Ubuntu Unity in the Style of Gnome 3

Let me start off by saying that I really like Unity, especially its most recent iteration, 5.8. It seems the Ubuntu team are doing their best to increase its efficiency and responsiveness, and it acts a lot faster than it did way back in 11.04. The dash is extremely efficient, and the HUD is like having the Alt key bound to a one-line terminal.

There is, however, one problem I have with Unity.

Isn't it wonderful?

It's ugly as hell.

I don't mean the interface, I mean the default appearance settings. The purple-and-orange color scheme works well with solid-colored 2-D graphics, but let's face it – Unity's default background is extremely off-putting. Which is odd, considering the fact that the rest of the backgrounds supplied with every Ubuntu release are fairly well-chosen. I must admit that I also don't much like the Ambiance GTK+ theme, but I can at least understand why people like it.

So, being a bit obsessive-compulsive about the way my system looks, I decided to do a bit of tweaking to make it look more like an interface I think looks much more attractive.

Bring the hate.

That's right. Gnome 3.

Now, don't get me wrong, I positively despised every release of Gnome before 3.4, and I don't even like it all that much now. It's got a lot of overhead, and it doesn't seem to be intuitive for new users or people familiar with Gnome 2. But they do get the visuals right, and that's what I aimed to emulate. It's actually fairly simple to get working, and only requires you to install a couple packages that ought to be bundled with Ubuntu anyway.

Without further ado, here is how to make Ubuntu Unity 5.8 look like Gnome 3.

The two packages we're looking for are Advanced Settings (gnome-tweak-tool) and CompizConfig Settings Manager (compizconfig-settings-manager), or CCSM. These are both in the official repositories, so you can either install them through the terminal:

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager


...or get them from the Ubuntu software center. Either way, they're both great tools to have if you want to reveal the sizable amount of customization available for Unity.

Let's start by getting the technicals down. Open up CCSM and go to the Desktop tab (either by clicking its filter on the left of the window or scrolling down). Open the Ubuntu Unity Plugin menu and change the Hide Launcher setting to Autohide. This makes the desktop look much cleaner on startup, and the launcher won't be such an eyesore when it's not in use.

If you want, you can also keep the launcher even more out of the way by changing the Reveal Trigger for Left Edge to Top Left Corner, but this can be a nuisance when trying to close maximized windows. You can also switch over to the Experimental tab and change the icon size – I personally think the default 48 is obnoxiously large.

Now to the fun stuff! Close CCSM and open Advanced Settings from the dash. Switch to the Theme tab and change both the GTK+ Theme and Window Theme to Adwaita. It is worth noting that if you want ot go absolutely all-out, you can download Cantarell (Gnome 3's default font) and install it in place of the Ubuntu font, but that won't be covered here.

At this point, your panel and windows should look essentially identical to Gnome 3. If you want to go the extra mile, there are a few purely esoteric changes you can make. First, gnome-tweak-tool automatically adds the default Gnome 3 wallpaper to your wallpaper folder, so it's available in the standard System Settings > Appearances (note that it says it changes with time, but it actually doesn't).

If you want your browser to integrate nicely, there are Firefox Personas and Chrome (or Chromium) Themes which click nicely with Adwaita (Firefox Persona here, Chrome Theme here.)

Chromium looks pretty slick with Adwaita.

I've looked into trying to go even further with this, like trying to move the launcher to the bottom of the screen like Docky, but it refuses to center and the Dash gets all out of alignment. You can also grab the Faenza icon theme, but the panel icons in that set look plain bad. What do you think of Unity and Gnome? What other cool Unity tricks do you know of?