How would one add a GTK theme that I downloaded from GNOME-LOOK.ORG that has been extracted from a tar. I have it extracted so how would I add this theme. I have gtk-chtheme but that only shows the preinstalled packages. help

Place the theme folder into /home/<username>/.themes.

Either using Xian's method or run gnome-appearance-propreties; you should get an "Install" button somewhere. Point that to the tar archive, if it contains only one theme, or to the specific theme directory from the extracted data, if the tar archive contains several themes (or other, non-gnome-theme related files).

I tried that and pointed the extracted theme from a tar and it doesnt see and theme. It there an extention that the theme should be? I am confused.

I also placed the themes in ~/.themes and nothing. what gives?

Some of those "themes" are a misnomer. They actually only appear as option to change the window border or application. Check the other tabs in the gnome theme manager and see if the name of what you extracted appears under another category.

I didnt see anything different. I did figure it out. I am using mandriva and simply did a search for the name of a theme already installed. It unvailed the path and in my case it was /usr/share/theme/{name_of_theme_folder}. Inside of the the theme folder it has GTK2.0_something and icons_something. I just simply copied the extracted tar file to that location and fire up gtk-chtheme and there they were. I did notice a gtkrc file. Is that the format that gtk-chtheme looks for? There was also the issue with fonts that you need to have in order for certain themes to work.