How the heck do you install 'Theme' engines? Not to be condescending, but, man it is soooooo confusing... I open with Archive Manager and extract and it extracts to the directory of where I downloaded it. I mean, come on, extract the files to where they are supposed to go. How is a noob, well not totally, but new enough, know where some of this stuff is supposed to go. No readmes with install instructions. If there is one area where Ubuntu, and probably other distro's fail, is in this area.
Sorry, didnt mean to rant, but man it sure is frustrating.

How is the computer supposed to know where the themes are supposed to go when you extract them?

Anyway, what kind of themes are you trying to install? GTK or metacity? With GTK themes, just make a directory called .themes in your home directory, extract the themes there and use what-ever theme switcher you have to switch theme.

Its not the themes I am having a problem with, its the Theme Engine. For instance, I want to install the Smooth Engine. I found it, downloaded it and tried to extract it. No theme engine installed. It put the 'lib' directory where I downloaded it. Hence, no theme engine.

I assume that the tar was created with 'relative' pathing. So it will restore 'relative' to where you are at. Well, where/what is the path that I am supposed to extract it to?