I have a question (I just had to use one of those smilies). I looked around on googles & the message board but couldn't find an answer to my question.

I recently installed RH8.0 w/gnome desktop 2.0. I did a custom install but I think was pretty close to the personal desktop.

I download some themes (such as from www.themes.org and themes.linux.se) and used the themes install from
redhat->preferences->theme->install new theme
to install them. I can then validate that it indeed installed from "Go to theme folder" and yes they are there.

Unfortunately nothing shows up in the "Installed Themes" list (neither in the "Application" nor in the "Windows Border" tab).

What am I doing wrong? I really need one of those sexy themes. Bluecurve is neat but just not sexy enough. Asides from that it was one of the bribes I promised my fiancee to switch from Windows to Linux. Hehehehe.

thanks,
Philip

Hiya,
Yep, it's frustrating isn't it? I had the same problem. I believe it is a bug in the new window manager for Gnome 2. Sorry I can't remember exact details (like the name of the window manager) as I am no longer using Mandrake 9. I had to go back to 8.2 and Gnome 1.4 due to video card hassles.

There is a config tool but it requires some patience and probably an advanced (well at least in terms of a new user) knowledge of penguin-speak .
Good luck (with Gnome and fiancee)!
Stevo



Gee, those smilies are addictive aren't they?

I'm using RH 8.0. Really don't have a big distro preference, but it seems this might be indeed a bug, since you are having the same problem on another distro.
I had themes working just fine on RH 7.3 (Gnome 1.?). Although the ones I tried really didn't look nearly as good as I've seen screen shots for Gnome 2.0.

It's just wired because you'd think they notice a bug like that. And of course I don't see anywhere a mention of this bug.

I was thinking maybe I have a package-issue (missing some dependencies even though it installed fine?). But can't figure it out...

If anybody happens to bump into something I'd really appreciate it if they drop me a line/post a reply. It would also be good to hear from somebody who has themes working just fine under RH8.0/Gnome 2.0 and how they installed.

thanks though,
Philip

Hiya,
After looking around a bit more (I am waiting on delivery of a new video card so upgrade to ML 9.0 will be happening again soon), I found some discussion suggesting that the Metacity-setup program made the whole theme changing thing easier. Metacity is the enigmatic new window manager for Gnome 2 that I couldn't remember the name of in my previous post
.
Many of the links to download metacity-setup seem to lead to dead ends but this should work.

http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/pro...metacity-setup

Hope this helps.
Cheers
Stevo

I had same problem when I was using RH8.0 and I still do have same problem with Mandrake 9.0..... in both I'm using gnome

I've just downloaded and installed metacity-setup (on Mandrake 9.0). It is fairly featureless and a little buggy. For example, the 'install new theme' will hang if the file you are installing is not in your home directory (well that's how I got it to work). This bug is mentioned in the README file but not the fix.
The theme still doesn't install though. Same deal, the theme gets unpacked into the themes directory but doesn't appear in the list of available themes in the Themes Preferences section of Gnome.
It must be possible, mustn't it? If all those people are designing themes? If anyone knows where I can find a step-by-step how-to for doing it manually I'd really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Stevo

I found this:
http://themes.linux.se/docs/?nid=23

But I'm not quiet sure what WindowsMaker is. Is that to MAKE themes? 8)

Apparently from that doc it can be used to display themes, but I think RH8.0 doesn't use WindowsMaker (anymore?) because it's not part of the default installation. I did install it once though but the howto on the above didn't make sense. I assume because installing and using it are two different things (will RH8.0 w/Gnome 2.0 just use it when I install it?).

I think one of my fundamental problems is, that I don't know *what* displays the theme in Linux. I guess X11 is the WindowsServer and Gnome 2.0 gives it a graphical appearance. Bluecurve is just RedHat's 8.0 Theme to make it all look the same (on gnome & KDE). Thus, I assume, gnome 2.0 is still the "dude" that displays the theme.
So what's WindowMaker now for? And why should it display the theme if gnome should do it?

All right, even thought I didn't think I am one (I've been on linux for a couple of years) -- I think I officially earned the medal of:



And I still wonder if there is anybody out there that is using themes from just the RedHat (or since we are at it: Mandrake) stock installation w/gnome 2.0. I mean how can they miss a bug like that? And as you said before, what are the people doing that develop themes

Just doesn't make sense to me -- maybe themes need to be 2.0 compliant? Can that be?

Philip

Hi Philip,
Windowmaker (www.windowmaker.org) is a 'window manager for X'. You can run windowmaker by itself (and it is really nice) or 'underneath' Gnome, which is a 'desktop manager' (I think that's right). Gnome needs a window manager to be running, it doesn't manage windows by itself. Themes are applied essentially at two levels - the window manager level and the Gnome level. Gnome themes are usually handled by GTK. This only changes the menus and buttons inside the window though. It is the window manager themes that provide all those fancy borders, title bars and stuff. The default window manager for Gnome 2 seems to be Metacity. It is the Metacity themes that I (and suspect you) are having.
I hope that clears things up a little.
Cheers,
Stevo

Hey..
I have the same problems with the theme installations in RH8.0.. I allso have some "lib" erors when I tru to install enlightening.. Seems like RH8.0 wasn't really ready to be released..

I think we should submit a bug-report to redhat and reference this message board. I mean if we are having this problem, we can't be the only ones. If it isn't a bug then they surely need a HOWTO somewhere.

I wasn't successful locating something on the RedHat page to submit a bug report. You guys know how to best contact RedHat? I also didn't buy 8.0 so I'm not sure what kind of support coverage I have (I bought 7.0 or something like that at some point).

They have this Support on Demand:
http://www.redhat.com/software/linux...on_demand.html
... I wouldn't mind paying a couple of bugs to answer this question. Anybody know details how this works? Maybe I'll just call and find out...

Thru RHN I was able to find some documentation but nothing that helps. There is a manual-page that describes the Theme selector, but it doesn't say anything about Themes not appearing in the list after installing them.

I think the bug report is the way to go but it should go to the Metacity people. I have tried downloading and using the Metacity setup program seperately and it behaves the same way as I am experiencing in Mandrake and what you are experiencing in Red Hat. I think both distros have built the metacity-setup into their Gnome 2 configuration tools.

The only problem is that there doesn't appear to be anything at the Metacity project site, it's just a directory of files. Sourceforge are hosting the metacity-setup project at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/metacity-setup/

There is only one bug reported so far which may help us. I haven't deciphered it fully yet but it seems to be a problem with Metacity 2.4 not finding theme files for earlier versions. There is a patch available for download to fix this, available here:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/downl...273&aid=603335

I have to run now so can't look into it any further just now but will hava a more serious look later.
Cheers
Stevo

theming works great in gnome2 /metacity..
if it is a bug, it might be a redhat bug. not a gnom2 bug..
I managed to skin, nautilus and metacity just fine without any trouble

copy the metacity theme.tar.gz to /usr/share/themes as su
extract it as tar zxvf theme.tar.gz
in the theme app u select install new theme, go to /usr/share/themes and click on the dir, press ok...
go to borders and windows tab and select the theme there.
u can also install nautilus themes , which will appear in the theme tab.
u do the same procedure, so you get a different nautilus, different icons on desktop etc.

it took me only 5 mins to find this out, I never themed gnome before at all.

Wow! You MUST be smarter than we are to have figured it out in only 5 mins while we dummies have been floundering about here for days.

Thanks for your modest advice but it doesn't work on my machine. I had tried that (and several variants) when the official methods failed (install new theme --> select unzipped directory, or drag and drop to theme list).

I have managed to at least get the theme names to appear in the list by going to the <themename> folder in /usr/share/themes and creating a directory called "metacity-1" and moving all of the theme files into it. However nothing happens when I select the theme. I got this kooky idea by looking at the directories of the themes that did show up in the list and worked.

Cheers
Stevo

Hi there,
I've been doing some study
The following is a cut and paste from the SourceForge-hosted metacity-setup project:

------------------------------------------------
Date: 2002-10-09 05:53

patch to fix theme detection
this is text from a bug (#8822) i filed on bugs.gentoo.org:

metacity-setup will emerge, but doesn't really detect
themes properly. i hacked on it this morning, and am
attaching a new ebuild file and the patch. the program
now recognizes my themes and changes them.

the issue was that metacity-setup was looking for:
<theme_dir>/THEME_NAME/metacity-theme-1.xml

but all of the themes i've installed use the form:
<theme_dir>/THEME_NAME/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml

my patch adds this second path as a valid form and
voila! things started to work.

this patch is against metacity-setup 0.7.1

----------------------------------------------------------
The patch is available here:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/downl...701&aid=620746

Now, how does one find out which version of Metacity they have?

And of course the next question is "how do I apply a patch?"

Before anyone gets all high and mighty and screams RTFM, I'd like to point out that I have tried to a) use the KDE program Kompare, and b) after reading the "man patch" page, tried running "patch -p1 <patch name>.patch".

The result for a) was that nothing came up to patch and for b) was that nothing appeared to happen. The cursor just went to the next line and stayed there. I was su root.

Cheers,
Stevo