No way to choose Ubuntu’s Radiance theme without installing Gnome Shell

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Ubuntu Ocelot, all updates installed at 2011-08-16

1. Install Ubuntu.
2. In your new Ubuntu installation, try to switch to the Radiance theme.

What happens: There is no interface anywhere for switching between Ambiance and Radiance.

What should happen: If Radiance is shipped by default, an interface for switching to Radiance should be shipped by default too. Otherwise it's a waste of time and space.

It is possible to change the theme by first installing gnome-tweak-tool, but gnome-tweak-tool is riddled with settings that we probably wouldn't want to expose by default, including Gnome-Shell-specific settings, and (to fix bug 795084) it Depends on gnome-shell.

[Sam_ (and-sam)]

Similar request on Bug #825939

[Andrea Cimitan (cimi)]

Definitely not a bug in light-themes... maybe control center?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

It is a bug in light-themes: a large proportion of the light-themes code is code that people can't practically use. The bug might be fixed by introducing a new package, or changing gnome-control-center, or changing some other package. But in the absence of any concrete plan to do that, it is light-themes which is being inefficient.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I talked to the gnome-tweak-tool developer and he'd be happy to have some Unity settings included in his tool. And he'd like for gnome-tweak-tool also to work without crashing if gnome-shell (or in this case, Unity) is not installed because crashing is definitely no the way it's supposed to work.

I think gnome-tweak-tool is a much better choice than CCSM as an interface to set Unity settings for casual users. And it's written in Python so it should be a lot easier for devs to submit patches for improvement.

I don't know if there's time (and interest) to get gnome-tweak-tool in shape for Oneiric, but it's definitely possible for Phlegmatic Pheasant.

[Sam_ (and-sam)]

With unity 4.10.2-0ubuntu2 'appearance' in g-c-c was introduced which allows to change the theme to radiance.