This posts details  a theme intended for use on Ubuntu 13.04.  The theme uses many elements of the Elegant Bird, a theme previously intended for xfce built on Elegant Brit and Greybird.  The result is a clear theme with square windows and tidy title buttons for a simple yet stylish appearance.

To use the theme first download its archive:

Download Milieu Bird

Unpack the folder from the archive, open a terminal and navigate to the directory where the folder is extracted to.  Use the following command to copy folder to the themes directory:

sudo cp -R Milieubird /usr/share/themes

It may be necessary after this step to apply to correct permissions to this folder.  To do this use the following command:

sudo chmod -R 777 /usr/share/themes/Milieubird

Following this, use a tool like Ubuntu Tweak or the Unity Tweak Tool (sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool) which both have options for changing Ubuntu’s theme. MilieuBird should appear in the list of available themes in these tools after being copied into the themes folder.  After setting MilieuBird as the current theme log in and out to make sure everything is changed appropriately.

For icons which fit the theme’s blue colour scheme clarity-mono-dark is recommended. This icon theme is similar to Ubuntu’s default but uses blue in place of orange in various places such as the folder icons.  To use this icon theme first get the archive from the clarity-mono-dark page.  Unpack the folder from the archive, open a terminal and navigate to the directory where the folder was extracted to.  Use the following command to copy folder to the icon themes directory:

sudo cp -R clarity-mono-dark /usr/share/icons

Use a tweak tool again to change the icon theme to clarity-mono-dark.  Logging in and out should ensure changes take place.

I’ve only tried the theme with Ubuntu 13.04 but it should work with most recent versions.

The background used in the screen shot is a blue version of Ubuntu 13.04′s default wallpaper: blue-warty-final-ubuntu.jpg

Like the music player featured in the screenshot above?  Checkout Clementine.

The version of nautilus pictured is the solusos patched version.

This theme also works great on Elementary OS: Luna.

Note:  Earlier users of the theme may have noticed issues with the appearance of some app’s menu bars (such as firefox’s) and text-shadows on the menus; these has now been corrected.