This posts details a new theme intended for use on Ubuntu 14.04. The theme uses many elements of Milieu Bird and Ubuntu’s default ambiance. The sharp contrast between the dark headers of Milieu Bird with the lighter elements of ambiance lends a stylish and usable Ubuntu look.
To use the theme first download its archive:
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 the folder to the themes directory:
sudo cp -R Elegant-ambiance /usr/share/themes
It may be necessary after this step to apply the correct permissions to this folder. To do this use this command:
sudo chmod -R 777 /usr/share/themes/Elegant-ambiance
Following this use a tool like Unity Tweak (sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool) which has the ability to change Ubuntu’s theme. After setting Elegant-ambiance 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. The current official version of the icon theme hasn’t been updated to work with Ubuntu 14.04, therefore the following modified version is recommended for use:
Download Clarity-Mono-Dark (modified for Ubuntu 14.04)
Unpack the folder from the archive, open a terminal and navigate to the directory where it 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 the necessary changes take place.
The theme is primarily intended for use with Ubuntu 14.04 but it should work with most recent versions of the OS and some similar Linux distributions.
For the black Unity launcher shown on the left in the screenshot Unity Tweak was used to set both the launcher’s colour and transparency. This tool can also be set to change the colours of the window snapping and resizing areas to shades of blue which match the theme.
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.
J.A.McNaughton 
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