Emerald?

Emerald themes and the emerald theme manager do not come pre-installed with Gutsy Gibbon. As I mentioned earlier, it is possible to set transparency for Metacity window borders. And one or two of my favourite Emerald themes have a Metacity equivalent. But many don't. So the question arises - do I install Emerald? Or do I settle for a selection of the best Metacity themes (window borders).

I succumbed last night. If you go to Synaptic, you'll find 'Emerald'. It installs without problem. But I've since uninstalled it. Why? Because there was no package of themes included. And I didn't fancy having to look for, download and import each of the best themes individually. I did try to import themes en masse using the 'import GPL'ed themes' button in the Emerald theme manager. But that required the installation of 'subversion' which I rashly went ahead with. And it was useless. It didn't manage to import anything. Fortunately, I discovered the history tab in Synaptic which listed for me all the dependency packages that I installed along with subversion. That enabled me to get back to a clean slate.

So what now? Well apparently a few other Ubuntu forum members have the same dilemma.

Someone suggested: "If you have already installed Emerald then do this:
sudo apt-get install emerald emerald-themes

Or fetch a package of emerald themes from Trevino's site:
http://3v1n0.tuxfamily.org/dists/feisty/eyecandy/index.html

There are some interesting notes on Compiz-fusion and emerald at Forlong's blog.

I note however at:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/x11/emerald
that there is no package of emerald themes available for gutsy

But in response to the question:
"Is there anyway that i can use compiz fusion themes or do they even exist?"
someone replied: "There is emerald-themes (windows decorator) for compiz fusion.
... search for emerald-themes at http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/x11/emerald-themes (it works for gutsy)."

That enthused me for a moment. Then I reconsidered. I'm quite happy with the quality of Metacity window borders - Ater 5, Orange glow, Scaled Black, Humanoid, Zune, system G - the list goes on. And I like being able to set or adjust all my appearance preferences in a single applet. That wouldn't be the case if I were to switch to emerald as my windows manager. I also find that I rarely, if ever, feel a yen to revisit Gconf to adjust the transparency of windows borders. So I'm sticking with Metacity.

I've read here and there in the forum that "There is no such thing as a Compiz theme", but I notice that gnome-look.org still lists Compiz themes. Intent on getting to the bottom of that mystery, I searched the Ubuntu forums and found:

"Compiz themes do exist, these are themes for the previous compiz decorator that evolved into emerald. Some of them still work with emerald." OK - mystery explained.