Ubuntu 11.10 - Replace the Default (and Annoying) Orange Scheme

Switching to Ubuntu 11.10 is painful, ugly and time consuming… but more on that some other time.

I was quite surprised to see most of the theme control options are now gone. The Appearance panel has no colour tweaks and I hate the default orange scheme. Luckily, there is a way to change it in Gtk3:

$ sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
$ dconf-editor

Browse to org.gnome.desktop.interface. Locate gtk-color-scheme. Edit the property:

bg_color: #f0f1f2;
selected_bg_color: #4677f0;

Change the colours to your liking. You may need to re-launch some apps for changes to take effect.

…now if I could only get those Gnome Terminal tabs to look darker.