Working primarily on Gnu/Linux and just moving to Windows occasionally, I felt a need to make the Windows XP desktop look like Gnome. There are two aspects to this, one is to change the icons and the other is to change the visual styles. Here is a step by step procedure for converting your desktop to Gnome.
Icons are an essential part of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) world. We will be using Tango Patcher, which currently includes implementations of the Tango icon theme, the Tangerine icon theme developed by the Ubuntu art team, Gnome-Icon-Theme2 and NLD10’s Industrial-Icon-Theme. Download the patcher and installing it just involves running the software.
The Patcher before installing gives you the option of the icon theme you want to install from the various ones mentioned above, I choose the default Tango Icon Theme, you can choose anything else. An option to change you Login Screen and BootUp screen is also available, choose it based on your liking. Then continue with the process, it will install and then reboot your system to be greeted with the new icons.
The next step is to change the visual styles, we will be using the clearlooks option, available as ClearLooks for Windows XP.
For visual styles to work we would generally need a software such as styleXP, but there exists an alternative to enable external themes support in WindowsXP, download and install Neowin UXTheme Multi-Patcher v4.0 (alternative link for download) (it applies a patch to the UXTheme.dll, to remove this just run the software again).
Next to install the Clearlooks themes head over ClearLooks for Windows XP or directly download by clicking here. Unzip the file and copy the folder to your themes folder, which is usually located at “C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\”.
Now go through your usual procedure which you use to change your Visual Styles (right click on desktop, choose appearance tab) and choose the ‘Clearlooks’ option. and Viola, now we have a desktop which closely resembles the Gnome environment. See a couple of screenshots below.
Hope you found this useful, do let me know your experience by commenting below.
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December 17th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
neat! will try this on my desktop machine sometime soon.
December 19th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
Sounds great. Nice stuff for linux lovers.
December 20th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
http://www.llbbl.com/data/nw_uxpatcher.zip gives a 404 error . Do you know of any alternatives?
Thanks.
December 20th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
@Swaroop: I just tried the link twice, the first time it worked, the second time it failed. Any ways it is also available here:
http://www.maxmomirror.com/mirror/nw/nw_uxpatcher.zip
Also, I will send you the file by email in any case.
December 20th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Hey Nithin, A little googling had helped me find the file.
Thanks!
Swaroop
January 4th, 2007 at 4:29 am
thank you for this post
finally something different from those vista/LH transformation packs 
January 4th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
i tried tango patcher along clearlooks, but when i start the computer, there is error showing …that goes away after cicking ok a couple of times.
and in the documentation i read that it does not support 64-bit versions of windows…am on XP…is that 64bit?
PS: i have a am 64 3000+ msi mobo machine
January 13th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Thanks Nithin,
That is everything a Desktop theme should be: clean, simple and pleasure to look at. Good work.
Rob B
January 18th, 2007 at 8:06 am
I tried it, it works great! Now, I need a hack to make the windows xp start menu look like gnome’s Applications/Places/System menus.
February 13th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
@ sindhu
If you have Windows XP 64bit, then you are on a 64 bit version of Windows XP
you see, XP is both 32 and 64 bit, depends on which version you get, it’s not Windows OR XP.. it’s Windows XP
February 24th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I tried it and it is really great, good job, I always wanted a linux like look for XP now I have it. I made a slightly improovement, using Firefox, I added the Tango firefox theme and it is awesome.
March 13th, 2007 at 2:58 am
Hi, I gnomed my Windows XP Pro following your instructions. The new interface is great! Thanks. With this new skin the system appears faster. Is it just an impression? Or is the new interface lighter than the original one?
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:37 am
Aww yea! Wish I would have stumbled on this sooner. Good work.
Couple more enhancements I found.
A Gnome theme for Thunderbird, but just for the 2.0 beta versions, and a Gnome skin for WinRar.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:43 am
Awesome !
This EXACTLY what i was looking for my WinXP at work !
Thanks again
April 30th, 2007 at 1:45 am
Awesome !
This EXACTLY what i was looking for my WinXP at work !
May 17th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
[...] Windows XP да изглежда като Gnome Posted by Dimitar Nikolov on Thursday, May 17th, [...]
September 19th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
great howto. thanks!
April 29th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Thanks for that!
TBH, on the rare occasions that I do boot into XP I’m generally off in about three minutes… (yeah, I never use college computers) so I don’t really care about how it looks – the first error message tends to dispell any doubts I may have about the OS I’m on!
May 1st, 2008 at 4:08 pm
This is AWESOME thanks so much!!!!
May 17th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Great! Finally I can use XP with (a bit) of joy.
July 30th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
UX patch does not work under XP SP3, use this instead: http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/SP3-UxTheme-Patcher-Download-98929.html
August 5th, 2008 at 2:28 am
Guys, I think that google’ing for “UXtheme dll patch” will be better than asking questions around here…
August 5th, 2008 at 2:33 am
And about “Xp look like GNOME”…
Try searching for “Human for Windows” on Net…
Human on Windows is the default Ubuntu Linux’s theme ported to Windows. (including Icons and Mouse and Bootsplash and Logon);
I think that it will be better if you will combine some stuff from this page with some stuff from Net like HfW…
P. S. I am not the spammer but I want to let people know about cool things…
P. P. S. Sorry for my bad English I’m Ukrainian;
August 8th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Thanks – this is very helpful. I had to go back to XP for practical reasons but much preferred Gnome when using Ubuntu. Is there any similar method to making Vista look like Gnome? Googling ‘Vista Gnome’ brings up tuts on how to make Gnome look like Vista.
August 9th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
@Arp: I have not tried Vista, as I am using Linux much more so have not looked into it at all, but sooner or later someone should be posting a neat article for the same; after all there is no lack of people who would like the gnome experience on Vista.
February 15th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
It seems not to work with Servicepack 3. I got an error that an unnamed File was not found and rundll32 crashes.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Hi there,
Really nice!
For those who are really fan of Linux, you can also install Desktops. It will create Virtual desktops under Windows.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881.aspx
It is not a big program but it does the job. Some people @ Microsoft starts to understand life!
October 1st, 2009 at 12:14 am
Really good!
I’ve been using Ubuntu for ages but that looks good enough for Windowz.
Drake’s suggestion is also worth trying.
Thanks
October 24th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Thank’s..
it’s Really Good.!!!!!!!!
October 26th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
wer can i download this GNOME skins?..
November 18th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
[...] Windows XP desktop look like Gnome — http://nithinkamath.info/archives/2006/12/make-windows-xp-desktop-look-like-gnome/ [...]
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
cant wait for this to be available for vista and windows 7. Please. Microsoft designers have no taste with their styling.
January 8th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
hey guys why not just try linux? it’s free anyway and there’s loads of free themes!
Oh i forgot to mention, no BSOD! LOL!
January 8th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
@Knox : I am infact using Linux itself, for a brief period of time I had to use Windows as I was unable to connect to the net using the data card. So wanted a interface which matches Gnome desktop. Hence I wrote this. Once I got the data card working in Linux, it is Linux all the way.