How to install the Ultimate Maia GTK theme on Linux
Ultimate Maia is an “easy on the eyes” Material Design theme for GTK and Gnome. It consists of deep flat colors and various accents. It mirrors the Google Material Design specifications and was made famous by being the default theme setup for Manjaro Linux. However, it’s possible to enjoy this GTK skin on other Linux operating systems.
Download Ultimate Maia GTK
The Ultimate Maia GTK theme is available to all Linux users via the OpenDesktop website. On the page, there are several different versions of the GTK theme with various accent colors. These accent colors are blue, green, grey, black, orange, and violet.
To get your hands on the Ultimate Maia GTK theme in your favorite accent, follow the download instructions below.
Blue
The Blue Maia theme is at the top of the “Files” list on OpenDesktop. To get it, click on the theme page. Then, select the “Files” button on the page. From there, click the blue download button next to “Ultimate-Maia-Blue.tar.xz” to start the download.
Green
Want to try out the Green version of Maia? Head over to the official theme page on OpenDesktop and click on “Files”. Once there, find “Ultimate-Maia-Green.tar.xz” and click on the blue download icon to get it on your PC.
Grey
There’s a Grey Maia theme available, and if you’re looking to try it out get it by heading to the files page on OpenDesktop. Look for “Ultimate-Maia-Grey.tar.xz,” and click the blue download button to get the theme.
Black
Maia looks good in Black, so If you’d like to get Black Maia, find the “Files” button on Ultimate Maia’s OpenDesktop page. On that page, click the blue download button next to “Ultimate-Maia-Black.tar.xz” to get it.
Orange
While Orange might not be many people’s first choice for an accent color, it’s an option for those that want it. To get it, go to the “Files” tab on the Maia theme page and click the blue download button next to “Ultimate-Maia-Orange.tar.xz.”
Violet
Love the color violet? If so, consider grabbing the Violet Maia theme! To get it, go to the “Files” section of the Ultimate Maia theme page and click the download button next to “Ultimate-Maia-Violet.tar.xz”.
Install Ultimate Maia GTK
To install any of the Maia GTK themes on Linux, you must first extract the contents of the TarXZ archive. To start the extraction for the theme, open up a terminal window. With the terminal window open, use the CD command to move the command-line session into the “Downloads” directory.
cd ~/Downloads
Inside of the downloads directory, you can extract the TarXZ archive. Keep in mind that since there is a wide variety of different themes, we will need to use the wildcard function.
Note: the wildcard (*) function will automatically detect the rest of the filename, so you don’t have to.
tar xvf Ultimate-Maia-*.tar.xz
Alternatively, if you don’t like using the Tar command in a terminal window, open up the Linux file manager and click on “Downloads”. Then, locate your TarXZ Ultimate Maia archive, right-click on it and select “extract” to decompress it.
When the archive is done extracting, it should show up in a sub-folder with a label of “Ultimate-Maia-COLOR”.
Set up system-wide
Setting up Ultimate Maia system-wide is the best way to go if you have multiple users on your Linux PC and you want them all to experience and enjoy the same GTK theme. To install Maia system-wide, the theme files must be placed in /usr/share/themes/.
To start the installation for Ultimate-Maia, move your terminal to the “Downloads” directory, (assuming the command-line session isn’t there already.)
cd ~/Downloads
In the download directory, use the mv command, along with the wildcard function (*) and sudo to move the theme files previously extracted from the TarXZ archive into the system theme folder.
sudo mv Ultimate-Maia-*/ /usr/share/themes/
If you’ve decided to install multiple Ultimate Maia themes, repeat the process till all theme files are in the correct directory.
Set up for a single user
Only plan on using Ultimate Maia GTK for a single user? If so, set up the GTK theme set up on your user. To do this, move the terminal session to the “Downloads” directory using CD.
cd ~/Downloads
Once inside the “Downloads” folder, use the mkdir command to make a new ~/.themes directory in your home folder.
mkdir -p ~/.themes
Using the mv command, install the Ultimate Maia theme for the single user looking to run Ultimate Maia.
mv Ultimate-Maia-*/ ~/.themes/
Be sure to repeat this process if you plan to use multiple Maia themes.
Activate Ultimate Maia
To use the Ultimate Maia GTK theme, you must activate it within your desktop environment. To do this, open up settings and access the “Appearance” area. Or, if you need help activating themes, check the following links in the list below.
