How To Install The Uniform Icon Theme On Linux
The Uniform icon theme is a very unique set of custom icons for the Linux desktop, as no other theme out there looks quite like it. Its design is heavily based on the idea that things should look unique and different. Overall, the theme follows some cool design trends (like the flat trend) but doesn’t come off as “yet another pair of Google icons” for Linux.
If you’re interested in installing the Uniform icon theme, it’s widely available on all Linux distributions through Github, or, downloadable archive files.
Note: the Uniform icon theme isn’t available as a downloadable DEB or RPM file. Instead, users looking to use the icon theme need to get it from Github or Gnome-Look.org.
Follow the instructions below to learn how to install Uniform on your Linux distribution of choice.
Get Uniform Icon Theme Via Github
Getting Uniform from Github is a great idea, as users will get the absolute latest version of it. Better yet, as the files are downloading from Github, there’s no need to deal with things like Zip archives. The only downside to this method is that Github is a developer platform, so the icon theme may feel incomplete.
To install Uniform via the developer’s Github page, you’ll first need to install the Git program. Open up a terminal and enter the installation command that fits with your Linux operating system.
Ubuntu
sudo apt install git
Debian
sudo apt-get install git
Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S git
Fedora
sudo dnf install git
OpenSUSE
sudo zypper in git
Other Linuxes
Getting the Git program is usually the same process, no matter the Linux distribution. Look through your distribution’s package manager for “git” and install it.
Once the tool is installed, use it to grab the Uniform icon theme from the developer’s page.
git clone https://github.com/0rAX0/uniform-icon-theme.git
Now that Uniform has finished cloning, it’s time to do a quick tweak of the source folder. Using the CD command, move the terminal into uniform-icon-theme.
cd uniform-icon-theme
In the uniform-icon-theme folder, use the mv tool to place the Uniform sub-folder in the icon directory.
sudo mv Uniform /usr/share/icons/
Alternatively, if you’d like to use the Git version Uniform as a single user, start out by creating a new ~/.icons folder. Creating a new folder is usually necessary as many Linux OS’s don’t create one during the installation process.
In the Linux terminal, use the mkdir command to create the folder:
mkdir ~/.icons
Finish up the single-user installation process by moving the “Uniform” folder into the new ~/.icons directory.
mv Uniform ~/.icons
Get Uniform Icon Theme Via Gnome-Look
In addition to being available on Github, the Uniform icon theme can also be downloaded from Gnome-Look.org. While it might not sound like there’s much of a difference between the two, there actually is.
For starters, Github is a developer platform. It’s nice for Linux users, as things are usually open source, and, as a result, are easy to mess around with and get going. However, Github pages are usually incomplete and not intended as a “full-release”, complete with bugs, missing assets, and etc.
Conversely, getting things from places like Gnome-Look, though less convenient allows the user to have a more complete set of icons.
To get the Uniform icon theme from Gnome-Look, no special programs (like git) needs to be installed. Instead, head over to the Gnome-Look Uniform page, click the “download” button grab the latest Tar archive. Then, open up a terminal and use tar and mv to finish up the installation.
cd ~/Downloads tar -xzvf Uniform+\ \icons.tar.gz
tar -xvf Uniform+\ \icons/icons.tar.xz
With everything extracted, it’s safe to start the installation. To install the Uniform icon theme system-wide, so that every user on your Linux PC can have access, place the icon files into /usr/share/icons.
cd ~/Downloads/icons sudo mv * /usr/share/icons/
If you’d like to install Uniform for a single user (instead of making it accessible for every Linux user on your PC), do the following.
First, create a new ~/.icons directory. Creating a new one is important, as many Linux distributions don’t create one by default.
mkdir ~/.icons
Finish up by moving the icons from the download folder into the new ~/.icons directory.
cd ~/Downloads/icons sudo mv * ~/.icons
Activating Uniform
The Uniform icon theme is installed on Linux and ready to use, but not activated yet. Luckily, activating a new icon theme is very easy. To activate, open up the “system settings area,” and look for the “appearance” section. Then, find “icons” and select the “Uniform” theme from the drop-down menu.
If you’re still having trouble figuring out how to activate the theme, consider checking out the following links. Each one of them goes over, in detail, how to apply customization settings for things like icon themes, GTK/QT themes, and more!
