How to install the Skeuos GTK theme on Linux – Easy Steps

Skeuos is a GTK3 / 4 theme for Gnome Shell, as well as other GTK-based desktop environments on Linux. It comes in several different color variants and has a clean and elegant design that is sure to spice up your Linux setup. Here’s how to install the Skeuos GTK theme on your system.

Download Skeuos on Linux

The Skeuos GTK theme is available for download on the project’s GitHub page. To download this theme to your computer, you will need to use the wget download command in terminal.

Almost all Linux operating systems come with wget pre installed. If you are using a Linux operating system that does not come with this tool, you will have to install it manually. To get your hands on the Wget application, click here.

To download Skeuos on your Linux computer, open a terminal window on the Linux desktop. You can open a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T on the keyboard. Or search for “Terminal” in the application menu and run it that way.

With the terminal window open, use the wget download the command below to get the latest version of Skeuos on your computer.

wget https://github.com/daniruiz/skeuos-gtk/archive/refs/heads/master.zip -O ~/Downloads/skeuos-gtk-theme.zip

It is also possible to download the theme from the Skeuos GitHub page with the clone de git command. However, you should only do this if you know how to use GitHub as it is a complex tool.

Extracting Skeuos on Linux

Once the Skeuos GTK theme has been downloaded to your Linux computer, you will need to extract it. To start the extraction process, go to the terminal and use the CD command to move to the “Downloads” directory where the ZIP file of the theme file is located.

cd ~/Downloads/

Once inside the «Downloads» directory, use the unzip command to unzip the file “skeuos-gtk-theme.zip”.

unzip -d skeuos-gtk-theme/ skeuos-gtk-theme.zip

When the extraction process is complete, a new folder named “skeuos-gtk-theme” will appear in your “Downloads” directory. Use the CD command and enter this directory.

cd ~/Downloads/skeuos-gtk-theme/

Once inside the “skeuos-gtk-theme” folder, you will need CD in the folder “skeuos-gtk-master”. This subfolder contains all the GTK theme files that you can install on your Linux computer.

cd skeuos-gtk-theme/skeuos-gtk-master/

Skeuos installation on Linux

Installing Skeuos on your Linux computer can be done in two ways. The first way to install this GTK theme is in “single user” mode and the second way is in “whole system” mode.

If you don’t share a computer and you don’t need anyone else to access the Skeuos topic, you should follow the “single user” instructions. Alternatively, if you need multiple users to access this topic, follow the instructions for “whole system”.

Single user

To install the Skeuos GTK theme as a single user, start by creating a ~/.themes folder using the mkdir command. This folder will contain GTK theme files in your home directory (~).

mkdir -p ~/.themes/

After creating the new directory, use the ls command to view the contents of the ~/Downloads/skeuos-gtk-theme/skeuos-gtk-master/ directory.

ls

Look at the list of items in the terminal prompt. It will show many, many variations of the Skeuos GTK theme. When you’ve found the one you want, use the mv command to install it on the newly created ~/.themes/ folder in your home directory.

For example, to install the “Skeuos-Black-Dark” theme, you must enter the following command.

mv Skeuos-Black-Dark/ ~/.themes/

Replace “Skeuos-Black-Dark” with the name of the theme you would like to install that is within the ~/Downloads/skeuos-gtk-theme/skeuos-gtk-master/ directory.

Repeat this process as many times as you like to install more Skeuos GTK themes on your computer in “single user” mode.

Whole system

Do you need to install the Skeuos GTK theme system wide? Here’s how to do it. First, use the sudo -s command to elevate your terminal session to root access.

sudo -s

Then use the ls command to view the contents of the ~/Downloads/skeuos-gtk-theme/skeuos-gtk-master/ directory.

ls

the ~/Downloads/skeuos-gtk-theme/skeuos-gtk-master/ The directory has many theme folders to choose from. Look in the terminal list for the theme you want to install.

Follow the example command below when you have found the Skeuos theme that you would like to configure on your system.

For example, to install the “Skeuos-Magenta-Light” theme on your system, you would run:

mv Skeuos-Magenta-Light/ /usr/share/themes/

Repeat this process as many times as you like to install more Skeuos GTK themes on your computer in “whole system” mode.

Activating Skeuos on Linux

The Skeuos GTK theme is installed on your computer, but it is not the default theme yet. To make Skeous the default look for your Linux desktop, you will have to change the theme settings.

Not sure how to change theme settings on your Linux PC? We can help! Check out the links below for more information on how to change desktop themes in Linux!