For the past few months we weren't focused on creating new themes. Now we've covered that lost time by releasing or updating our complete lineup! Some themes (Round & Square) have been left behind, while others (Blackout) were re-purposed in other projects (notably, System 7 [beta theme] and Metro Dark (black Windows 10 theme), and yet others have been released (Solarized)!

Notable upgrades are the XP Embedded and Zune variants (now they really look like they sould!) and the Chrome OS theme, based on the original Chrome theme!

Also, we have been working hard on the Longhorn Theme pack, in close collaboration with Collaborator Feren, and we are proud to announce two pre-Release Candidates: Jade and Plex.

We will now focus ourselves on the Whistler Watercolor (3.18) theme and the porting of Chrome OS to 3.20

New Icon packs will also be supported, among them the revamped WinXP Icon theme!

Thanks for following our theme with close attention, see you next month!

Here we are again, providing updates on the themes and the general state of the project so far. We had hoped to do a great amount of work during the summer. Unfortunately, we couldn't make it happen. However, we are now ready to tackle one of our biggest tasks to date : port the complete Redmond collection for compatibility with GTK 3.18.

Also, we are considering the option of refreshing the Chromium OS theme by shifting to Flat-Plat as base theme. This has been decided mainly because Flat-Plat provides Chrome OS-like transitions which we would like to integrate. Heavy work must be done to transform the theme, since all colors are stored as HEX values (we prefer on working with color definitions). But since colors are generally very similar, we may also just rework some elements and change assets to match Chrome OS's look. Expect some new things coming to this theme very soon.

One of our priorities is also to progress on our Longhorn collaboration, but as the themes are planned to be based on the XP Zune/Embedded themes, we must upgrade these before any work is made on the Longorn themes. 

We have also recieved lots of feedback on the Windows 10 theme, so bug fixes, enhancements and additions are comming very soon to the theme as "Service Pack Releases" or "Update Releases" for macOS theme.

So here's the current roadmap : 

• OS X / macOS and Windows 10 will get fixes for the GTK 3.20 release, maybe some other things for GTK 3.18 versions
• Port the Chromium theme from our base theme to Flat-Plat to have GTK 3 effects & transitions
• Port the Redmond collection over to 3.18 by the end of the year
• Start working on new Longhorn themes (in order: Plex, Slate, Jade, Aero)

Ubuntu 16.04 packs some modern software, including the latest stable (3.20 IS NOT stable, whatever the GNOME team may say) GIMP ToolKit. We had seen this coming, and because we had provided support for it in Fedora 22/23, it hasn't been much of a hassle to fix the remaining bugs.

However, the next-gen GNOME desktop will ship with GTK 3.20, which (almost) totally resets the way themes are rendered. According to this GNOME post, they've replaced many CSS classes with nodes, supposedly to improve speed and to allow further customization. Althought we've got most of the OS X and Windows 10 themes ported, it wasn't as easy as upgrading to GKT 3.18. Due to a lack of time, we have to redefine our priorities on the short and mid-run. Here is the expected roadmap for the next two or three months.

• The Redmond themes will NOT be upgraded to 3.18, unless things start to get better
• OS X El Capitan development will be paused
• Windows 10 Theme will get bug fixes mainly, released as Service Packs (we're keeping the 1.0.0 tag for later)
• Chromium OS will see it's development interrupted
• B00merang Glass may get an overhaul; new Blackout variant will be released soon (expect a glassier look on the next releases of B00merang Dark)
• B00merang Transformer's goal will be redefined as an offline theme installer and managing tool
• We will be focused on the Longhorn project as far as theme creation goes

We hope our time restrictions will have faded by the end of august, so expect news around that time

So, it's been 3 months since we started this project, and it's been a lot of work (have a look at the changelog if you're not convinced)! So we decided to release a little more info about this theme that is growing very popular (almost 40K downloads).

1) It's been included in some Linux distros
Yes, due to it's ressemblance to Windows 10 it has been integrated with the Linux Distributions AnemOS and FerenOS (it's seen in a system screenshot). We value the efforts the developers put in making Linux more accessible to the masses and are glad to contribute to their efforts.

2) It's been widely talked about
Since we began analysing traffic to our website, we found out that quite a few webpages had talked about this theme : aside from our pages @ gnome and xfce-look, linuxadictos.com, tuxdiary.com, sempreupdate.org, lemondedestuts.org and nosolounix.com, as well as a link from linux.softpedia.com have furnished a lot of views to, mainly, the Windows 10 theme download page.

3) Video content is already out
Being reviewed helps the visibility of the theme, so it's kind of a good thing. 
Xfce preview : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0jAqeIHbNw
Ubuntu 15.10 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W98H1GEchqs
Mate DE : ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=056O13Hkgbg&app=desktop
plus an appearance in this comparison video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkB_nmTSlI4

UPDATE
According to a poll from OMG! Ubuntu, our Windows 10 Cinnamon theme got voted among the top 5 best Cinnamon themes. Have a look at the article to know more.

And now, the info we promised :
The theme started when I started with a little project around September 5th, 2015. My purpose was to build a custom Windows 10 theme based on one of my previous themes, the B00merang-Glass theme, from which this group took it's name. So after having kind of finished, I released it, but I wanted a dark theme to use at night, so on Version 0.3 I added a dark variant.

So, that's the theme's story in short words.

 Until version 12.04, third-party tools allowed Ubuntu users to move the panel to the bottom of the screen. Nonetheless, in release 14.04 Canonical removed support for this function. Plus, ​Mark Shuttleworth said that the Launcher won't be movable in next releases either. So, considering we want to provide users with a realistic Windows-looking environment with our Windows 10 theme, we searched for alternatives. Here's what we found :

1. Xfce4 Panel

Surprised? We were too! In fact, we didn't find this alternative in the internet. I had this idea after reminding about my previous Linux Mint installation with Xfce, wich had installed this program called DockBarX for window-listing. After some thinking, I installed the xfce4-panel package and was delighted to find out it worked very well, just like it does on Xubuntu and other Xfce-equipped distributions. To successfully install the xfce4-panel package and have it running, follow the following instructions.

To install the Xfce Panel on Ubuntu, open a Terminal and type

Enter your password and you have successfully installed the package!

Now we'll get rid (almost) of the left-aligned Unity launcher.
Ennable the "auto-hide launcher" option in Settings > Appearance > Behavior, and set sensibility to low for the Unity launcher to disappear for good.

To have the Xfce panel launch at startup, open the dash and search for Startup Applications. Once there, create a new launcher and in the command field, enter xfce4-panel. Save the launcher and log out. When you log back in, a dialog will pop up asking wich configuration you want to use.

Usually, the default config is pretty similar to what we want, plus we'll save ourselves a lot of work! There's no problem with starting from scratch, but it's going to take some time. After making our choice, the desktop will look like this :

Of course, you'll have to customize the environment to get one that fits your tastes, but, hey, at least we're not stuck in having this vertical Launcher, right?
​
However, we want the desktop to look like Windows, so we'll continue with the tweaks. Right-click somewhere on the panel and select Panel > Panel Preferences. A configuration window will appear. Usually, if we chose the default configuration we'll get a dock similar to Docky at the bottom of the screen. We want to get rid of it, so in the drop-down menu, select 'Panel 2' and then press on the remove button.

Oops! The config window just disabled itself! No problem, just select 'Panel 1' in the drop down menu to edit the panel left. We'll want it to align to the bottom of the screen, so we'll set uncheck the 'Lock Panel' option and then drag the panel to the bottom of the screen.

We'll check the 'Lock Panel' now, since we want it to stay at the bottom of the screen. We can also adjust the color and size of the panel, add applets and edit it's behavior (automatically hide panel) from the settings app. I've set it to look a bit like a Windows 10 taskbar : 

Almost done! We'll now remove the text from the Window-list applet. Go to the Items tab and select the applet 'Window Buttons'. Next, press on the configure button to set its properties. A new dialog opens. Uncheck 'Show buttons labels' and we're done! Now we'll add a couple of launchers to the panel to access your preferred apps quickly. Back to the Settings Window, in the Items tab, we'll press the add button and choose 'Launcher'. A new launcher appears at the end of the panel.

Right-click on the newly appeared icon on the panel and choose 'Properties'. In the new dialog that pops up, press the add button and choose the desired application. Save your choices and close all Xfce Settings Windows. You can add more launchers following the previous steps. Finally, after having created all the launchers you want, reorganize them so they appear right after the application menu. Do this by right-clicking on the panel, Panel > Panel Preferences and in the Items tab of the config window. You can then reorganize the items by selecting some applet and clicking the arrows to the right of the dialog.
Finally, we're done editing our panel! Here is what it's supposed to look like :

Of course, we found other alternatives searching for 'Ubuntu Panels'. Here are a couple of the results we found : 

• Cairo-dock
• Docky
• Tint2 panel

There are plenty of tutorials out there to install these, so we'll leave to you the job of searching and trying them out. However, we think that the Xfce panel is the best solution, since it is highly customizable and includes an application menu by default.

Comments or article suggestions? Contact us at our Contact page!

Finally, we provide help to newcomers on how to install our themes. 

After having received a couple of questions from users, we decided to publish our knowledge on this subject. Head over to the FAQ page to learn more on how to install pointer themes, icon packs and GTK themes on various Desktop Environments available for Linux users.

     The Windows 10 theme is our most popular one (close to 18 K downloads on gnome-look), and we were wondering if we could make it look even more to the original. Obviously, we can't edit the way applications work and look globally, so we had a look at similar features (ex. Start menu, File Explorer, Desktop...). Here is the result : 

     So, wich look do you prefer? Let us know in the comments!

     So, after some reflexion I'm starting the B00merang blog to have you all up to date on our plans and coming themes and/or projects.  I'll try to update at least once a month and probably will release some little updates during this time. So, for the near-to-end month of October, we are planning to : 

1. Release Version 0.7 with an improved KDE 4 & 5 Aurorae theme,
2. Include in this same version the latest Cinnamon theme, which also happens to be the final release for Cinnamon (except if bugs arise),
3. Focus on finally setting Terminal background to black for GNOME-SHELL.

     I can notify that we are on our way to accomplish the first two objectives very fast. The terminal issue has been there for a while and we will probably have to consider forking a special version for SHELL.

Well, that's it for this month. Don't forget to have a look at our themes and see you next month!