Ubuntu is by far the most popular Linux distribution these days, thanks to its eye-candy design and user-friendly environment that set this operating system far from the console-style, hacker-only image we all had of Linux some time ago.

But if you don't dare jump to the penguin side yet, don't worry: you can still enjoy Ubuntu's look and feel with this Windows visual theme. Smooth Ubuntu Human includes pretty much anything you need to make your Windows computer look like the Ubuntu operating system. Besides the graphic elements such as wallpapers, fonts, cursors and icons, you also get a special DLL patcher that enables you to use the theme even if it's not an official Windows visual theme.

The result is quite impressive and looks really nice, though I missed having a bit more of choice in wallpapers and theme colors. Also, I must say this theme is not as easy to install as other themes I've tried. For example, if you want to install icons you'll need to download and install a third-party application.

With Smooth Ubuntu Human you can get the Ubuntu look and feel on your Windows computer, though you'll need to go through several steps to obtain the complete package.

For many people, the only reason worth upgrading to Vista if for the look since the functionality and basic framework really don't differ that much from XP.

If you think the same way, then you'll be more than happy with Vista Transformation Pack. Once installed, the program makes superficial changes to XP that give it the Vista look. The main changes are that it "Vistarises" your start-up screen, cursors, sounds, screen-savers, tool bars, clock, etc. The transparent effect in Vista is hard to emulate on XP machines but by combining with Windows Blinds, Vista Transofrmation Pack does a surprisingly impressive job. Be warned however that some users have complained the program changes driver DLLs in XP which make it difficult to remove, or at least, it leaves problems behind when you do so.

To be fair to them, the developers advise you to view their user discussion board before installing to be warned of any potential problems as they readily admit that they are not aware of all the bugs it may cause. Note that if you're simply updating Vista Transformation Pack, there's no need to uninstall the original - just install the patch. They've also added a user selection feature whereby if you log onto your PC as a different user, you can select whether you want to transform your XP desktop to Vista.

This is probably one of the best transformation packs out there although be warned that it's likely that you'll suffer conflicts with programs from time to time, and may have problems with XP when it's uninstalled.

If you like the new graphical interface of Windows Vista, but prefer to continue with the friendliness of your XP, Transform XP to Vista is a good solution to get you going.

It's a simple package containing a desktop with the look of Vista and many of the applications you'll find in Vista Start Menu and Yahoo! Widgets. It's easy to install, you can choose the three main components of the package or any of them, and if you get tired of Transform XP to Vista, you can uninstall it with equal ease. The package also includes Yahoo widgets which is basically a collection of small and useful desktop assistants. This includes anything from a PC temperature gauge to mini games. The Vista Start Menu is modified not only in appearance but also in functionality. You'll find a few new tools on there that aren't in XP and it's basically a lot more accessible although some things, like "Communication Centre" have been renamed.

A cool little package that will save you a packet on Vista's hefty price tag but won't leave you with all the compatibility problems associated with it.

Ubuntu XP is not a strange mixture of operating system, as you could tell from that name. It's a complete kit to transform Windows XP into Ubuntu – at least in its appearance.

The pack includes everything you need to give XP the Ubuntu look, from a new visual style (with several color variations) to mouse cursors, featuring also wallpapers, new logon and boot screens, skins for Firefox, icons and even a clone of Beryl, the 3D windows management system used by Ubuntu to change between applications.

The good thing about having a package with all these elements, categorized in several different folders, is that you can choose what to install and what to leave unchanged. The downside is that you have to do it step by step, and sometimes you even need a third-party application - like in the case of the new boot screen, which needs the Bootskin tool. This installation procedure can therefore be a bit complicated, as there's no documentation to explain how to apply the whole kit properly.

Give Windows the clear, colorful Ubuntu look with Ubuntu XP

If you're considering moving to Linux but haven't made up your mind yet, ClearLooks can tip the scales in favour of the open source option. This Windows theme includes two new visual styles that resemble Linux Ubuntu's appearance, with new colors and a refreshed window style.

Simply run the msstyles file and you'll be able to choose the visual theme in Display settings. ClearLooks includes a couple of matching skins for Y'z Toolbar in case you use it, and also a cursor set that must be installed one by one in the Control Panel > Mouse configuration window. However, I missed having some wallpapers bundled in the package.

ClearLooks is a Linux-based visual style that enhances the appearance of your desktop.

Some time ago Microsoft launched Royale Theme for Windows XP, a slick, elegant blueish theme that many people adopted immediately. A new Royale theme appeared after that, this time in a very elegant black. However, this dark Royale was apparently not finished and you could tell it clearly needed some polishing. The same happened with the Zune theme created by Microsoft to celebrate the launch of their MP3 player. It seemed someone had leaked them without having tested them properly.

Bearing that in mind, an independent designer has finished the job on his own and now presents Royale Remixed, a theme for Windows XP that fixes all the bugs in the Noir and Zune themes and adds everything the original themes lacked.

Royale Remixed will not only change your desktop wallpaper and windows appearance, but it will also replace your system icons, mouse cursors and system sounds with new files. The result looks like a completely new system with a really attractive design.

That said, note that Royale Remixed is not as easy to install as it seems. If you have problems installing it, it's probably because you need to patch a DLL file (see Notes). I had this issue and it took me some time and a few Google queries to find out what was happening. Also, if you want to customize the shutdown window to match the rest of the system, you'll have to modify another couple of DLL files. Fortunately, this process is very clearly explained in a TXT document included in the program's ZIP file.

Customize Windows XP with this shiny, elegant black design.

Even if you don't have Vista, the Inspirat Bricopack will make your PC look like it’s been fitted with Microsoft’s latest Operating System. Not limiting itself to one visual style, Universal Vista Inspirat is a bulky (483 MB) yet complete theme pack made up of wallpapers, icons and appearances that will give your PC a complete makeover.

We were impressed by this Vista theme pack. Not only do you get the sleek dark menu bar characteristic of Vista, but the theme also sets up a Mac-like dock where you can nest icons of your favourite applications. They even magnify when you roll over them. With the Ubericon feature you can get that magnifying touch for every item you double click. Y’s Shadow is another feature that separates Universal Vista Inspirat from other simple Vista Themes. This feature gives a cool drop shadow to your windows, which you can easily increase or decrease and even apply to your taskbar.

Universal Vista Inspirat ingeniously improves the feel of your XP menu yet we felt a little more sceptical about the cosmetic changes it applies to other Microsoft applications. Word and Outlook are given a fresher, whiter look, but we were unimpressed by how Windows Media Player appeared, with a dubious purplish hue replacing the default sleek dark feel.

Universal Vista Inspirat is an impressive theme pack filled with original features that definitely separates it from typical Vista themes. Despite a slightly lengthy installation process and bulky file size, this theme is probably the closest you’ll get to Vista without dishing out $200.

With this simple application you can easily patch your Windows Vista system to use custom styles, similar to the UxTheme patch for Windows XP.

After that you can modify your Aero style to use the glass transparency effect on maximized windows.

You can sometimes get tired of the default Windows theme and if you don’t have enough money to dish out for Vista, how about using a theme customizer? TopThemes XP allows you to create your own themes and give your PC a fresh new look.

The first time you launch TopThemes XP, you can choose between loading a theme and creating a new one. You can download a theme from dowthemes.com and automatically set it if you don’t want to be bothered with creating one. Otherwise, move on to the central part of the program, to create and customize your own theme. The tabs at the bottom of the interface make it easy to quickly personalize elements like style, wallpaper or sound events.

The theme creation process is fairly straightforward. After adding a title to your theme, you are able to set a style. You can customize your style by modifying colours and font size but can only choose between two styles, Luna and Royale Type. With 12 different possibilities, changing the start button seems more promising. However we were left unconvinced when we realized most of the Start buttons were of poor quality and looked like they were pasted onto the toolbar. Once you’ve decided on a style for your theme, you can choose a style from your window shells from the 11 different options available. Just like for the theme you can change the colour of your window shells.

The next step is to adjust your wallpaper, but TopThemes XP merely lets you browse for an image and set it as centred, tiled or stretch: nothing you can’t do in the Windows display control panel. Similarly, setting desktop icons and sound events is limited to browsing in your PC for new icons or sound files.

We only really enjoyed three features in TopThemes XP. The boot logo can be customized with an image of your choice and you can set the positioning of the progress bar on the window. TopThemes XP also lets you personalize your logon UI, by adding a background image, positioning the icon and adding colored frames at the top and bottom. Once you’re through just click “create theme” to finish off. The schedule manager is also very easy to use and can randomly set how your wallpapers or themes appear and when they change.

Once you’ve created a theme the supposedly exciting part is seeing what it looks like on your PC. Unfortunately we never managed to make this work with either of the different themes we created. We even downloaded some themes from dowthemes.com, but TopThemes XP refused to load these too.

TopThemes XP seems like a very exciting and simple to use application but its general feel leaves much to be desired. The fact that you can’t load themes is already fairly alarming, add to that the multiple spelling mistakes in the program ("adavanced", sound “evenes” instead of events) and you start to wonder how finished the application really is. The theme creation tools are easy to use, but most of them are already available in the Windows Control Panel. TopThemes seems like a promising application, and we hope that future releases will correct these shortcomings.

Providing one of the easiest ways to change Windows into a fully skinnable OS, TopThemes manager allows you to apply popular desktop themes that can completely change the appearance of Windows, especially Windows XP Service Pack-2. It changes the wallpaper, appearance, icons, cursor, sound, logo, logon UI and screensaver much more with just one click.

Top features:

• Replaces, deletes & makes the desktop themes for Microsoft Plus
• Support for free desktop themes from TopThemes.com
• Supports automatic installation & uninstallation of desktop themes
• Create and edit a desktop themes package with just a few mouse clicks

Twinkle Bulbs is the award-winning holiday desktop accessory and enhancement for Windows which displays flashing holiday lights around your desktop. With hundreds of customizable options, personalizing your desktop has never been so much fun...there are bulb sets, images and background music for various holidays and events through out the entire year.

Twinkle Bulbs may be personalized for your own desktop, making an otherwise dull workspace more lively and productive. With all the configuration possibilities, Twinkle Bulbs may be used during all seasons, from the winter holidays to summer and all in between. In addition to that, Twinkle Bulbs puts you in a holiday mood, and brightens your spirits.

Royale Noir is an almost exact copy of Royale except with a dark purplish tint. If Royale was day, Royale Noir is night. No doubt about it, this is a ‘dark’ theme. If you’re the sort of person who likes bright and vivid colors, stay away from this theme.

As W3bbo pointed out, there are quite definitely issues with this theme due to its incompleteness. The most obvious being, the “Start” button’s hover and active states are unchanged from Royale, inconsistent with the purple tint surrounding. However, there is even a color scheme for Office 2003 so it will not default to the blue Luna colors.

Looking at it from the big picture, Royale Noir is a welcomed alternative to the extremely small collection of verified-by-Microsoft XP themes. However being incomplete, it is not recommended for the general consumers. Enthusiasts are welcomed to try it to stand out from the crowd, but even still, you’ll feel right at home with the familiar Luna/Royale style.

This theme was created to match the new OS made by Apple, Mac OS X 10.4 codenamed Tiger. My Mac OS X Panther theme came out in 2004. I rebuilt it all from ground up and I think it is a very large improvement over Mac OS X Panther. I've also included a few additional schemes to add more to the Mac experience, it features the classic Aqua and Graphite scheme, the newly introduced Platinum scheme which is found in the System Preferences and Mail programs in Mac OS X 10.4. In addition to those two, I couldn't leave out the beloved Brushed. There is over 20 substyles and those included two versions of the start menu's, one being the standard start menu, and the other being my own compact apple menu (AM). The apple menu is a simple stripped down start menu that is made to look like the apple menu in Mac OS X. There are also left and right handed titlebar buttons for those that want their PC to look like a Mac, but at the same time keep their right handed Windows buttons. Now, as I made you all read through that, here is what you have been waiting for.

Theme Manager s a program for Microsoft Windows that allows companies to provide branded desktops. Theme Manager OEM can change virtually every part of the Windows environment -- title bars, Start bar, push buttons, icons, wallpaper, media players, and much more.

Stardock can provide both the software technology and the art resources to turn the Windows desktop into whatever you would like it to be. Your users can optionally turn it on and off with just a few clicks. It's a great way to promote your product or service, website, film, game, or just to have a branded desktop in your company.

If you’re one of those people who spends most of their free time tinkering with your mobile phone ringtone or reorganizing your bedroom, then StyleXP could become your new favorite toy. The application promises to expand the customizability of Windows XP and gives you the power to install new themes that break the mould of the existing XP shell.

The program works by patching your operating system to accept unassigned styles, scores of which are available for download from the web. Once you’ve applied a style you can tweak virtually any aspect of the appearance, including the font size, screensaver, colours, menu transparency, or even the boot screen. What’s more, if you’re particularly artistically minded you can create your own elements in a graphics editor and apply them to the skin.

Although the developer has made strides towards making the interface as simple as possible, there are so many customization options that it can be a little daunting for new users.

There’s no doubt that the temptation to make Windows look like OSX or apply a ‘Windows Pirate Edition’ boot screen is pretty appealing, but pimping your OS in this way does come with a risk. It’s worth bearing in mind that because of the way the application writes files to your System Folder you could end up doing damage to your machine, especially if you install a patch or a new service pack.

Having said this, we’ve experienced no problems yet (touch wood) and also found that it runs pretty smoothly without sucking too much RAM. You can choose to keep Style XP locked in the System Tray, or release it so that it uses no resources, which is a refreshing thing to see from a developer. With so many themes and customization options available, Style XP is well worth a look if you fancy a change of scenery on your desktop, but keep in mind the risks involved in using a patching program such as this.

If you’re one of those people who spends most of their free time tinkering with your mobile phone ringtone or reorganizing your bedroom, then StyleXP could become your new favorite toy. The application promises to expand the customizability of Windows XP and gives you the power to install new themes that break the mould of the existing XP shell.

The program works by patching your operating system to accept unassigned styles, scores of which are available for download from the web. Once you’ve applied a style you can tweak virtually any aspect of the appearance, including the font size, screensaver, colours, menu transparency, or even the boot screen. What’s more, if you’re particularly artistically minded you can create your own elements in a graphics editor and apply them to the skin.

Although the developer has made strides towards making the interface as simple as possible, there are so many customization options that it can be a little daunting for new users to the program.

There’s no doubt that the temptation to make Windows look like OSX or apply a ‘Windows Pirate Edition’ boot screen is pretty appealing, but pimping your OS in this way does come with a risk. It’s worth bearing in mind that because of the way the application writes files to your System Folder you could end up doing damage to your machine, especially if you install a patch or a new service pack.

Having said this, we’ve experienced no problems yet (touch wood) and also found that it runs pretty smoothly without sucking too much RAM. You can choose to keep Style XP locked in the System Tray, or release it so that it uses no resources, which is a refreshing thing to see from a developer. With so many themes and customization options available, Style XP is well worth a look if you fancy a change of scenery on your desktop, but keep in mind the risks involved in using a patching program such as this.

ScreenThemes is a powerful program that allows you to view Star Wars images in a screensaver. It also sets these images as your desktop wallpaper. The screensaver supports sound and music and includes over one hundred transitional effects. You can also superimpose a monthly calendar and apply surface textures to your wallpaper.

Features included:

• Automatically sets a new Star Wars image as your desktop wallpaper each day
• Resizes your images to fit any screen size. Looks sharp at 1600x1200
• Screensaver includes hundreds of transitional effects
• Supports sound (WAV, MP3, etc.)
• Superimposes a monthly calendar over your wallpaper
• Underlays surface textures
• Sets your own JPGs as wallpaper

For the first time in Windows XP, Microsoft introduced the Theme Manager component that enables users to customize the visual appearance of all applications that run in Windows. You can customize literally all visual attributes, including colors, icons, fonts, headings, borders, buttons style and so on.

StarSkin allows you to change the view and appearence of your Windows XP box with the use of publicly-available themes.

Key features of the program include:

• Quickly change the visual appearance of the Windows
• Select custom styles, icons, fonts, colors and themes for Windows desktop
• Change boot screen
• Change log-on screen
• Enable themes support for older applications

If you’re yearning to experience the dapper new Windows Vista interface but don’t fancy splashing out for an upgrade yet, then VistaXP is the perfect antidote. There’s no doubt that the XP styling is well past its sell-by date and this Visual Style provides a classy alternative modelled on the new OS.

Although VistaXP takes a bit longer to apply than most Visual Styles, you’re rewarded with a very accurate recreation of Vista’s window bars, taskbar and Start Menu. The style applies a sleek gun metal shell to your windows and program icons in the taskbar glow a brilliant deep blue when rolled over. Likewise the Start button turns a gorgeous green when you hover over it.

Unfortunately the visual style doesn’t include a Vista background or any of the innovative new desktop features of Microsoft’s latest operating system. However, by installing the Vista wallpaper and Vista Sidebar, you can get a true feel for the OS. Of course, you won’t get access to the fancy new file management tools, but it’s sure to raise a few eyebrows when your friends and colleagues pass your computer.

A Desktop Theme is a collection of wallpaper, mouse pointers, sound effects, colors, fonts, screensavers and startup/shutdown screens, all bundled together into a convenient package. It lets you totally alter the appearance of your desktop in one go. There are thousands of themes available for free on the Internet. As well as being a theme manager, Desktop Themes is also a full theme creator and editor, letting you create themes to give to your friends, family or the world in just a few easy steps!