My Ubuntu desktop looks like this (click any image for full size):

When I have an app open it looks like this:

The way to get Ubuntu to look like this is fairly simple.

1. Download Microsoft core fonts to get Arial

Like it or not, the Arial font looks good on Windows just as Helvetica looks good on a Mac (unless you’re some typography nerd that insists on arguing which looks better/worse/etc.)

Arial looks even better when used in Ubuntu.

To get it, we need to go to Add/Remove, select "All available applications" from Show, then search for core and you’ll find it. Once you do, install it.

It looks like this:

2. Change fonts to Arial

In the Appearance section of Ubuntu is where the fonts are changed.

It looks like this:

3. Change font rendering to "Slight"

The standard font rendering in Ubuntu looks a bit "computery", so to soften it up we change the way fonts are rendered.

From the above screen, click the Details button at the bottom right, set "Smoothing" to Subpixel (LCDs) and "Hinting" to Slight. Then click close.

It looks like this:

4. Set toolbar button labels to Text besides items

While it’s true this takes up a bit more screen area width-wise, it saves screen space height-wise.

This is optional. I prefer text-beside-item because text-under-icon looks very "old".

It looks like this:

5. Increase the size of your mouse pointer

For whatever reason the mouse pointer is very tiny in Ubuntu by default and difficult to see even on lower resolution monitors.

You can adjust this by going to Appearance Preferences, select your theme and then click Customize, then the Pointer tab.

It looks like this (note the bottom – drag the slider to increase/decrease pointer size):

6. Set transparency on your panel(s)

Transparency = modern-looking. By default the panels are solid in Ubuntu. You can change this over to transparent by right-clicking an empty area of the panel, selecting Properties, click the Background tab, choose Solid color then drag the slider next to Style to set your desired transparency.

It looks like this:

6a. Go 100% transparent, bump up panel size for big icons

If using the standard "24" panel size doesn’t float your boat and you want something with larger icons, set the transparency to 100% and your panel size to 48.

When you do it will look like this:

Some may like this, others may not. Whether this works for you or not greatly depends on the wallpaper you choose (some wallpaper may "blank out" the text altogether).

7. Get a cool wallpaper

The wallpaper I use was formerly a standard image bundled with Ubuntu but they got rid of it for whatever reason.

The image is called Dawn of Ubuntu and it’s easily found via a Google image search. So if you like that Ubuntu wallpaper, go for it. I personally think it looks great.

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By doing the above steps you can turn a plain Ubuntu desktop into something much more modern looking in just a few minutes.