Making Portable Ubuntu feel at home on Windows

If you like Linux applications but don't want to install Linux, Portable Ubuntu is the perfect application for you. Once you start using it you might feel that all the Linux applications feel out of place with the Theme and fonts. That is where this quick tutorial comes into play. Download the XPLuna theme if you are on XP or one of the Aero themes for GTK 2. You can look at all the available options and keep the one that looks identical to your windows theme.



The controls might look familiar but till you change the fonts it is almost like a waste. Copy the fonts from your windows installation. Open the terminal window in PUbuntu and then follow these steps. cd /mnt/C/WINDOWS/Fonts Here I am taking for granted that your Windows folder is in C:. Then make a new directory mkdir ~/.fonts. Copy Segoe fonts incase you are on Vista. cp Segoe*.* ~/.fonts. If you have Windows XP copy Tahoma fonts. cp Tahoma*.* ~/.fonts.

Open System/Preference/Appearance. Select the font tab and select the fonts and the sizes as in the screenshot. This should give you the fonts as of Windows XP. For Vista select Segoe instead of Tahoma and set the size to 10 instead of 8.

The fonts might look quite dark compared to windows. To reduce the anti-aliasing click the details button on the fonts dialog. And select the Smoothing to none. The fonts will look similar to windows fonts. Atleast for the dialogs but will not look good on other parts of the UI. I normally select Subpixel for Smoothing and Medium for Hinting. Though it still does not look like a real windows application but its close enough.