You can change the looks of Ubuntu 11.10 using the gnome tweak tool. If you don’t have the gnome tweak tool installed read this article and for those who already have it installed continue reading.
Press Alt+F2 and type: gnome-tweak-tool
Select Theme options
 
Cursor theme: allows you to change your cursor
Keybinding theme: allows you to change the keyboard shortcuts layout
 
Icon theme: Here you can change the icons
 
GTK+ theme: Allows you to change the look of the top panel, menu and windows
 
Window Theme: Changes the window borders
If you have any shells installed you can change them by clicking on the Shell theme button. I don’t have any shells installed yet so i can’t show you a screen shot with a list of shells.
On Ubuntu 11.04 (and older) it was very easy to change your theme from default to a custom theme. You just had download the theme and open your Appearance manager, select the Theme tab and drag and drop the new theme into the appearance manager. But on Ubuntu 11.10 you first need to download the new theme and extract it into the /usr/share/themes folder. And to change the theme you need the gnome tweak tool.
If you want to use a custom theme make sure it’s GTK+3 and that the theme file is compressed as a .tar.gz file. Download and save the theme you like in your Downloads folder and to extract and move the theme into you /usr/share/themes folder copy+paste the following line in a terminal window:
sudo tar xzvf Downloads/theme-name.tar.gz -C /usr/share/themes
Replace theme-name with the name of the theme you want to install. When installed you can use gnome tweak tool to enable the newly installed theme.
Good luck and have fun changing the looks of your Ubuntu desktop.
I get to these settings by going to the dash home/more apps/installed, then I just click on the advance settings icon. For someone like me I like the mouse clicking way.
that’s also a way to start it. i normally press Alt+F2 or the SuperKey and enter the name of the program i want to start … i’ve been using the Alt+F2 key (Run Applications) combination since Ubuntu 8.04
I use both ways, but I noticed that for anyone new to linux it takes time to learn shortcuts. I’ve actually written down a few things myself so I don’t get confused. I’m sure for you guys it’s like taking candy from a baby, but for most of us noobs it’s a lot trickier than that. Linux it’s in a way a lot like daily life, you could learn something everyday.