If you've been browsing through the themes available for Ubuntu, you'll have noticed that quite a few of the better ones require a theme engine called Aurora.
This tutorial will take you through the process of compiling and installing Aurora on Ubuntu so you can use these themes.
Firstly, open a Terminal window and make sure you've got root permissions:
$ sudo bash
Then lets install some prerequisites:
$ apt-get install build-essential auto-apt checkinstall libgtk2.0-dev
Create a source folder in which to compile Aurora.
$ mkdir /src$ cd /src
Now lets download and extract Aurora 1.5:
$ wget http://gnome-look.org/CONTENT/content-files/56438-aurora-1.5.1.tar.bz2 $ tar -xvf 56438-aurora-1.5.1.tar.bz2
If this doesn't work (probably due to a new release), get the latest file from here.
Extract the Aurora engine:
$ tar -xvf aurora-gtk-engine-1.5.tar.gz
Now change into the Aurora folder and compile:
$ cd aurora-1.5/$ ./configure --prefix=/usr -enable-animation; make; make install
To install the Aurora theme, open the Aurora.tar.bz2 file in the /src folder with the Appearance manager.
References: