Epidermis is a project that promises to bring together all the aspects of a complete GNOME theme in to a single interface, allowing you to install and apply a completely new theme in a single click.

After installation, Epidermis lets you install a complete theme (including desktop background, GDM theme, splash screen, window theme, etc.) either through a downloadable package or repositories. The purpose of this is to integrate all of the settings available to you through different interfaces and applications into a single theme management window.

If properly implemented, this ability to change the entire theme with one click could be an incredible feature. Unfortunately, the system does not work as well as it claims to, at least not yet. Actually using it on my Hardy Heron resulted in a difficult to fix theme mess, with some things correctly skinned and others apparently only partially themed. In a virtual machine running Intrepid Ibex, however, everything appeared to work perfectly.

Epidermis has a lot of promise as a great way of easily switching themes. Unfortunately, especially if you are still running Hardy Heron, I would not recommend you start using it. At this point it is better to wait for your distribution to integrate Epidermis. At that point, it should be incredible.