Ubuntu – How to change desktop background colour in GNOME

First, it looks like in my desktop setting, I need to restart my X session for widget colours settings could be applied. I could use the $GTK2_RC_FILES environment variable to define the colours profile only for one program, rather than overall.

Second, the text colours (highlight, titles, links, ...) are defined in NoteTag.cs file in the Tomboy sources (InitCommonTags() method). It's not possible to run the rebuilt Tomboy.exe file directly, though: you need to proceed to a "sudo make install" (in /usr/local) first to have all the libraries and resources moved to their expected location.

e.g. use foreground-yellow instead of background-yellow on highlight

tag = new NoteTag ("highlight");
// tag.Background = "yellow"; // commented out
tag.PaletteForeground = ContrastPaletteColor.Yellow; // <- inserted
tag.CanUndo = true;
tag.CanGrow = true;
tag.CanSpellCheck = true;
Add (tag);

Have fun.

The following line pasted into a terminal did recover the background image for me:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.background active true

Hope that helps you too...