For Ubuntu 11.10
The first thing you would need to do is take a .png icon file that you would like to use and copy it to the respective ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/
directory. This will contain the following directories (which are the dimensions of the icons) : 16x16/apps/
32x32/apps/
48x48/apps/
I downloaded a free 16x16 free icon sampler and picked a 16x16 icon called Alien.png
I took the Alien.png
file and copied it to ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps
, When you copy yours, you can do that through either the GUI or terminal.
From there you would need do the following in a terminal (you may need sudo to copy this over):
cp /usr/share/applications/pidgin.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
Next edit the pidgin.desktop file:
vi ~/.local/share/applications/pidgin.desktop
Look for the line that says:
Icon=pidgin
This will need to change to the new icon name without the .png prefix...
Icon=Alien
Save your changes... Then logout and log back in.
Please let me know if this helps or if you need more assistance.