Customizing the Window Manager in Linux Mint 18 xfce

I've found some of the articles and tutorials out there to be either confusing or lacking in detail. So I'm making this post to show how to install a custom Window Manager in Linux Mint, specifically for the XFCE light-weight edition. The reason why you'd want to do this is if you find the out-of-the-box window controls (minimize, maximize, close) to be too small or not to your liking. In XFCE I personally find this to be the case, though the Kokodi window manager provides decent controls.

First, you'll need to find and download a custom window manager. Once you decide on one you like, download it from the Files section:


Then, in a terminal window, uncompress the downloaded file to the /usr/share/themes (or ~/.themes if you're not allowed or don't want to make changes to /usr/share/themes) directory. 


user@linux-mint18 ~/Downloads $ sudo tar xvzf 43023-LiNsta-Black-Plastic.tar.gz /usr/share/themes
[sudo] password for user: 
LiNsta-Black-Plastic/
LiNsta-Black-Plastic/xfwm4/
.
.
.
LiNsta-Black-Plastic/xfwm4/themerc
LiNsta-Black-Plastic/xfwm4/menu-inactive.xpm
LiNsta-Black-Plastic/xfwm4/menu-active.xpm
LiNsta-Black-Plastic/xfwm4/menu-pressed.xpm
Then, you'll need to update the permissions in case the developer did not set them to be accessible. 

user@linux-mint18 ~/Downloads $ cd /usr/share/themes
user@linux-mint18 /usr/share/themes $ ls -l
.
.
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 Jun 28 05:50 Industrial/
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 Jun 28 05:58 Kokodi/
drwxr-x---   3 root root  4096 Sep 15 13:48 LiNsta-Black-Plastic/
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 Jun 28 05:52 Metabox/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root  4096 Jun 28 05:50 Mint-X/
.
.



user@linux-mint18 /usr/share/themes $ sudo chmod -R a+rx LiNsta-Black-Plastic/

Next, open up Window Manager from Start > Settings > Window Manager. You should see your new theme available for selecting!

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