Guides to customizing Ubuntu

Answer: not really, varies too much. There is no such thing as customizing ubuntu, that is just a distro, so you want to know how to customize linux in short. Just visit the sites of the programs/desktops you're using. i.e. kde, gnome, compiz

gnome/gtk: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/Tutorials
kde: http://www.kde.org/documentation/

Custo'ing the linux desktop is much different than custoing Windows. There's a lot more that you have to consider, simply because of the amount of choice you have.

For instance, which window manager do you want? Emerald is good, but IMO Pekwm and Openbox are better. (Maybe not for changing how things look, but they're much lighter and follow the <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy">'Unix Philosophy'[/a])

Because of the nature of it, you can do so much more, but it's a lot harder to visualize from a windows custo'er's standpoint. (For instance, Pidgin on Linux won't crash if you simply delete all of it's icons, it just won't use them.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is this:
It seems as if you are asking "What can I do with this?".This is a flawed approach to Linux customizing in my opinion. What should be asked is "How can I do X?" We'll help you figure it out from there.

I hope this makes sense. And I know I rambled.

Thanks for the quick replyes.
I can see that customizing is a bit different from customizing XP.
After a bit more experience I realise that my question is huge. I quess my thought with this thread was that, I know that a lot of you guys have a lot of experience, so which programs would be a good place to start? For an example do you prefer Pekwm or Openbox? I would like to get a dock, but as I can see there is a lot of different programs, so which can you recomment?
The idea was more an exchange of experience and ideas, than a specific problem. Now that i have a bit more experience with Linux, I realise that the question is not that easy to answer.
But justaguy1 thanks a lot for the links and synorgy your answer clarifyed a couple of things. I will be back when I have a concrete porblem.

... and are there any neat little programs you'd like to mention?
Just chipping in.

Pekwm is more like skinning Windows XP or VIsta. It has its own set of limitations, but it uses pixmaps to skin the windows.

Openbox uses colors and gradients to skin. It's much more limiting, but you'll find that you can do some awesome stuff using flat color or a limited gradient palette.

If I were you, I'd stick to GTK apps (If you don't understand this - don't worry- just check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK )

Remember that Openbox, PekWM, blackbox and so forth are just window managers, so they lack a complete desktop, basically anything that you will find useful isn't easily accessed. I would only suggest using window managers like those when you feel extremely comfortable with linux. Stick with gnome, kde and xfce since they have a complete GUI interface and desktop with everything. Gtk can be used by them all except for kde which uses the gt engine, but it really doesn't matter because any program can be run under any desktop.

Again, there really isn't any programs for customizing in linux, just pick a base theme and begin editing it in a text editor and gimp up some nice images to replace the not so liked ones. :D

Or I guess these can be used for customizing linux:

Gimp ( for new images)
text editor (open favorite gtkrc theme file and edit away)
gnome color chooser (changes most colors for gtk theme for temporary usage)
gcolor2( for color codes)

Also most programs like I said earlier have documentation on customizing them. (links in my first post)

Hope this helps a bit.

If you don't mind the bit of overhead - agave is agreat color picker. It also features color scheme generation. Which is REALLY nice if you find one color you like but cant figure out where to go from there.