When comparing Solarized Dark vs XGnome Enhanced , the Slant community recommends XGnome Enhanced for most people. In the question“What are the best Gnome Shell themes?” XGnome Enhanced is ranked 5th while Solarized Dark is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose XGnome Enhanced is:
XGnome Enhanced supports Gnome Shell versions going all the way back to Gnome Shell 3.6.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro There are versions for a lot of applications or it's easy to make your own
There are ready-made packages for Vim, IntelliJ, Emacs, iTerm, etc. If your app isn't supported the website explains clearly what colors are used, so it should be easy to wrap up your own.
Pro It seems that is has been given the most thought
Judging from the description that has been given by the author, it seems that this color scheme has been designed with huge background knowledge about colors and relations between them.
Pro Works well with multiple fonts
Since Solarized has pretty good color separation it's easier to distinguish both thin and bold fonts.
Pro Supports many versions of Gnome Shell
XGnome Enhanced supports Gnome Shell versions going all the way back to Gnome Shell 3.6.
Pro Offers PPA for easy install on Ubuntu
There is an optional PPA for easy install on Ubuntu.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/themes && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install xgnome-enhanced-gs
Pro Designed to be modern and minimal
The XGnome Enhanced theme is deigned to be modern and minimal. It is a very dark theme with clean lines.
Cons
Con Too much blue
People caring about the color intensity in their screens, will notice that this theme is not useful for night use. If you use software like Flux to dim the blues in your screen this theme loses its enchant.
Con Low contrast
Comments for example, have very low contrast against the background which makes it harder to read.
Con Vanilla version doesn't work with htop
Half of the usernames in htop have the same color as the background.
One has to use a patched version of htop.
Con PPA does not work
For example, you'd get errors like "Unable to locate package xgnome-enhanced-gs."