A New Desktop Theme Is Coming For Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

[starshipeleven]

As a proponent of dark modes - I find that where it is not an option is annoying

I will say though that it does take a little time to get used to it.

you are just straining your eyes and you don't know it

[starshipeleven]

I don't understand the fascination with dark themes. 'Better on the eyes' does not apply here, if I was really concerned I will get a pair of spectacles with the anti-blue filters.

Dark is better on crappy screens and it is a good thing on Oled or other display technology where each pixel is a light source (so the black areas are all turned off and not wasting power), that's it.

[royce]

People seem to forget you always have the choice of switching to other themes, if you don't like the defaults. It's absolutely a matter of personal taste. One thing ubuntu are doing with yaru is to provide with an alternative to adwaita, which is the only fully supported theme, and crucially ensuring apps actually work well with it, which is almost never the case with community themes.

[wagaf]

However over the years I learned that for some reason many in the Linux community think ugly is beautiful. And the best evidence of that today is the prevalence of "dark themes."

I believe this is a cultural perception.

Dark themes used to be considered "geeky" or "nerdy", associated with white text on a black terminal, and used mostly by big terminal users to avoid painful contrast with other apps... Android introduced "dark themes" early (without app theme switching), and Android 4.0 (Ice Scream Sandwich) had a native dark theme with a very geeky look .

This was all until Apple introduced dark themes in macOS and iOS during the last years.

Since then, it's the new "cool" thing every app NEEDS to have to not be considered obsolete by teenagers. Every journalist or blogger will mention that your app don't support dark themes, or praise that it does.

[Vistaus]

There is already GNOME's own Adwaita theme that is pretty okay.
Personally I use Arc Theme which is the nicest theme, it is nicer than both Adwaita, Yaru and everything else.

I thought you never changed default themes/theme settings? You're always like "I want good default themes because I only use default themes". So how did you end up switching to Arc then?

[Vistaus]

Dark is better on crappy screens and it is a good thing on Oled or other display technology where each pixel is a light source (so the black areas are all turned off and not wasting power), that's it.

I have a good screen and I like dark better because my eyes are very, very light-sensitive. Both indoor and outdoor.

[Britoid]

I thought you never changed default themes/theme settings? You're always like "I want good default themes because I only use default themes". So how did you end up switching to Arc then?

The plot thickens.

[eidolon]

Oh wow, one of the major problems that kept me away from Linux in the beginning was its supreme ugliness.

I remember the first time I saw Ubuntu, I just couldn't believe it. The dirty orange combined with dirty brown literally hurt not only my eyes, but my soul. I couldn't conceive of how anyone would make those colors the default for anything. However over the years I learned that for some reason many in the Linux community think ugly is beautiful.

So unless customization is destroyed by the mystifying move towards client side decoration I say more power to Ubuntu continuing their historic ugliness. But if client side decoration does become a reality, and users are forced to live with whatever painful color scheme others command, then I would actually move to Windows, or anything that didn't hurt me aesthetically. I simply can't stare at ugliness all day. I just can't.

[DanL]

It can’t get any easier than theming a pure GTK3 desktop. Well done.

Of course, you're too much of a fanboy/troll to remember how much theme breakage there was in minor GTK3 version bumps before it finally settled down.

[uid313]

I thought you never changed default themes/theme settings? You're always like "I want good default themes because I only use default themes". So how did you end up switching to Arc then?

Yeah, I think the default settings ought to be good and pleasant. Applications should have sane defaults.
I think Adwaita (the default theme in GNOME) is a great theme, and that most people would be happy with it, it is a good default theme of high quality. It is accessible and visually pleasing.
I came across the Arc theme (on the website OMG! Ubuntu), it is a also a very beautiful theme, so I use it right now, but I could use Adwaita too, it's also great.

I still haven't bothered to change the default wallpaper though, but I don't have to because Ubuntu ships with a beautiful wallpaper, so that's great!