Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid's Theme

[jblackhall]

Community Artwork

Add Ken Wimer's PPA and check out the 3 community themes (community-themes package containing Dust, Kin, and New Wave). They all look pretty good to me. Unfortunately, Canonical has the final say on any theme.

https://launchpad.net/~kwwii/+archive

[yesterday]

It's really strange what happens with Ubuntu's artwork. How can they invest money and resources with artists and always end with a terrible artwork??

As far I'm concerned, Canonical paid the IconFactory team for making their icon theme, but the result of this work, the Human icon theme, is much worse than any set of icons on IconFactory portfolio!!

I agree, but to be fair, the Ubuntu team probably stipulated the design and colour parameters.

The real problem is Ubuntu's unwillingness to move beyond brown and orange, a combination that really should've been left in the 70s. It's a shame, because really the talent is there and in fact the GTK widgets are quite nice. However when wrapped in the Ubuntu colours the effect is really underwhelming, even off-putting. It's really time to evolve

While it is true that many will add / customise my own theme, the default theme is like the image a distro shows to the world. For a distro aimed at new Linux users, a nice theme should be a priority. Nice enough that most users won't see the need to change it, and that new users don't immediately get the idea that Ubuntu lacks aesthetic taste.

[jblackhall]

The real problem is Ubuntu's unwillingness to move beyond brown and orange, a combination that really should've been left in the 70s.

I disagree with all the brown/orange hate (from you and others). It can be done well, it just takes a little finesse and not using crappy shades. E.g. kin dust, aka Didymous:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Intrepid/Kin%20Dust

The fact is that a color change might be warranted, but many distros have their signature "color" that gives them identity: fedora blue, suse green, debian pinkish/red. I think that the orange and brown is good and good heritage for Ubuntu (it follows the roots of their distro), but you're right in that for it to be effective, it has to be done well. Unlike slapping a simple blue theme on, the orange and brown can look particularly bad if not done right.

[reavertm]

Ubuntu and GTK2 look & feel doesn't look that bad, but when you look at any Kubuntu release with KDE3 - you see that Canonical clearly have no idea about good looking default desktop...
Of course, everything is the matter of taste but.. Kubuntu default KDE3 color/style/icon theme is just a joke - I wonder whether they are doing it on purpose ("Hey, look at this KDE3, it's ugly, isn't it? Now switch to Gnome and have fun").

[MetalheadGautham]

The disro with the best artwork is openSUSE.

Too much green is also sick for the eyes. I think the newbie oriented distro with the best artwork has to be LINUX MINT and overall, the best artwork is with ArchLinux KDEmod 4.1.

[DanL]

If you don't like the default theme, change it. [/B!TCHING]

Personally, I like dark themes (mostly because LCD's are too bright at night, even when you turn the brightness down).

sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-theme ubuntustudio-icon-theme

Problem solved.

[jeffro-tull]

Allow me to show you a pretty little graph, Jeffro.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=apple%2C+ubuntu%2C+fedora%2C+suse%2C+mandriva

Ubuntu is becoming relevant. Hence, it gets coverage.

I'll try my best not to mention Mark Twain here....

Yes, Ubuntu is popular. It has a fairly enormous userbase, and non-linux users usually look to that first. I can understand that popular things get coverage.

But come on. A news post simply to say "Hey, guess what? Ubuntu is still brown!"? Come on. I can see that being mentioned in, or even being a major facet of, an all-around preview (you know, the ones with mind-boggling bullet-points such as "improvements to SELinux" and "improvements with PolicyKit"). But on its own?

Maybe it's just because I don't use Ubuntu on any of my machines with a GUI, but I just don't see why this is important enough to be news in its own right.

[FunkyRider]

Try my theme:

Enterprise-GTK 1.1 (For Hardy)

http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/GTK+Theme%3A+Enterprise?content=85731

Is it just me or to most of the people pure dark theme hurts the eyes? I've taken UbuntuStudio's window frames, used human-murrine but changed to blue highlights instead of orange ones as window widgets, and customized a Gnome panel background (using the UbuntuStudio window frame too).

The result is simply neutral and easy on the eyes. I have all my three computers set to use this theme.

I'm not advertising but really, just give it a try.

[MetalheadGautham]

Try my theme:

Enterprise-GTK 1.1 (For Hardy)

http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/GTK+Theme%3A+Enterprise?content=85731

Is it just me or to most of the people pure dark theme hurts the eyes? I've taken UbuntuStudio's window frames, used human-murrine but changed to blue highlights instead of orange ones as window widgets, and customized a Gnome panel background (using the UbuntuStudio window frame too).

The result is simply neutral and easy on the eyes. I have all my three computers set to use this theme.

I'm not advertising but really, just give it a try.

Awssome. You got everything perfectly right, although I would have prefered it if you had mixed the Ubuntu Studio theme with Linux Mint's theme. That would be the best combo of dark and light.

[MaestroMaus]

You got to be kidding...
There are so many good themes out there, and they come up with THIS? This one is quite possible the worst theme for Gnome I have seen in my entire life. I don't know who pulls the strings about this internally, but I advice them to put someone in charge over this who actually has eye for it.

BTW, Dust and Kin Dust are awesome. I nominate the last one for the default theme.