Ubuntu 8.10, the Intrepid Ibex, is starting to take shape. It’s going to be similar in spirit to Edgy Eft (6.10), in that it’s focussed on introducing radical new features, as opposed to polish and stability. Now, I’m all in favour of new features. And, in my opinion, Ubuntu needs a new theme. Perhaps it should be something with a little more colour this time. It also needs a new font (Bitstream Vera? DejaVu Sans? EUCH!)
However, looking at the radical new theme included in the alphas of Intrepid Ibex, I am horribly disappointed. Just look at it! LOOK AT IT!
Yes, this really is Ubuntu. It's fugly, yes.
I can see so many problems with this it’s unreal that this wasn’t killed before it even entered the launchpad repository.
- It’s the colour of excrement.
- Readability is rubbish on the window backgrounds (black on brown – baad).
- It’s the colour of excrement.
- The active window highlight is not immediately obvious.
- The font is still revolting.
- It’s not remotely radical. The interface is still practically the same.
- It’s the colour of excrement.
- Look at it! JUST LOOK AT IT!
In my opinion, Ubuntu should now try something more radical. Scrap the existing panel arrangement, and try something like this.
If they didn’t want something so radical, they at least need something that looks better than Pooman. Here’s my desktop configuration:
New Wave theme applied, with smaller title bars and the bottom panel on autohide.
Now look at that. It’s pretty, yet it’s still distinctly Ubuntu. It could have some orange hints added if necessary – but either way it’s better than the new “Feces Flavour” of Human.
EDIT: Since this post was made, NewHuman has been removed from Alpha 4 of Intrepid. This pleased me.
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It’s GNOME for christsakes.
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Well all I can say is — Ubuntu has always favored an earthy theme tone. I don’t like it, never did. In a sense that’s one of the factors that drove me to Kubuntu.
I look at quite a few distros over the average month. My take as far as a ‘new look’ the folks over at gOS are doing some bang up work. No its not compviz radical. Its more an AWN driven clean look that i favor. Its easy to configure and then gets the hell out of the way.
Know what I would think really be a nice is positionally contextual menus. Consider the screen in quads. Each quad has a context that is user definable. Quads for System, Graphics, Office, Games would be defined. By right clicking on any quad you receive only the submenu for that quad. In two clicks I could be accessing the specific commands of interest. Quick, efficient and it keeps the Desktop uncluttered.
Just an idea.
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That’s not the decided theme for Ibex. It’s merely a test theme until they get it figured out. Developers are actively working on a number of different theme ideas. I’m not worried at all about what the finished product will be, especially when Shuttleworth has been so adamant about wanting the UI to look even more attractive than Mac. I do like that Espresso theme, though.
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I agree with your comments about the new theme, but it is still alpha mate. And I don’t know about you, but if the colour of your excriment looks like that, I’d see a doctor right now ;D
We have been through this before with Ubuntu, so between now and October anything can change.
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Oh dear… I seem to have caused quite a stir.
I’m simply saying that the present theme looks revolting, and, in generic terms, the theme is the last thing you work on. Dapper Drake, the last time Human had a major revision, introduced the theme aroundabout Alpha 4 IIRC, and until Alpha 6 it was more orangey than the present caramel. I may be wrong, but even the original Human (with its ridiculous mahogany tone) was nicer than the latest incarnation, and if they’re going to throw the theme into the alpha, they need to make it look a little nicer.
@Ambleston Dack: I was thinking more about the excrement in the bowl of a portaloo when no-one’s been bothered to flush it.
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No question but as far as graphic design is concerned, it’s all been downhill with Ubuntu since Dapper. Each release has been that little bit more garish than the previous one but that scraggy turkey thing on the Hardy wallpaper really makes you wonder if the guy who painted it has St Vitus’ Dance. & BTW, if anyone knows how to get rid of the shiny new Mac-look-alike volume control indicator, please let me know.
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Yes the theme is ugly. What is really funny is that your own theme is almost as ugly.
Great success!
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Which one, excrement? The website’s theme or my desktop theme?
Reply now, double quick, or it’ll be to the killfile with you.
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I’ve been partial to blue and non-cartoon icons. So I gravitated to Kubuntu. I’ve been with Xubuntu since 6.10 due to lower WM overhead and that I’m more comfortable with the CLI and bits where Xfce still needs work – but the speed is there.
When I’ve compared Gnome, KDE, and Xfce for speed, Gnome always comes out the slowest. KDE is noticeably faster than Gnome and has looked a bit more polished, and begins with a non-brown theme. Ubuntu would do a bit better to be green (growing, environment, etc) than brown.
One of the big benefits behind X/K/Ubuntu is that older hardware can remain in service rather than disposing and “upgrading” to new hardware that only minimally runs the latest OS (XP to Vista). There is a statistic that two tons of raw materials are required to construct a new PC. Extending a hardware upgrade over one or two cycles with a useable platform just makes really good “green” sense.
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No, it doesn’t look disgusting – because it’s not out yet.
(if you didn’t know, several themes will be tested during development)
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@J S: I tend to gravitate towards GNOME version of Ubuntu, because I rather like warm, pleasant colours (but not ‘sewer brown’ as seen in Ibex) and I also don’t like KDE. GNOME, I find, has a more ‘I’ll put it like this and it’ll hopefully work, now I’ll get out of the way so you can get back to work’ end-user attitude. With KDE, it’s ‘look how many switches I have!’
Xfce is not bad – it’s a bit like GNOME without the bloat – but I don’t really like it. It’s because when I run Xfce, I find myself spending too much time at the command line, configuring things to work in the way I want them to. If it wasn’t such a headache to configure, I would be more inclined to switch to it.
The new icons proposed for Intrepid are quite nice – they’re an evolution on a theme, taking cues (it seems) from OS X in the new matte finish on the folder. It’s just the initial design for the theme which I find nasty: and surely it’s better to complain about it now, in the early stages of development, than to notice, at Release Candidate stage, that the distro looks like the inside of a nuclear bunker?
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*sigh* I wish Canonical would stop treating KDE like a red-headed stepchild. Gnome just doesn’t cut it.
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I wasn’t speaking about the website. That’s also a disaster.
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Who cares about the bloody colour, anyway? I ‘mod’ *everything*, mate… there’s heaps of skins and themes and stuff that take a mere moment to apply. No biggie to me: I just want it to *work* properly… much more important than for it to look pretty. Besides, that’s *my* job…
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Worry not Jonathan … the Dr has arrived.
I agree with your prognosis … it is s####, very much so! :roflmAo:
Your blue desktop configuration is much improved and shows the medication is working!
I’ve just been checking up on Ubuntu & KDE and from what I’ve learned, they both look much,much,less dangerous than the forecast avian flu … so you should recover 100% fitness.
Come back again in a couple of weeks if the symptoms persist!
Haaaaaa
Dr Blockbuster
Networks & Forums
“Veni, vidi, vici” -
… and quite right toooooo :smiles:
Well done Jonathan! The trick, as you know, is to make plenty of noise … such that it is so deafening they WANT to react
What else needs fixin’?
Dr Blockbuster
Networks & Forums
“Veni, vidi, vici” -
Dr Blockbuster responded on August 16th, 2008 at 23:15 with:
… and quite right toooooo :smiles:Well done Jonathan! The trick, as you know, is to make plenty of noise … such that it is so deafening they WANT to react
What else needs fixin’?
Dr Blockbuster
Networks & Forums
“Veni, vidi, vici”For gods sake get a life and stop pissing about on any old forum you happen to find
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notsuchabigfanoftosserafterall has been consigned to the killfile dungeon.
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Why is this distro so f#@king ugly? Change the excrement colour for a start! And do something serious with KDE because not everyone prefers gnome!
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i am using glossy as a theme… with that nice desktop from mac osx leopard. i did have mac4lin installed to make my pc look like a mac but it wasnt my favourite.
i hate the theme that is in the screenshot… i think that it is an eyesore… thats why i’m not going to upgrade this time!
i will stay with puppy linux for the next 6 months then -
And look, the theme remained, and as DarkRoom is still in the RC. The theme won
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But it’s not the default. So people can switch to it if they’re feeling depressed.
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