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I am pretty sure somebody's already kicked out the door what I need to get whatever flavor of Linux desktop to have that flat look, without things like tiles unless I decide in a fit of insanity I need those.

Ricing my desktop was one of the things that got me into Linux and a source of amazement that Microsoft still doesn't provide a clean, out-of-the-box, just-werks way to buy and install themes on Windows.

It's like they don't even want that money.

The really sad thing here is that you can get a lot of low-level accessibility just by installing the right themes--for example, if you've got light sensitivity problems, the high contrast themes do nothing, and I suspect you could kick out a visually-enjoyable set of themes designed for those with forms of colorblindness. (I'd have the dual goals of it not at any point needing the user to be able to perceive colors at all, and being obvious about it.)

I am pretty sure somebody's already kicked out the door what I need to get whatever flavor of Linux desktop to have that flat look, without things like tiles unless I decide in a fit of insanity I need those.

Ricing my desktop was one of the things that got me into Linux and a source of amazement that Microsoft still doesn't provide a clean, out-of-the-box, just-werks way to buy and install themes on Windows.

If you don't like a company or their product then don't give them money or use their product.

I'm happy to say that Linux (specifically Ubuntu and Mint) has never been better in terms of hardware support and software compatibility.

Steams runs flawlessly for me on Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 even using a weird and little known window manager. Over 80% of my games run just fine:
XCOM and XCOM 2
Alien: Isolation
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
Empire and Atilla Total War
All the Valve games
Indie games: Hyper Light Drifter, Serpent in the Staglands, Broforce, Darwinia, Frozen Synapse and others
Wargame: AirLand Battle
Kerbal Space Program
Age of Wonders III
Antichamber
Metro 2033 and Last Light
Planetary Annihilation
The Talos Principle
Torchlight II
Wasteland 2
The Witcher 2

And that's just the games that I've bought and played. New ones are coming out every week-- more than I have time or desire for.

Everything I could want or need installs through a package manager-- yes an actual package manager like windows should have had twenty years ago-- for free.

I have access to every programming language known to man, more text editors than I can list, more IDEs, more compilers, more everything and all trivially installable for free.

I can trivially download themes for all my applications with a huge variety of colors and styles or even create my own without any bullshit hacks or fly-by-night .dll downloads. No longer do my eyes scream in agony at stark white dialog boxes in a darkened room.

I can update or upgrade my system when I want rather than when Microsoft wants.

I can pick from and install any combination of dozens of desktop environments whenever I want. Try 'em, don't like 'em? Uninstall and try another one!
And they all support customization to an extent that will inspire awe in the average Windows user-- yes, you can set a hot-key for that! Yes, you can move the close button to the left or the right or the center or even remove it altogether! Yes, you can script a widget that will alert you when it's time to take the dog for a walk, or even download one that someone else already wrote! And on and on.

Oh wait, did I mention that all of this is FREE? Free as in cost and free as in freedom.
No longer do I worry what data Microsoft is gathering about me; no longer and I simply an advertising mark.
No longer do I pay stupid amounts of money for a dongle from Apple or for a replacement disc from Microsoft.
No longer do I sign up for a {$software->manufacturer} account just to use my computer.
No longer do I pay for the privilege of using my own computer and operating system for as long as Microsoft will deign to allow me to.

Microsoft continues to screw you over and over and over again and you still use their OS???? Isn't that the definition of insanity?

Come home, slashdotters. Come home.

Rebecca Black Linux

http://sourceforge.net/projects/rebeccablackos/

Hannah Montana Linux...

http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/

My Little Pony Gnome theme...

http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/?content=144562

Unfortunately, Mattel is serious about its trademarks, so Barbie Linux doesn't exist (yet)(at least publicly)

Be afraid. Very afraid.

--
BMO

+1 for QMMP.
While it's still a < 1.0 release, it gets the job done (it plays :p ).
Also, there are a fair amount of skins for it, as it accepts skins for Audacity or XMMS.
At the moment I use one which replicates exactly the good old WinAmp 1.0. Hell, it even has the WinAmp name on each window... For the curious, here it is

Yup. I'm going to wait a bit for the themes and extensions I use to get updated for 3.6, but it's looking good so far. At this point it feels like pretty much all the functionality and options removed during the GNOME 2 -> 3 transition has been made available as an extension or exposed as an option via gnome-tweak-tool. Any favorite extensions that you can't live without? My favorites are:
- Axe menu extension (to put a nice "traditional" GNOME menu back in the top left)
- Maximus (to remove the titlebar on maximized windows) and Window Options (to make the window menu available from the panel)
- Tracker extension (to add file results to the type-ahead find search) and Journal extension (to add recent files to dock icon's right click menu)
- Calculator extension (to make the type-ahead find search perform calculations)

My current favorite theme is MediterraneanNight

Some extensions are great. But overall, the extension landscape is pretty hostile towards users.

Installing and managing extensions could not be any more convoluted. It's absurd that GNOME developers really expect their target audience to figure out that they have to open a web browser to install extensions. Why on Earth isn't there some applet for managing extensions in System Settings? Users are even expected to open a web browser and navigated to https://extensions.gnome.org/local/ to view installed extensions. Seriously. WTF.

The extension breakage every 6 months is a joke. Why are extension developers expected to update their Javascript every 6 months? Is an API that doesn't break bi-annually really that difficult to attain?

Why can't upstream do a better job of bundling and quality control? There are a half dozen broken weather indicator extensions. Is it really that difficult for a single one of them to be maintained upstream?

Yup. I'm going to wait a bit for the themes and extensions I use to get updated for 3.6, but it's looking good so far. At this point it feels like pretty much all the functionality and options removed during the GNOME 2 -> 3 transition has been made available as an extension or exposed as an option via gnome-tweak-tool. Any favorite extensions that you can't live without? My favorites are:
- Axe menu extension (to put a nice "traditional" GNOME menu back in the top left)
- Maximus (to remove the titlebar on maximized windows) and Window Options (to make the window menu available from the panel)
- Tracker extension (to add file results to the type-ahead find search) and Journal extension (to add recent files to dock icon's right click menu)
- Calculator extension (to make the type-ahead find search perform calculations)

My current favorite theme is MediterraneanNight

There's a version out for the linux distro called Tails (found on the torproject.org page) and it's a VERY nicely done clone of the UI.

Every Little thing!

Meh. Ambiance_R and Radiance_R. What is it we're complaining about again?

Meh. Ambiance_R and Radiance_R. What is it we're complaining about again?

let me resize a window on any edge, not just a tiny 10x10 pixel corner... oh and double click to maximise... how I could dream!

or you could run Linux with Compiz and Emerald. I use a glass theme of my own devising, with Cillop-Go widgets, and avant-window-navigator for that glitz and glamor.

Of course, if that's not where your software runs, then it's not the environment in which you're going to work, but it certainly is a nice place to hang out.

Okay, i'd not go as far as adding the windows logo and microsoft copyrighted styling, but you have to admit: The windows themed one looks a *lot* better than the default theme of gnome which feels a bit '90s http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.30/figures/rnusers.nautilus.png.en_GB vs http://gnome-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre2/113264-2.jpg

If you don't like the controls in the new left side position for Radiance and Ambiance in Ubuntu 10.04, you can download slightly modified versions of those themes entitled Radiance_R and Ambiance_R. I have modified these thems and posted them on Gnome-Look.org for people who would like to use them. Here are the links to the themes. Ambiance_R (Ambiance Right Side) http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Ambiance_R+(Ambiance+Right+Side)?content=123927 Radiance_R (Radiance Right Side) http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Radiance_R+(Radiance+Right+Side)?content=123931 I hope you find these beneficial and enjoy them. - zipperback

If you don't like the controls in the new left side position for Radiance and Ambiance in Ubuntu 10.04, you can download slightly modified versions of those themes entitled Radiance_R and Ambiance_R. I have modified these thems and posted them on Gnome-Look.org for people who would like to use them. Here are the links to the themes. Ambiance_R (Ambiance Right Side) http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Ambiance_R+(Ambiance+Right+Side)?content=123927 Radiance_R (Radiance Right Side) http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Radiance_R+(Radiance+Right+Side)?content=123931 I hope you find these beneficial and enjoy them. - zipperback

What I don't understand is why they don't focus on the gdm login screen. The default looks horrible and they removed the option screen to add your own themes.

They really should replace it with something like this by default but with the current wallpaper they have.

People still confuse the X11-desktop with Windows. They also confuse Compiz with MacOS. Maybe the strategy is to make sure that the desktop colours are distinctly different from the colour schemes used by the proprietary operating systems. If you choose one of the most popular themes onGNOME-look or KDE-look you will likely wind up with something that very much resembles Windows or MacOS.

There are plenty of color schemes you can download. http://gnome-look.org/ http://www.kde-look.org/

Really any of the most popular distros on distrowatch.org should work as long as they come with a GUI. KDE by default is oriented in a way similar to windows, and other DE's like Xfce or Gnome can be configured that way with very minimal effort. Any of the *buntu's, mandriva, opensuse, fedora, linux mint, debian, centos, and simply mepis should be suitable for your purpose. I would recommend that you start them off with something that you are familiar with in case there are issues. (similar package manager/desktop environment/configuration files among other things).

If you are looking for themes they are all over the place.

http://art.gnome.org/themes
http://gnome-look.org/
http://kde-look.org/


I introduced my mom to Ubuntu 2 years ago and she has been using it since without any problems. I do upgrades for her (she doesn't seem to notice otherwise) and I helped her get Google Earth installed. And with SSH access I can help her if something goes wrong from miles away. My favorite part of setting it up was telling her it was all free. She couldn't believe me :)

http://www.gnome-look.org/

http://www.kde-look.org/

no matter what the ubuntu devs choose for the default theme, someone is going to be unhappy and that is why we have whole domains devoted to hosting various shiny things to put on your *nix box to customize to your liking.

I think it's great.

When I installed 7.04 I smiled and never booted into anything else.

I did eventually switch to the Wombat Blue theme ( http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Wombat+Blue?content=70900 ), but mostly because I felt the need for an "Always on Top" button.

I actually changed a couple of the buttons even to make them look different when toggled to on (just inverted color on the .png files).

I just recently switched to KD 4.2 because it appears to use about 100MB less RAM, 150 if I use konqorer instead of Firefox, but I think the default Human theme is fantastic.

I can't wait for the KDE people to try to make their stuff work as smooth as the screen shots look.

Every time I try to assign a custom icon I stair at a window full of static for a solid second or 2, they need to just draw some white in there first.

Also my screen flashes white before the dashboard appears (maybe Nvidia's fault?).

I find so often I try to do something, and it works, often with decent speed, but it jars me ion the process.

I really with the dashboard would come up as quickly as OSX's though, since a lot of the widgets are quite great. And if the Amarok 2 team does decide to integrate with the desktop, it will be particularly cool.

Yah srsly. Just download the CDE theme for your Linux box and be done with it. Same result.

Right, just because you have the freedom to speak your ideas doesn't mean everyone has to listen to them, and while there are disturbing/mean things in both Christian and Muslim religions, there's really nothing nice about Satan, which was the original point of his invention I'm sure, and that's enough of a reason for a site to want to ignore such a distro.

Besides, packaging some GDM themes, desktop themes, and wallpaper and calling it a distro is pretty lame since anyone can easily install themes anyway, not that having the theme you want being default isn't a nice touch, if a small one.

I keep my amber waves of grain picture at http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Amber+Waves+of+Grain?content=30777

You do know that there are these things called "GTK themes" that allow you to change the look of GTK widgets?

Amazing, yeah, I know.

Personal preference more than anything. Ubuntu works for some but not for everyone. For me Ubuntu is too flaky and the community, while refreshing, can be about as stiff as any other out there. I'm not going to point fingers but some of the Ubuntu main contributors can be a little unpractical when solving problems. From my opinion, the community support I've encountered with fedora was almost non-existent or I was unaware of it completely. Their presence is a little more apparent now but like all communities they can be stiff.

I've kinda got stuck with Fedora and Red Hat. There were more RPMs that met my personal needs; driver support, development apps, etc. There has been more support for fedora/red hat apps without having to compile from source for as long as I can remember. deb systems can be hit and miss. I don't want to use some strangers compiled package. I would like to get packages from a reliable source. I don't want to compile packages every time there is an update. I don't want to watch RSS feeds to see when the updates are available. If I wanted to compile I would build from scratch. I'm not running my own distro here and to be honest it takes too much effort to do something like that. That's my argument for fedora.

For the CodecBuddy (Codeina Project Page), I'm disappointed. It's incomplete and its really called Codeina. The app doesn't do anything but inform the user of legal issues. It then redirects the user to a website to purchase from there. Codeina promises to install the codecs for you but in the end the user will have to do it manually. The app itself is hard to find but it's there. I haven't seen it popup on firstboot. I had to search for it in order to finally see what the whole hubbub was all about.

The whole respin is a good idea but falls apart when you attempt to use revisor. It's another incomplete project (ie.: current bug reports). I use kickstart with livecd-creator because they're stable and reliable. My biggest pet peeve with revisor is that you can only create livecd media. Installation respins fail regardless of architecture. Spinning a 64bit livecd from i386 desktop has been unavailable even though revisor provides options to do that type of task. Hopefully they fixed all of this with their last update from a few days back. I just don't have the time to check. It's a good idea but right now the command prompt app is the better choice.

With Ubuntu, the spins provided are based on either window managers or targets specific markets by generalizing what packages they might need. Respinning trims the fat from the bloat. Even then, Ubuntu has dependency hell written all over it (Ubuntu Desktop Package). I can't uninstall evolution without having to uninstall the majority of applications I need to have on my system. With Fedora and their respins I don't have to have it on my computer at all if I don't want it.

About the theme, it's alright but I still go to gnome-look.org/kde-look.org to get my themes. About PulseAudio: It runs. I still use jack, alsa, oss when it comes to running certain apps. It's seems like it might help with audio. I can't really tell, haven't had a problem with audio.

People complain a lot about RPM based systems. Apt is faster, that's a given. The Fedora team has improved yum quite a bit over the past couple of distros. Yum for FC6 was a pain and with SELinux, the whole update process was a bit of a chore. SELinux-corepolicies update pretty much fixes that problem. With Fedora it's always best to update from a terminal on firstboot. Just press ctrl+alt+f1, log into root, run "yum update" from there and it makes the process run much more smoothly. Afterwards, pup works great for updating the system. Yum is a lot faster than it used to be. On their site t

I'm using the ATI driver. I'm assuming it's the open source driver. My Xorg config shows "ati" as the driver. I'm not using the fglrx one. It was configured that way by the update of Feisty Fawn. My ATI card is an integrated Radeon card. It says it is a Radeon IGP 330M/340M/350M. All I know is that it's crap integrated card that shares with the memory.

The theme I'm using is called "Darkilouche"...you can find it at http://www.gnome-look.org/ I'm not sure what Background I'm using or where I got it from. I just searched Google for Space Backgrounds or something similar till I found one I liked.

Here are a few more Screenshots if interested.
http://zanerylin.com/images/Screenshotubuntu2.png

http://zanerylin.com/images/Screenshotubuntu3.png

http://zanerylin.com/images/Screenshotubuntu4.png

I'm sorry for stating this so bluntly, but: that was a very poor review. It doesn't mention what Beryl does apart from the title, which mentions that it's a cool looking window manager. The article doesn't even have any screenshots or descriptions of how it improves the UI. The author doesn't expound on any features since they don't even mention any of them. It doesn't mention development of beryl, where they intend to go with it, how beryl compares to other similar routes to a 3D desktop on Linux, how it compares to desktops on other OSes, or any advantages to be gained from the functionality of using beryl for every day work. This is material for a message board post, basically.

OK, it's easy to criticize, so I'll do my part. Beryl (wiki) is a desktop compositing manager and window manager that takes advantage of 3D acceleration. Essentially it draws each window separately, allowing them to refresh and paint independantly and then puts it all together into the desktop you see. This allows graphical effects due to the fact that each window can be manipulated as a separate element by the 3D card and mapped as a texture to 3D objects, to which shaders and other geometry-altering effects can be applied, allowing for effects such as wobbling windows and water ripples.

Beryl accepts plugins for extra effects and features. The functionality Beryl provides can be extended to control the transparency of windows, allowing you to reference other windows while you make changes in the current one. Plugins are provided that organize your windows in front of you, allowing easy task switching. An enhanced alt+tab task switcher shows picture-in-picture previews of windows you can switch to, while highlighting the window you are currently selecting. Beryl can provide zoom and contrast features to make your desktop easier to see in certain situations.

There are many ways in which Beryl can be extended to provide helpful tools for every day desktop use, but since it is in its infancy (being on version 0.2.0 as of this writing), many additional features may be incorporated into the main release, and who knows how developers and users will enhance the desktop with Beryl's feature set.

It doesn't really change the feel of using applications under Gnome or KDE, but you feel a lot more aware of what's going on because new animations represent your actions visually and you see smoother transitions between actions such as opening menus, switching, minimizing, maximizing, and dragging windows. I haven't used any other 3D accelerated desktop, so I can't comment on how it compares to those. I have no idea how it compares to Windows Vista, or OS X. Feel free to reply with your experiences and comparisons.

A feature spotlight is available on the home page, and you can download additional Beryl window manager themes.

To any Windows users weary of using Linux because of its looks - worry not. I started using KDE around version 3.1 and was humbly surprised by how nice it looked. Many of the default screens don't do it justice. If you want to give KDE (or GNOME, for that matter) a new look you can hop over to KDE-Look or GNOME-Look respectively. For the users who prefer a more minimalistic interface you could always try out Enlightenment, a fantastic looking window manager.

That being said, I have no doubt that KDE 4.0 will make everything good looking and functional I love about KDE much better, so there is always that to look forward to.

I'm surprised that nobody seems to have pointed out the existence of many theme sites yet. You can make Linux look beautiful today!

That's the biggest bunch of nonsense I've read in a while, I can't believe someone modded it interesting. There is no single "GTK+ Theme Engine", theme engines are shared objects and limited only by the ability of the programmer.

"You need to be able to render button and text fields with shadows."

We use many shadows in Ubuntulooks, they are subtile but that's a design choice, not a technical limitation. Even shadows on text can be done: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/pre1/43793-1.png (on the menubar).

"You need to have certain corners be sharp, while others rounded. The toolkit engine of GTK+ allows for both, but doens't easily allow for both to be used concurrently."

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I can make every corner as sharp or rounded as I want, based on the type of widget, its detail string (additional information provided to the theme engine), the widget's properties or its hierarchy (this is how we make the combo boxes look "connected" in Clearlooks and Ubuntulooks, its not a unique widget).

I can assure you that the choice of C has nothing to do with deficiencies found in common Gtk+ engines. The problem is rather that there are few programmers who actually care about GUI design (or have any sense for the matter). Things have gotten dramatically better during the last months and there is still a lot of room for improvement. Ubuntulooks (Human) is what you should consider the current state of affairs.

Gtk+ theming is far from perfect, but I've yet to see a better solution. I'd like to know specifically what you think is impossible with Gtk+ themes (but possible with Qt and others), so I can prove you wrong. :-)

-Daniel

I'm not sure whether or not you're joking with the Gnome part, but you know that you can change everything from startup sounds, and splash screens to ui themes? Why else are there sites like http://www.gnome-look.org/? And if you don't like it, if you're using X, you can always change it to something else. Maybe I've been out of the loop and missed something, but would you mind explaining?

Gnome can also be "customized"... goto.. http://art.gnome.org/ and.. http://www.gnome-look.org/ or (google for more)

Have you never heard about One of my main reasons for not even looking at Ubuntu for longer than about install+1 hour is that it just looks plain ugly compared to Fedora. How weird.... I mean I really hate the brown/orange thing and the Gnome icons and text seem to look years behind Fedora, more like RedHat before Bluecurve or SUSE's Gnome, it's just unfinished.

Have you never heard aboutGnome look orGnome art , if only there was an easier way to install eyecandy than drag - drop

So you're saying that "upgrading" to Vista is for looks?

Hey everybody, I got a new version of Linux!!

A )Print/Read thisWiki(wiki.ubuntu)

B) Download the .ISO from the site

C) Install

D) Add the necessary repositories to your sources.list,
install/configure all the stuff you need , search tutorials about this
subjectshere
(ubuntuforums)

E) Put some nice themes/windows borders/icons at your Gnome (see Gnome Look) ,
the default art at Ubuntu sucks!

F) After a while help give back to the community , write
howtos , donate money , help other noobs , tell people how Gnu/Linux is
great , ...

G ) Bash M$ at /. (they deserve it)

H) World domination

The last two ARE NOT
optional.

Boooooorrriiiiiiiing...

Perhaps this is because it is designed to look rather generic/clean/sterile out of the box so that it fits in nicely in any home or buisness environment. If you want something more exciting or personalized, there is absolutely no one stopping you from taking five minutes and visiting places like art.gnome.org or www.gnome-look.org

Personally, I don't care for the default look, but some of the fun was in customizing the appearance and making it my own.

That being said, it would be interesting to see something like Tango! gain more widespread use.

How about Fedora Core 5:
1. Linux with SELinux enabled
2. Firefox 1.5 and Konqueror with Opera as an option
3. How about making it look the way you want?
4. With Mono, you have Beagle
5. yum for command line, yumex or pup for GUI
6. Gstreamer, xine, mplayer: all installable through yum(ex)/pup
7. Non root accounts plus lockdown
8. All sorts of backup scripts
9. Wiki, CVS, etc.
10. Anaconda or a live CD

one _very_ interesting test to do is to disconnect _all_ machines from the internet;
windows, gnome, kde - and see whether people find it useable or even useful.

another:

http://kde-look.org/ and http://gnome-look.org/ (when they're back up/online)

set something up that is MAC-like. see how much it takes to set up a MAC look-alike
(use kroller.sez - search for it on kde-look.org or even just kroller)

use the MAC kde theme (baghira i think it is).

try to do the same thing on gnome (which is near impossible).

but most importantly, take note - over time - how long it takes people to
_adapt_ to using linux.

compare the bitch-awful time that people have with windows viruses and
spyware to _not_ having to deal with viruses and spyware at all.

compare the bitch-awful time that people have with printing, on windows,
to printing on linux (both kde and gnome). don't tell them how to set
up a printer.

plug in a scanner, see what happens.

plug in a USB memory stick, see what happens. if you install debian or
any debian-based distro, remember to read this:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169444&cid=141 27637

including the follow-up comments i added.

yes - basically: the advice about doing a "long-term" study is a very
good one.

if at all possible, set up a four-way (actually 8-way or maybe more!) matrix,
all using "dumb users":

* windows or kde or gnome
* access or with no access to the internet
* access or with no access to a "geek" who can provide advice

the internet access on will test your "dumb users" ability to seek out
advice for themselves, and the quality of that advice - including
posting on mailing lists and getting useful replies, and being able
to action them.

the "geek" access will provide a reasonable guide to what happens
when you have an "IT department".

i bet you that the failures will occur in windows when there's
internet access but no geeks, because of spyware, virus and adware
attacks.

that, depending on your users, the failures will occur in linux
when you have no internet access or geek access [unless you drop
them in front of ubuntu or kubuntu].

that, when you put users in touch with geeks, that linux wins hands-down.

that, overall, your "intelligent" users who just want to get on with
stuff, when in touch with geeks, find KDE _much_ easier to live with.

that, overall, your "stupid" users, when in touch with geeks, find
gnome fits their level of stupidity _just_ fine.

Yes $7/share is pretty tempting, but Novel's stock will only go up if they start being profitable. Novel had it coming to them when they bought Ximian, a gnome vendor that made a hodge podge of different products that are now dead (remember RedCarpet?). Novel should stick to SUSE/KDE and re-orient all its developers towards improving _only one_ application for each particular need (ie. YAST for installation/maintenance, KDE for desktop, etc).

Novel's premier Linux distribution, SUSE, is historically based on KDE yet the individual projects that they're supporting (Beagle, Evolution) are gnome apps. I think in the long run KDE will become the de-facto standard primarily because of the tight integration among its applications and excitement in its developer and user base about KDE 4. If you don't believe me, take a look at how many more posts there are in KDE-Look than in Gnome-Look. In fact, there is KDE-Apps for independent apps built with the KDE/QT framework, while there is no such place to aggregate gnome apps.

In conclusion, Novel should get their gnome developers to work on KDE so that they have a tightly integrated system with no duplicated functionality.

Personally, I like the gperfection2 suite which also includes xmms and firefox skins. Clear, usable and minimalist.

Just wanted to say thanks. Those themes are awesome. Thanks also for introducing me to http://gnome-look.org/ as well. Never really cared much about how the OS looks...but if I can impress friends...they might be more inclined to give ubuntu a try.

If you're not a big fan of the Ubuntu brown default theme, check out the Blended metacity theme and the nuoveXT icon set. They definetly add a 2005.10 (modern day) feel to the system.

If you're not a big fan of the Ubuntu brown default theme, check out the Blended metacity theme and the nuoveXT icon set. They definetly add a 2005.10 (modern day) feel to the system.

Here's the main reason I never liked BlueCurve: it looks like a ugly version of Windows 98 with nicer colors. The KDE support for BlueCurve was also very poor, it looks like ass comapared to the GTK+ support. QTCurve, however, was quite usable. The KDE support for it was quite nice, and the configuration is unified between KDE and GTK+. However, now thank's to ClearLooks I can just run that on GTK+ and Plastik with the ClearLooks color scheme. Look's quite unified that way, and much easier on the eyes.

... s/icons/wrinkles

Bring on the spat of posts telling me I can change the icon theme, as of course I do, but I'll say it again: Gnome needs a new default icon set.
The icons in most of those screens are sadly still as dull, muddied, venerable and depressing as they were 6 years ago, when I first tried Gnome.

The forward and back arrows in Nautilus seem to have absoutely no graphical correllation with the rest of Gnome's visual landscape (except the Refresh icon). The ~/ icon still looks like a little squashy mushroom house from a childrens novel and the icons in the menu editor (for menu groups) have no internal correlation other than they exhibit a tongue-and-cheek dig at futurism. Who actually thinks of a typewriter when looking for 'office', let alone a bricklayers tool when thinking about development?. Is this theme targeting a 50+ demographic? For icons so small, that aliasing really eats into their form and lastly the colour space of the icons seems all over the place, as though to solve the lack of a common palette they have simply mixed Khaki greeen into everything. This one thing KDE has really sorted out.

From what I have seen of Gnome desktops over the years, these default icons have a life expectancy of about 2 weeks (especially that home icon). Why not finally lay them to rest - or just move them down the theme list, far away from 'Default'?

text is all blurry and shit

Q: why do you think its the most downloaded ever?
A: BoObIeS!!@1

I agree, the screenshots add nothing. If you want a more artsy desktop you can go here or here. If you want a faster, cleaner desktop, I'd suggest you take a look over here.

If there are better themes out there and no Gnome developer I know actually uses the default *why* is it the default still?

There's going to be a new default theme in 2.12. The current frontrunner is ClearLooks. If gnome.org wasn't dead right now, I'd link you to the wiki page, but for now you can read a snippet from Google's search results.