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There's plusses and minuses to this. On one hand, unified theming is a win, no question. But doing so by adding yet another layer of interface could perpetuate the core differences rather than helping unify them. The world is rife with short-term hacks that are still running; it's one of the big contributors to bloatware.

In addition, it's a one-way change. When the author completes his work, Gnome apps can follow KDE themes, but not vice-versa. That's good for KDE, but not particularly good for Gnome.

It also leads to some subtle UI traps. When I run a Gnome app under KDE, it stands out. In one sense that's bad, as it can be visually jarring. In another sense that's good, as I'm visually alerted to expect some different UI rules. If one can't determine which ruleset to follow by a casual glance at the app, it's going to lead to user confusion.

It's also going to dilute the UI guidelines to both KDE and Gnome. Application writers tend to model their UIs on other apps, not from reading the UI guidelines. An app developer running Gnome apps under KDE look (but not feel!) will assume that either the KDE rules are loose or that he should be developing Gnomish features.

I'm not saying the author shouldn't do this; it's a noble goal and (from the responses on the author's posting) pretty decent code for an alpha/beta release. But we should hope for and work towards better long-term theme engines.

But... But...

Without rewriting the wheels we wouldn't have so many iTunes clones!

... is the native Plastik theme that comes with KDE 3.2. (Tip of the day: for added prettiness, set Nimbus Sans L as your default font. Then watch people gape and go 'ooooh!'). None of Xandros' doing, although their choosing it certainly sounds like a proof of good taste.

> ... the customized OpenOffice which is one of the key perks of Ximian

Oh is it?

But I'm going to keep scratching my head until I find a site dedicated to Linux improvements (from our, the users, standpoint). If you've ever been to kde-look.org you should have a pretty good idea about what I'm talking about. Slashdot is a great forum for commenting on exactly what it is you believe 'Linux' needs (or why it sucks), but that isn't its purpose and it doesn't collect or organize this information so Red Hat execs can skim through and see just what the uncleaned masses are griping about now..

Have you seen kde-look.org? The community can do it (with relatively few Goatse pictures). Just...a little..broader.

People like you would probably be more interested in the KDE Projects more than anything

BECAUSE KDE IS BEYOND GAY, FAGS.

Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Linux is GAY. Gayer than the GNAA. Gayer than OpenBSD (impossible as it sounds)

FAGGOTS!

GAY GAY GAY!

http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=7 655

> while the gnome guys have been working to stick these features where they belong, but im not suprised kde has always been implimenting stuff where it dosent

Um, since when was FreeDesktop associated with only GNOME?

This stuff works with both KDE and GNOME, quite obviously.

Screenshot of it with KDE

But they have effectively branded it. Check out a couple of icon sets at kde-look.org and tell me how may you see coming with IE icons! Of for a quiter example check out Opera. Browsers are like everything else, we want to feel like where using the fastest and the best, branding adds sex appeal (and can increase usability!), just like with everything else.

> Seven years, and it STILL looks like crap.

Yup, it's a good thing that is has some of the best themeing capabilities I've ever seen out of the box. It's very easy to change themes too, less than ten clicks.

Plastik and the new Crystal SVG Icons (not the old Crystal icons..), make up one of the best combinations I've ever seen. They'll both be included as part of the upcoming KDE 3.2 in december.

> Seven years, and it STILL looks like crap.

Yup, it's a good thing that is has some of the best themeing capabilities I've ever seen out of the box. It's very easy to change themes too, less than ten clicks.

Plastik and the new Crystal SVG Icons (not the old Crystal icons..), make up one of the best combinations I've ever seen. They'll both be included as part of the upcoming KDE 3.2 in december.

This is kind of on-topic, and I think quite poetic.
A nice background pic portraying Tux driving the longhorns off a cliff can be found here

Get to the background directly from here

This is kind of on-topic, and I think quite poetic.
A nice background pic portraying Tux driving the longhorns off a cliff can be found here

Get to the background directly from here

Its killed KDE/LINUX!. Its fun to trick people into thinking I've got a macintosh!

All the Apps are there
Itunes = JuK
Safari = Konqueror
Finder = Konqueror
Dock = Kicker
Menubar = Kicker
bbedit = Kate
Quicktime = Kmplayer!
Appleworks = Koffice!

Download this to make OpenOffice match your icon theme. Then use this guide to get your fonts looking good. In Gentoo you can get Microsoft's fonts by emerging corefonts

Hyperlinking the URL would fix the problem and make access convenient. Why not try it?

Aqua widget and WM theme: Here

OSX animated panel SuperKaramba theme: Here

Aqua widget and WM theme: Here

OSX animated panel SuperKaramba theme: Here

yup, the main reason I switched back from KDE to GNOME is Ximian's excellent Industrial style.

But within the last few days, I've been back in KDE, because of the release of another excellent style called Plastik. It is also most excellent, and rivals Industrial in professionalism.

Obviously the projects wouldn't be being developed if the developers (and the community around them) thought they where useless.

I've been following kde-look.org on and off for a while now, there are a lot of users who really like this stuff. I'm a Blackbox man myself, but I'm not above making my desktop easy on the eyes (I run a dressed up version of the KDE kick on mine that looks similar to this).

Too much clutter and I start to feel a little distracted, but I really like that the Linux desktop if finally starting to come into its own.

Of course if you don't like you still don't have to use it.

Obviously the projects wouldn't be being developed if the developers (and the community around them) thought they where useless.

I've been following kde-look.org on and off for a while now, there are a lot of users who really like this stuff. I'm a Blackbox man myself, but I'm not above making my desktop easy on the eyes (I run a dressed up version of the KDE kick on mine that looks similar to this).

Too much clutter and I start to feel a little distracted, but I really like that the Linux desktop if finally starting to come into its own.

Of course if you don't like you still don't have to use it.

Since it uses KDE, you should be able to configure just about everything about the interface if you have an internet conneciton. A great site to get new styles for the interface is here

Soon?

We already do. Just have to get the right theme.

XFree 4.3 even comes with some default cursor sets that are shadowed. The development versions even used them as defaults on my Gentoo box, and look great on my Free BSD laptop.

No one needs to know how to turn them on, because this patch is not part of GTK and never will be. The GTK philosophy is to do things right and have them "just work", which means no shadows until X11 gets native alpha support.

Before we add yet more GTK2 appearance options, wouldn't it be prudent to get an application into GNOME to configure them all?

All GTK appearence options are configurable by GUI (or gconf, in a few cases) There is no longer one application for GTK configuration, but there are control panels for fonts and themes (GNOME no longer has one integrated control center, it's separate apps for everything, like MacOS). Unfortunately, I don't think colors are officially configurable separately from themes - you have to edit the theme directly.

GNOME does a really good job with making obscure prefs available in gconf, but this is one of the few things that aren't configurable. On the bright side, most GTK themes are available in multiple color schemes - Bluecurve and Greencurve, for example. Also, if you're using the Keramik KDE theme, you might try the Geramik GTK theme, which should automatically import your KDE colors.

Lots of posts say this is a wasteful development etc. I am a KDE user (since 2.2) and I find this incredibly useful.

As a rule, I use very little eye-candy, I prefer a subdued looking desktop. I turn off all that whiz-bang borrowed-from-Apple features like gleaming scroll-bars,flashy window decorations etc.

However, these little changes like font smoothing,sub-pixel rendering(cleartype),and menu hinting make KDE a lot more useful.

Specifically, the Dotnet style.

Nice to see this turn up in Gtk/Gnome.

First (and I'm not trying to be a smart ass here) wasn't Windows a direct knock-off of Apple's interface? That alone would make it more appropriate to complain nothing much risky or new has been done in an even longer time.

But thats not really the case. While the basic KDE and GNOME interfaces do seem to be trying to ease users in, there have been plenty of alternatives that look nothing like the standard Windows interface. Blackbox is my personal favorite, nothing but a clean desktop and the applications I'm currently using. For convenience I also use the KDE kicker (example) to provide clickable links and additional eye candy.

Sites like kde-look.org provide great examples of UI enhancements both conceptual and implemented (see SuperKaramba or Slicker). Of course freshmeat.net is an excellent resource for just about every imaginable interface. If theres one thing Linux is good for its developers being free to experiment with new ideas.

First (and I'm not trying to be a smart ass here) wasn't Windows a direct knock-off of Apple's interface? That alone would make it more appropriate to complain nothing much risky or new has been done in an even longer time.

But thats not really the case. While the basic KDE and GNOME interfaces do seem to be trying to ease users in, there have been plenty of alternatives that look nothing like the standard Windows interface. Blackbox is my personal favorite, nothing but a clean desktop and the applications I'm currently using. For convenience I also use the KDE kicker (example) to provide clickable links and additional eye candy.

Sites like kde-look.org provide great examples of UI enhancements both conceptual and implemented (see SuperKaramba or Slicker). Of course freshmeat.net is an excellent resource for just about every imaginable interface. If theres one thing Linux is good for its developers being free to experiment with new ideas.

I would consider myself in the top 1% or .1% of people who would feel comfortable using Linux

Well if you consider yourself comfortable enough with Linux, then you should be able to make it feel "at home" relatively quickly.

Most of the newest distros have installers that have come so far, I might even go as far as to say that they rival Windows installers (Mandrake 9.1 installer is beautiful).

If your complaint is about X11 drivers, then you should of course know that most distros can't bundle certain graphics drivers due to licensing issues i.e. Nvidia, Ati. A quick install of the driver, and a quick mod to XF86Config-4 usually does the trick (at least from my experience w/ Nvidia cards)

Dependency Hell?? Well I use Mandrake 9.1, a quick 2 min. URPMI from the PLF to add contrib, sources, main, and of course Texstar's repository, and dependency hell is pretty much taken care of, as grpmi also gets the deps. this is for an rpm-based distro, however apt-get is equally as powerful.

It may be that KDE or GNOME don't feel right from an ease of use standpoint

hmmmm.... this one baffles me a bit. I use KDE as my desktop, a quick trip to Kde-look.org and my desktop will look and feel exactly how I want it to. I know what you're probably thinking, and no I'm not a KDE-only zealot... Gnome is very good, I just like KDE better...Plus there are many other window managers out there, it's up to you to use whatever makes you feel "at home". Linux has come a long way in the last few years, and I'm proud to tell people I use Linux, and will always explain it to them what it is when they ask, "what's that?"

What it really comes down to is choice and options. You have choice, and you have lots of options. You can choose to run Windows be locked in, and have everything forced upon you. You can choose Mac OS and have a closed (but becoming more open minded) OS but one that def. beats Windows in ease of use, but can't quite tinker with it as much as the normal geek would like. OR you can choose Linux. If you can't make your linux box feel as if you were "at home", I'd re-think your statement about being "comfortable enough" to use Linux. Customization is just one of the many perks of Linux.

"I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end.. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin"..... "Where we go from here, is a choice I leave up to you"

If you're after icons then you can find them from any number of themes for Gnome and KDE, with clear and standard licences.

totally agree, I too prefer linux for reliability and apple for eye candy.

Thus the system I run - RH 8.0 + KDE with the a theme thats a lot like some OS we know :)

does anybody know if there is a KDE theme to approach aqua?

What "theme" are you asking about? Icons? Window Decorations? Widgets? Colors?

There's a couple Mac-sh clones for icons, there's a few different ones (and a few of thoses) for the Window Decorations. And there's always Good ol' Mosfet's Liquid for the widgets. And there's a ton of color themes too (Mosfet included one or two in his Widget theme as well).

Just go to KDE-Look. You should find everything you need or want.

And depending on your distro, there's brobably RPM's, DEB'd, EBuilds, whatever for most of the stuff there. I personally use Gentoo. There's a LOT of EyeCandy that's made it's way into the Portage tree. If you're on RH... Well... They've never been too KDE friendly, but I'm sure there's some other stuff that will work on the system from rpmfind.net, should you feel that compiling is too great of a task.

go to kde-look.org and look around. They have at least 1 or 2 very good aqua themes.

Its kind of funny, I'm reading a lot of comments like yours. Which is fine, of course. But there is a sort of big push right now for just this sort of thing on Linux desktops. Eye candy, it seems is underrated here?

As a user who has been using the Linux desktop for about 4 years now I'd have to say this is a very exciting project. You should take a look at kde-look to get an idea what types of eye candies are being kicked around. I've been using translucent aterms, Convectivea crystal icons and the Mosfet's KDE liquid module for quite a while now, I love it.

Btw, check out Karamba, its a new KDE extention that suports (fake) transparency, lots of fancy do-dads and themes. Beefs up the candy factor (and some functionality!). Might as well look good if your going to have to use it.

Last one! Check out Slicker. Its a collection of utilities which provide an alternative to KDE's kicker, and looks good. I don't know about you, but I got tired of looking at screen shots of OSX.

No "singular" "look" for a *NIX box.
This is not true. RedHat and Mandrake have worked on that. Use them if you don't understand what a "widget set" is or what enviroment the various ones apply to.

No "singlular" "style" that you like.
Well, then create one that you do like. Upload it to KDE-Look and see if people agree with you.

~~~

Please don't take this as a flame, as it's not meant as one. It's just growing very obvious you really don't know what you're talking about.

P.S.
And yes, I do agree that the "major" desktops (Gnome and KDE) get together and find a way for this to be a LOT easier for Joe Six-Pack...

slashdot.org
newsforge.com
theregister.co.uk
my university's daily newspaper (no link!)
fark.com
the smirking chimp
dr. fun
the daily vault (although i review there once in a while)
google news
daily rotten
lwn.net
crackmonkey archives
the dot
kde-look.org
corona's coming attractions
snopes' update page
doc's weblog

And I think that's about it for a daily basis.

http://www.kde-look.org

Easy to install. Very nice looking, some of them. My personal favorite? Light style v.3. Clean, minimal, no shit, better looking than anything else for Windows or Linux. Combine with the iKons icon set for a very, very professional desktop that makes Windows users ask "Is that Windows 2003?" (seriously.)

My main fear is that KMail and Konquerer won't be good Evolution/Galeon replacements.

No worries. Just keep Evolution and Galeon. I switched from GNOME2 around KDE 3.1RC2 and haven't looked back. If you're worried about consistent look (feel is another story) then you have a couple of options.
You could get the Geramik theme for gtk 1.x and 2.x this will match the default Keramik theme in KDE, and even inherit any color changes made in the kde control center! This is what I did, and now the GIMP, GAIM, and Pan (and mozilla/phoenix) all match my KDE desktop perfectly.
You could also try the Wonderland theme (called BlueCurve in RedHat) from the RedHat Artwork package. It will theme gtk 1.x/2.x and kde consistently.
Another more difficult option would be to use the Liquid theme for kde, and dig up some Aqua[Graphite] themes for gtk. Since Aqua-ish themes exist for everything that is skinnable, you get a reasonably homogenous desktop.

With a little effort, you can have a beautiful and consistent Unix desktop, regardless of which apps you need to run or which desktop you choose.

Personally I like the Keramik window decorations, but I despise the widgets.

I use the KDE default widget set (HighColour Default I think it's called), Keramik for the window decorations, "Desert Red" for the colour scheme (I get so sick of blue or black-based schemes) and Noia for the icons. I'm not a big fan of transparency, but I have just a hint (96 or 98% opacity) for the menus -- what the hell, it's kind of neat and I have the processor power for it.

Screenshot is here. The IM app you see is Psi, the best damned Jabber IM I've run across. I'm not the author, but I have contributed a few patches to help the project.

You could try Geramik - this'll give your GTK/GNOME apps a similar look to KDE3.1's Keramik style.

Mac OS X has a unique look while both KDE and Windows uses a very similar interface.

The new thing with this KDE release is that it now really drags away from Windows with excellent icons and windowstyles.

I, and many people, have used this themes for a long time.

It's really interesting to see how much the german government has spent on KDE development. Wish more government would do that.

Ciryon

Obviously the OSX UI (could easily be cloned)...and some multimedia stuff. What else?

What else? I shit load of cash in lawyer fees, that's what.

I've only "used" OS-X at a Mac Store a couple of times, but REALLY liked it. Like I'd even go so far as to dump all this OSS/Linux/M$/whatever stuff to have one Mac box. It left that great of an impression on me. But what you are suggesting is pure suicide. I would LOVE for Apple (read as: Steve Jobs...) to release an x86 version of OS-X. I'd buy it in a heart beat (I love KDE3.1, but OS-X... mmmm...). But I just don't see that happening. There's FAR too many hardware configs to consider. Apple as only one hardware config to think about: Apple's Hardware. That's REALLY easy to program for.

Aside, take a look at KDE-Look. There's a couple Window Decrations that are basically OS-X, and then there's Mosfet's widget set. OK, OK, there's more to OS-X than the look of it, I know. I'm just saying that there's MUCH cheaper ways to achive the same goal.

KDE3.1 + Aqua WD (I forget the exact name, I don't use it) + Mosfest's Liquid Widgets + CodeWeaver's Crossover + the dirt cheap prices of x86 hardware == Heaven (if it's a Mac you're looking for). Just thought I'd say it. We already have most of the parts available to us. It's just the matter of doing it...

For all of you complaining about innovation, I'd like to see you put some effort behind Slicker, a replacement for the KDE kicker. Tie this in with the Geramik theme and you have a unified KDE/GTK look, with 'innovative' features.

"Unfortunately it looks like we will still have the "crippled" KDE 3.0.5 in Red Hat 8.1."

Hey, guess what: Gnome and KDE are themeable! Yes, that's right, you can actually change the default look. Amazing, yes! Even more amazing, if you feel that Kmail is superior to Evolution, you can even change your menus to open Kmail!

Actually, it's not amazing. You have always been able to do these things for Gnome and KDE under Redhat 8. What IS amazing, however, is the number of people who complain about the default theme for Redhat 8, something which 99% of all complainers will change on their distro of choice anyway.

Personally, I use Keramik on my Redhat 8 desktop at home for GTK 1,2, and QT (Well, Geramik for GTK). It's basically the same "evil" idea: Mozilla, Gimp, and Konqueror all look very much the same. Mozilla's classic theme now picks up native GTK themes, which is why my Mozilla has that Keramik look.

Crippled? Well, if you couldn't change the theme anymore, or modify your menus, or if they didn't ship Kmail, you may have a point there.

Documentation- You're just plain wrong on this part. There is *ALOT* more documentation for open source software available online. It may not be the traditional type (books from the vendor) but news groups certainly make up a big portional of documentation. Newsgroups are how I've solved just about every problem I've run into on linux.

User Interface- You are right on the user interface part. However, this isn't an unfixable problem. Up until recently the majority of users using open source software, such as Linux apps, were geeks. Thus, those applications' respective interfaces were best suited for geeks. (think more functionality over ease of use)However, If mainstream users start using Linux more and more, the interfaces will evolve accordingly. I don't think there is any lack of innovation in the open-source market, and I like some of the interfaces that people are coming up with more than their mac or windows counterparts.

Open source doesn't necessarily mean difficult to use and head-ache inducing. It only seems this way because up until now it hasn't been designed to be easy to use. This will change as more mainstream users continue to adopt the OS. Just look at the strides vendors like Red-Hat have made in the last several months.

Overall, Open-Source software will continue to evolve and mature. As time goes on, we will start to see it in more and more mission-critical applications. Even now, it seems that every new supercomputer that is being built is running Linux. I think this is a sign of times to come.

On kde-look there is a very nice looking replacement proposal for kicker and the desktop metaphor.

The author proposes a card based metaphor which would allow you to mix and match componants to create your own desktop environment. There is no code yet, just some annotated "screenshots" here and here.

In the discussion there are several people volunteering to help code so this project may actually become reality.

On kde-look there is a very nice looking replacement proposal for kicker and the desktop metaphor.

The author proposes a card based metaphor which would allow you to mix and match componants to create your own desktop environment. There is no code yet, just some annotated "screenshots" here and here.

In the discussion there are several people volunteering to help code so this project may actually become reality.