New Propaganda Series: Rebirth

Quite a number of people have written in regards to the new Propaganda series. The series is called "Rebirth", and frankly, I'm frustrated. Now I'm going to have to download the new stuff, and look at re-doing my desktop. Must have...pretty eye candy...

Comments

I love Propaganda but ...

[geophile]

#14 is a big disappointment.

Should I feel bad?

[SkulkCU]

Should I feel badly when I boot into Windows and use this in enemy territory?

Re:Should I feel bad?

[Signal 11]

No, the latest version of W2K corrects various emotional instabilities users have been experiencing, including the use of unauthorized wallpaper. However, you should be aware that Microsoft disclaims all responsibility for installing such graphics and will not provide support for them. Further, many users report that the installation is successful, however they experience repeated dialog boxes stating that the image has not been registered with the RIAA and will be disabled after 30 minutes of use and to contact the author for registration....

Re:Should I feel bad?

[zmooc]

You don't have too...but I'm pretty sure you will >:

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how I can make it day to day without important items like these. I hope that by learning about this I did not forget some old important memory.

?

[AndyL]

"Sponsered by VA Linux systems" That was the first thing I noticed.

Now every time there's a story that even loosly involes VA are we going to have to have a thread about it?

Re:?

[chrisd]

Dude, slashdot was posting these up well before they were even owned by andover. I mean, crap, these tiles are awesome. You can feel free to disagree with me, but Bowie is really good at this stuff.

Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems

--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG

Can't people make their own?

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Look, playing with GIMP and making their own tiles isn't exactly difficult. I whipped up the imagery on my fvwm2 setup without much effort. Why do we need to hype up and drool over a collection of images done by basically combining random plugins? How does it show creativity to use someone else's stuff for this purpose?
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Re:Can't people make their own?

[Esperandi]

Dude, that *IS* Open Source. Sure, you could do it yourself, but you sit around and wait until someone else puts together the pieces other people have worked on and then they can get people to drool over them without doing hardly any work!

Esperandi

propaganda

[348]

As generally understood, propaganda is opinion expressed for the purpose of influencing actions of individuals or groups... Propaganda thus differs fundamentally from scientific analysis. The propagandist tries to "put something across," good or bad. The scientist does not try to put anything across; he devotes his life to the discovery of new facts and principles. The propagandist seldom wants careful scrutiny and criticism; his object is to bring about a specific action. The scientist, on the other hand, is always prepared for and wants the most careful scrutiny and criticism of his facts and ideas.

Actually I thought the rebirth series wasn't all that great, but didn't want to just post a flame. So Thanks to the first thing that came up under propaganda from Google, Yeah, I know, Lame -1,

ButtF***ing ugly..as usual

[uebernewby]

Looking at the screenshots, comparing them to other desktop themes raises the same old question (again): How come Linux desktop themes always have to be butt-and-butt ugly? I agree, at first glance they can seem spectacular (like these), but imagine having to WORK at a computer that displays that for a long period of time..

Sure, the Macintosh "theme" or (sic) Windows may not be much to look at, but if I have to look at it for hours on end, I know which one I'd prefer.

A desktop should not be an art-exhibition, for chrissakes.

Maybe the people designing themes should worry less about displaying their GIMP-skills and more about user-friendliness (then again, the same may be said about Linux as a whole..I personally like working on it, but there's no way in hell I could get my parents to do so right now - it's just to clumsy for them). After all, a Window manager is a TOOL.

And if it must be ideologically correct, try to take some hints from the Bauhaus, the guys who said that "Less is more" but also that design should serve a social cause. Nice, clean design helps users get the most out of their system.

Maybe it's time some people read the Apple Lisa papers again. To be fair, though, I think standard KDE is OK. Boring, but OK.

Re:ButtF***ing ugly..as usual

[jeremy f]

Yup.

When I work in KDE, I have a picture of a Pagoda snagged from Digitalblasphemy.com, a dark green colorset, and the green equivalent of the standard titlebar pixmaps that come with KDE. Nothing else has changed.

Most of those themes, on the other hand, are a complete mess. They're resource hogs, they're large, and they're EXTREMELY user-unfriendly. I don't care HOW pretty BlueSteel looks, if you try to work with that in high resolutions, you're gonna be cursing yourself trying to click the iconify, maximize, and close buttons, even if you can tell them apart at anything higher than 1280x1024. But not to pick on only BlueSteel alone, the majority of all themes made for X window managers are this way -- they're an attempt to be pretty but completly drown out any type of functionality.

I hate to drag Windows into this, but I will anyway. I won't even mention quality in this, I'm fairly biased towards the Windows developers, but this isn't about looks, it's about functionality. If you want to see some functional themes that still look pretty, check out some of the ones done for windowblinds. Win3000, Elegant, Titanium are just 3 examples of excellent looking skins that are completly functional on anybody's desktop.

And you know what's sad? The Windows skinners & themers port over the X themes, but vice versa is almost NEVER done. Go look for Win3000 for KDE. Go look for Elegant for Enlightenment. If you can find them, lemme know, cause I want to use them. Hopefully if these themes are indeed found, I can avoid the frustration of accidentally closing a program when all I wanted to do was minimize it. :)

I do appreciate the effort put into the themes by the artists. But please, it IS possible to be good looking and user friendly at the same time.


_____________________
.sig Instructions
step one: place .sig here

Re:ButtF***ing ugly..as usual

[gleam]

And you know what's sad? The Windows skinners & themers port over the X themes, but vice versa is almost NEVER done. Go look for Win3000 for KDE. Go look for Elegant for Enlightenment. If you can find them, lemme know, cause I want to use them. Hopefully if these themes are indeed found, I can avoid the frustration of accidentally closing a program when all I wanted to do was minimize it. :)

What is it that makes the windows interface better, exactly? I was always frustrated because the maximize button was right next to the close button. My friend (who loves the windows gui) says that that's wonderful, but I always had troubles when I would go to maximize and, bam, that window is closed.

I'm currently running blueHeart for e, and I'm quite in love with it. Each titlebar has two buttons, at max. The default title bar has these buttons on opposite sides, which is equally wonderful. On the left, we've got the iconify button, which does just that. On the right, we've got the close button, which does just that. I would, in fact, have to be a complete klod to mistakenly close a window I was trying to minimize.

So, really, not everything has to be reminiscent of windows. blueHeart reminds me not at all of windows, and I enjoy using it far more. No longer will I have to look carefully when I maximize a window; now I can just double click on the title bar. Middle click to windowshade. Right click to bring up a list of options that just...is impressive.

But! For all those of you who *love* the MS interface! You can set all your windows to "side border" which will put the iconify and close buttons adjacent to each other! But why would you ever? I find it prettier (the side border pattern is very sexy), so I use it for windows I'm not likely to close. My iconbox, pager, and gaim are permanently on side border, and I love it. Every other window is either borderless or using the default, simple, format.

And, of course, if you have trouble with closing windows when you try to minimize them, why not use a different window manager? e, windowmaker, and countless others are perfectly compatible with KDE (if you're stuck on kde), and will solve this problem for you.

So really, it all comes down to, if there's a problem, why don't you fix it yourself? Themes are fairly simple to make, especially for KDE and wmaker...why not just fix one up? Or make a "Win3000" theme for e, and use that? Change the gnome panel buttons so they look like a start menu, and use the Redmond 95 GTK+ theme. It'll be all better, don't worry.

I do appreciate the effort put into the themes by the artists. But please, it IS possible to be good looking and user friendly at the same time.

In fact, I believe, that's my point. I don't find the windows gui particularly attractive, or user friendly. I think, and I'm probably just stealing this opinion from many others, that the only reason people like the windows gui is not that it's intuitive, but that they've adjusted themselves to it. They understand the quirks and inconsistencies in the Explorer shell, and think that, because they've been trained to use such a system, it must actually be a good system.

How wrong they are. Go look at the UI hall of shame, go try and teach a new windows user (one who has never used a mouse before) what the difference is between double clicking and single clicking. Explain that the picture of the floppy disk means you're going to save the file, even if you're not saving it to floppy. And, once you've done those, show them how to delete something from their start menu. I dare you. Cmon, try it.

I'm spouting off here, as you can tell, but I think that too much time is spent by themers for X working on making X look like win, or macos. I guess some are doing it because they think the gui is superior, but... well.. no. MacOS might be superior, actually, although Aqua looks like it has some severe design flaws (using color coded buttons, the positioning of said buttons, the latest quicktime release).

So really, I think, what X themers need to do is to stop trying to imitate a GUI they believe to be superior (because they've been trained that way, most likely) and to start creating a new interface that actually *is* superior.

Rant mode: off. regards, ed fisher.

No way

[Duxup]

I don't. There are things I have to do in windows sometimes that I can't do elsewhere (games, some work related stuff). IMHO just because you're stuck behind enemy lines doesn't mean you still can't wave the flag.

Eye candy needed to migrate linux users...

[SuperDuG]

The main reason I started to consider linux was that you could make X look really pretty and customize it beyond solid colors. Now I know that there is Litestep and other windows Unix-like window managers. Then I saw all that linux could do. I was amazed so I switched over. But if it wasn't for screen captures of FVWM and Gimp I probably would have never switched over. Yeah I'll admit it I didn't switch over because I wanted to fight microsoft. And I didn't want to make a stand against the monopoly. I wanted to play with something new and customizable. And linux was it. Not to mention I got my first Linux CD for free. So that was even more impressive. So yeah that's why we need the prettiness. I mean console linux is nice, but that starts to get really annoying.

DuG

Although Bowie didn't actually make these ones....

[TechNoir]

This series of Propaganda tiles were created by Nadu Sundar, so lets all give him a pat on the back for continuing with Bowie's site.

I suppose it's a bit of a shame it's not immediatly obvieous on that site that these tiles were created by someone else.

The New OS "Smell"

[Esperandi]

When someone switches to a new OS with a new face or, shock of shocks, new elements in the GUI that provide different functionality (Linux has none of these, sadly (or should that be yet? anyone working on new user interface designs and not just prettier pictures?)) they get knocked on their ass by the new OS "smell". They've been using and staring at the same old thing for months, they see something new and it doesn't matter if its ugly or slower or harder to use, they love it. its something new, and new means good, right?

Very few people objectively evalualte an OS before claiming it as the new wave, they see the "new" way and think its the future. (I put quotes around that new cause I remembered that Linux doesn't have anything new to its command line design that it didn't copy from Unix but I've still seen people get floored by it simply because it was different)

Linux (well, X) provides a unqiue ability in an OS that keeps around a lot of people - continual new OS smell. Need a recharge on that smell? Pop in a new window manager! It doesn't matter if you go from Enlightenment to fvwm or the other way around, its *NEW*!

Esperandi

Re:The New OS "Smell"

[uebernewby]

I wasn't complaining about the fact that it's new. It is definitely time for something new: the Macintosh user interface has lost itself in extreme cuddliness without taking into account usability, and as for Windows...it's been said before but I'll say it again-there's just too many damn buttons in your average Windows program.

What I did complain about was that a lot of `theme-developers' seem to mistake excessive artiness for `a fresh approach to designing user interfaces'. Clever image-manipulation does not make a good working environment. A good working environment consists of clear, logical metaphors and a layout that doesn't distract the user from the task he or she is undertaking.

At the moment, I have seen no viable alternative to the Windows/Macintosh paradigm, overstretched as they may be. Most new interfaces (like Propagan(d?)a or MacOsX focus on creating pretty pictures instead. No-one says it's an easy problem to solve: there are entire universities working on it, all to no avail at the present moment. What is needed right now is for someone to come up with the one brilliant idea that will change the whole paradigm. Dumping yet another set of overworked GIMP-manipulations on the web just isn't the way to go.

Re:The New OS "Smell"

[Esperandi]

Oh, I realized what you were talking about, and I agree with you.. I was just trying to explain why people tend to fall all over themselves and they can't just stand back as you did and say "wait, this is frigging UGLY!"... they can't see the ugly, their nose picked up the new OS smell and its like a weird hallucinogen that makes you forget you actually have to *USE* computers, not just say "pretty" and stare...

Esperandi

Blah

[Zan Thrax]

Yawn. Boring. Abstract swirlies of colour is not what I want on my Desktop. I want a picture dammit. And even if I did want swirly colours, I'd just go to skinz.org or something similar to find a wider variety. The stuff at Propaganda's all so similar...

hmmm... wonder if I'll get moderated as flamebait, or just get flamed...

Re:Blah

[zeugma-amp]

I like pictures as well. Since my children tend to hang around this computer almost as much as I do, babes won't do it, so I use heavenly bodies from APOD.

There are some shots here that absolutely take your breath away. The universe is a beautiful and wonderful place...

Z

They're smart!

[Esperandi]

Think about the business possibilities here. Linux is getting commercialized (good thing). All the Open Source guys are used to eating ramen noodles and working at McDonalds so that they don't *GASP* get paid for programming. If you walk up to them and say "We'll give you $10 for your website", they'l drool and pant and hump your leg because they can't upload the pages to your server fast enough.

Now, fast forward 10 years. Linux is an established server OS with lots of interest invested in it. The people running the websites realize that its not evil to get paid for working on something you love. How much would it cost to get the website from those people? Hundreds of thousands if not millions!

What is the real moneymaker of these sites? Well, not much besides the fact that you can say "look how many poor open source programmers I feed while they give their lifeblood for you to have software without effort".... but in the open source community, that is one of the best PR moves you could ever make.

Esperandi
The numbers given in this post are not real. I realize that VA paid more than $10 for Slashdot, I'm just trying to illustrate a point. Flame me now, remember me later when I'm right.

Re:They're smart!

[Esperandi]

It's not a generalization when a group of people stand up and say "we hate money. It ruins everything. The richest man in the world is our sworn enemy until the say we die." to guess that those people are poor.

And yes, some people have hobbies, but most people if you walked up to them and offered to pay them for doing their hobbies wouldn't run away thinking you were the most outrageous and immoral person to have ever existed...

Esperandi

Well, I didn't like your tile

[roystgnr]

But the steganography in your .sig is hilarious. Now I'm tempted to hunt for the hidden data in that screenshot too...

hi

[mikpos]

I would just like to mention that I don't like Propaganda. Of course since it's on Slashdot, I have to read it and post about it. Since this is on Slashdot, I'll also have to keep reading everything posted on here relating to Propaganda, just so I can mention that it doesn't interest me.

On a related topic, I have no interest in politics whatsoever. That's why I subscribe to all the political magazines and newspapers I can. Then every week I send letters to the editor saying how politics don't interest me and how I found the articles boring because they talked about politics instead of more interesting things.

I hope that Slashdot stops posting articles about Propaganda, because I don't really find the Propaganda themes that attractive. If you ask me, Slashdot is critically overrun with people who find things interesting that I don't. The only way I can think to remedy this is to post a few messages to each thread I find interesting in order to explicitly state my apathy towards it.

I'm looking for anyone with exactly the same tastes as me to join my crusade to make all publications, especially Slashdot, publish only things that interest me. Anyone willing to join me in my crusade must do the following:
(a) never ignore anything. If you find something that is boring or uninteresting, read up on and then write letters/post messages to anyone willing (or unwilling!) to listen about how boring you find it.
(b) read all Jon Katz articles religiously. Set up a script to alarm you as soon as Jon Katz posts an article. Immediately read his article and then post a message about how much you dislike his article and him personally. To save time, use prewritten messages.
(c) get an account at Slashdot, and set it up so the only articles you see are on subjects you find boring. That way you don't have to waste time reading stuff that you're already interested in!
(d) do a little karma whoring on the side. Post at least 25 messages to each article posted on Slashdot. The more times you post, the more likely you are to get karma! You can use that karma to your advantage by being able to post your "is this really news for nerds?" posts at a score of 2!

Propaganda and the filter frenzy

[jjoyce]

Propaganda has made some interesting looking tiles, but for the most part this is what people call "filterbation." Good artwork minimizes use of filters.

Mankind has always dreamed of destroying the sun.

Here, have some more eye candy

[Chris Johnson]

...and desktops and tiles and for that matter, titlebar graphics, all in .jpg and .gif and .xpm formats :)

Airwindows Desktops

Airwindows Backgrounds

Airwindows Tiles

Airwindows Titlebars

Airwindows Web Backgrounds

It's there to use and has consistently been the biggest draw at airwindows.com. I hope to one day be looking at a Linux eyecandy screenshot and spot some of my own work in it! I think my tiles and natural media backgrounds kick butt in a serious way :) down with swirlies! Quit being so arty and get crafty! ;)

Re:Your Desktop

[Bowie J. Poag]

Hi!

Thank you for submitting your various clue-deprived assumptions to the world. I'll now take the time to correct them, and you.

Firstly, the "same damn swirly-theme-with-some-random-set-of-colors-in-som e-boring-pattern motif" apparently is quite popular. To date, we've had well over 30 million hits on the site, not to mention about 300,000 visitors since the project began just over a year ago. Did I mention the 1,200,000 copies of Red Hat 6.0, and 6.1 which ship with a good sized chunk of Propaganda tiles on each? Oh, lest we forget Mandrake..them too by virtue of association. I dont think your view is shared by the populous.

Secondly, my work (and Naru's subsequent work) is not being "forced" on you, or anyone. To my knowledge, no one is being subjected to our collection of free desktop backgrounds against their will. Check with Amnesty International. I'm sure they have a few people looking out for this and other serious civil rights abuses.

Thirdly, and most importantly, you're completely and absolutely wrong in this case:

"No accounting for taste, of course, but I just don't see what the big deal is about Propaganda's stuff that it has to get (likely extraordinary) funding from VA Linux, among other things."

You wanna know how much "extraordinary funding" i've recieved from VA Linux Systems? Zero. Thats right, you read it correctly. Nothing. Zero. $0.00. In British Pounds, that translates to 0.00. In pesos, thats 'cero'. In Lire, thats also 0.00... Infact, if you really want to get down to it, this project cost me about 1000 hours of work, and about $450 out of pocket. Red Hat never paid me a dime..I got an IPO invitation from them, but silly me, I refused to lie on a financial statement with E-Trade in order to get in on it. Damn those morals of mine! What about VA? VA didnt even recognize me when they were handing out IPO invitations.

As you can see, i've made absolutely no money from this project. Guess what that means? That means youre complaining about something youre getting FOR FREE. The whole reason you're getting it for free, because for a long time I liked making people happy by putting whatever talent I had to use for the Linux community. And you, sitting pretty in a position to pass judgement over an entire year's worth of labor, and the sum total of nearly eight hundred images, would like everyone in the world to know that "Its not something to get all worked up about."

Well, thank you for your comment. I hope that you'll continue to take mine, and other's work for granted. Naru's work may not yet be as refined as mine, but thats no reason to afford him any less respect.

In the meantime, you, and other people who find it necessarry to look a gift horse in the mouth can form a line to the left to kiss my ass. Lucky for you, thats also free. You see, its people like you that remind me of why I stopped doing things for other people for free.

Have a GREAT day,


Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)

I still think that...

[JoeShmoe]

EyePoppers produced the best tile sets a.k.a. eye candy.

Plus, you get your choice of a color scheme:

http://www.webslingerz.com/eyepoppers/red.shtml
http://www.webslingerz.com/eyepoppers/green.shtm l
http://www.webslingerz.com/eyepoppers/blue.shtml
http://www.webslingerz.com/eyepoppers/purple.sht ml
http://www.webslingerz.com/eyepoppers/grey.shtml

- JoeShmoe

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Re: Uh

[Foogle]

I think he's 20. That would make him a very recent ex-teenager.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

Re:Your Desktop

[chrisd]

That's bunk, man, I added you to the IPO myself. I also emailed you personally to ask you if you got it. After that I just figured you were'nt interested. I can forward you the emails if you like.

Chris DiBona
vA Linux Systems

--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG

Re:Your Desktop

[chrisd]

Thats interestng, I did overlook you on the first email that went out, but when I found out you were not on the original list, I added you and emailed you. I don't see how that's so bad. The original list was taken from contributor lists from programs, not sites. This was a mistake on my part which I tried to correct as I was working on the thing.

Anyhow, I know you don't hate me, but I did try to include you, even if it was later, that's why I felt it was important to respond.

Chris
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG

hrm

[fusion94]

crap