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

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....

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?
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

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.


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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.

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

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.

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!

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)