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Ubuntu Gets a New Visual Identity
buntcake writes "Canonical has launched a new visual identity for the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ubuntu is shedding its previous brown look and adopting a more professional color scheme with purple and orange. The colors will be used in a new GNOME theme and boot splash for Ubuntu 10.04. According to updated design documents that were published in the Ubuntu wiki, 'light' is the underlying concept behind the new visual identity. It displaces the 'human' concept that has been part of Ubuntu's theming and brand vernacular for the past five years. Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon has posted a screenshot and additional information."
Is professionalism a virtue? I like the notion of Ubuntu as being warm and fuzzy, especially with the adjective+animal names for the releases.
Don't you worry. In the 15 years I've been doing web and interface design, I've never heard the words 'purple', 'orange' and 'professional' used in the same sentence.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
First impressions... Why did XP default to the "Playskool" look?
Willie...
With his billions, Shuttleworth needs to hire a crack team of icon developers for a year. OSS icons stink, and icons are what you look at. Personally, I never use 'em. Just plain, clean menus (fvwm2).
As sentimental as that is, for the last five years I've heard nothing but complaints about the color scheme.
Not from me -- I like the brown colour scheme. Still, when choosing an OS, colour scheme is quite low on my list of priorities. As long as it doesn't hurt my eyes...
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
xorg.conf will still be used if you make one.
Yes, I made an xorg.conf, but wrangling with drivers, text files and unanswered forum posts of others trying to do the same thing quickly became tiresome. It's the same old issue: desktop Linux configuration is too much for Everyman. I'm technically capable and not averse to troubleshooting, but still couldn't readily identify what to do to get it to work (or even whether it could be done at all). To search the net for desktop Linux configuraton advice is to trawl a wasteland of old information, misinformation and absent information.
Why are you using s-video in 2010?
S-video because it's an old rear projection TV, and I've got no money for upgrades. The point is that I've done it on the cheap, but not by using Ubuntu.
WinXP Just Worked, and Boxee runs fine.
( Redundancy is ) ^ n
Dear CarrotTop,
Please don't change your image. We like you just the way you are: attractive, sexy, loveable.
Sincerely,
Teenage Girls
... but seriously. Ubuntu has typically looked like shit: 9.10 has the "burnt amber" look, which is horrible.
Orange (gold) and purple only really work for a very small subset of the populace. Brown and orange works for nobody: these are color schemes picked by football teams to differentiate themselves from each other, with no significant purpose other than that.
Blue, on the other hand, is much more acceptable to everyone.
Consider: both OS X and Windows have done "variations of blue" for the better part of a decade. Failing that, go with grey and accents (OS X 10.5 and pre-XP, at least).
There is a good reason for using blue: blue is calming and generally appealing. Darker shades are rich and warm. Even KDE uses "blue" to one degree or another (and has since 2.0 I think - for the most part - unless you're using SuSE).
Orange/gold and purple are regal colors. Whatever. I personally hate maroon, purple, and the like, and will theme anything I've got to look at all day a softer blue, grey, or the like. I suspect many people are the same in that regard.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I don't know about you, but I don't give a wet crap what the default theme looks like. Regardless of operating system, the defaults last just long enough for me to figure out how to change them to what I like. The only time I'm turned off by the defaults is when I can't change them. About the only graphics change in Ubuntu I'd care about is better support for a broader range of graphics cards.
Mind you, if the change makes Ubuntu appeal more to the kind of people who think desktop color schemes make a difference in how professional they are, great. I'm just not one of those people, and I rather suspect most self-selected Linux users aren't, either.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What I find stupid, is the moving of the window "action" buttons.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The window controls are precisely where they should be.
First, which side of the window, and for that matter the screen, are all of the menus on? That's right, the left-hand side. So why would you want to have to move your mouse a thousand pixels to close a window?
Second, what is the most destructive operation you can perform on a window? Closing it. Why on earth are you beating your users over the head by putting the most destructive operation that close to the corner? When it's on the corner, it's much easier to hit by accident, for example when reaching to resize the window. This has happened time and again with me on Windows to the point of absolute fury
What's the least destructive operation that still gets the window out of your line of sight? Minimize. If you hit it on accident, it takes you maybe a few hundred pixels to reach down, or up if you're like me, to restore the window. Unlike if it's closed by accident, which can take minutes to restore if it was a large networked word processing file.
Every Mac user can immediately appreciate the position of the window controls, if they use them at all. They are clearly colored for improved accuracy, they're out of the way, and what's even better, you usually don't have to use them, since OS X's Expose is so much more convenient, even more so than Compiz, anyways. The only reason not to switch is because of existing Windows users, and we stated a long time ago that Ubuntu isn't Windows.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Shocked at that statement. I have three environments, KDE, Gnome, and Windows. KDE is by far the most productive environment. Windows lacks so many features it simply hurts to use it, and for each feature thats similar Windows takes up too much real estate and takes waaay too many clicks.
Gnome is the decent compromise, dont think, no particular workflow, just jump in and go. There is a place for that too.
I've been loudly clammoring for Canonical to ditch the brown for the better part of a decade. On the forums, on IRC, on /., on Reddit, on my blog, literally everywhere, I've been pleading and begging for Shuttleworth et al to pull their heads out of their asses and make something that just generally appeals to a whole lot of people.
Brown doesn't. It was hideous, and somewhat embarrassing, especially when I tried to convince some people who ONLY WANTED FIREFOX that Ubuntu was a superior OS:
"But why is it so UGLY?!?"
"Hold on.... click click click..... Is that better?"
and of course those clicks are always changing the hideous default theme.
That said, this new theme is nearly as bad. Great, getting rid of the brown for.... PURPLE?!?!
Purple and Orange look god damned atrocious. Why don't you just make a better OS, and copy the superior look of just about every other OS on the market.
Points for originality only count if you don't look like shit. This new design, STILL LOOKS LIKE SHIT.
Why not just take a cue from Linux Mint? They actually have a very decent and PLEASING default look that is even original and different compared to Win and OSX.
While you are fixing that, why not go ahead and install superior default apps by default?
VLC is much, much better than any other video player for Linux.
Thunderbird is much better than whatever that crap is you default to.
Deluge is better than Transmission.
Audacious is much better than Rhythmbox.
In fact, other than Open Office, most of the Ubuntu default apps are right crap.
It wouldn't be hard to make 2010 the year of Linux on the desktop. All the tools are here now.
Sadly, all the distros I've seen are still too bulky, too ugly, and have all the worst default apps. Ubuntu is definitely a good example of that.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.