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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.
Hey, how's it going?
As sentimental as that is, for the last five years I've heard nothing but complaints about the color scheme. No one accepts others for who they are unless they already like who they are.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
This is long overdue. The brown theme was a major turnoff for me. It seems silly, I know, but the first impression is an important one. This was at least part of the reason I preferred Kubuntu. The quick screenshot looks a lot better to me.
And yes, of course you can change the colors, but there's a lot of value of a nice out-of-the-box experience. Developing your own color scheme is trickier than you'd think to get "right."
Don't like that the Window control buttons (maximize, close, etc.) are moved to the top left of the window, instead of the top right where they used to be.
1. I'm used to them being on the right in both current Ubuntu and Windows. I know Mac has them on the left, but I never liked that.
2. If the window is partially dragged off-screen, I can click either the X on the right side, or File -> Close on the left side. With both being on one side, I need to or drag the window back (if it works, which often doesn't if its dragged so much to the extreme that it's hard to grab the title bar with your mouse).
I know the problem usually has trivial workarounds (such as a keyboard shortcut to close), but meh. Why not leave it the way it worked before.
"Purple and orange" is a professional color scheme?
I don't even know what color tie goes with a blue shirt, but even I know that's awful.
I don't care so much about the color scheme as the general UI. Windows has come a long way since 2002. Gnome hasn't.
Not complaining... the Windows guys get more money. But still... competition is competition, and money or not, Gnome isn't competing with Windows 7 like it could with Windows XP.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Yeah I can see the plan.
'Hmm... What colour could potentially be uglier than brown...'
'Purple!!! Of course!!!'
True that.
"We changed the wallpaper!" OMG! NEWS!
Also everything about Ubuntu and the word brown, such as: ..."
"Ubuntu is shedding its previous brown look"
always reminds me of Apples Zune ad, can't find it on YouTube but it's like they talk about all the colors options and then mentions "[pause] brown
Hurray for brown!
PERHAPS because you actually know how to change it? Fine with me; but all these folks saying that it's a great visual really want to keep as away from the masses as possible. AND the effing irony is that there an immense amount of actually good artwork done by the community, and Canonical just ignores it. Mod me flamebait if you will, but the most popular linux distro seriously looks like its "Made for losers".
They've moved the window frame buttons to a place that's counter-intuitive for most people but they've also cocked that up in a way that doesn't even make sense for people used to OSX (the buttons are still laid out in the same order as if right-aligned). So now you've got buttons in places nobody is used to, the X button no longer benefits from the 'infinite-dimension' effect of being in a corner, and plus you've got the window frame buttons directly above the menubar - instantly making 10% of attempts to open the Edit menu into accidental window closes. I guess they never stopped to think why most WMs have them on the right and OSX has them on the left.
Brilliant.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
You might wanna get that checked out.
KDE doesn't look/behave like Windows either.
Agreed that you can choose the UI, but when there's not much to choose from... I guess I would have to write my own. But I'd rather pay Microsoft a couple hundred instead of doing that.
I like Linux. I'm on the LFS list. Been through most of the distros over the years. But I give credit where it is due... Microsoft has an edge in the UI world. Apple had an edge over Microsoft for years (not as much any more). Personally... I think the Ubuntu Netbook Remix UI is the direction of the future that could take it past both Microsoft and Apple.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
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
Quite the opposite imho. For example: Where again do you do desktop zoom in windows to see that video fullscreen where the website prefers to surround it by ads? Or how do I control a window transparency with a key plus the mouse wheel, so that I can see the window behind it too? Is it possible at all to choose which windows remain 'always on top' or 'always on bottom'? Oh, and what shady buggy shareware do I need to get multiple desktops, and why can't I assign my own keyboard shortcuts to switch around them? Why can't I run a program on one computer and let it display on another?
When I start a big program that takes a couple of seconds to start, and I go to the 'start' menu to start another program before the first one opens, then why does windows think it's a good idea to suddenly remove the menu where I'm trying to lookup that other program, just because the first program got far enough to open its first window?
Why, after logging in, when it looks on the screen that the computer is ready for me, does the mouse pointer still blink/flash and not let me actually do usefull things while the only thing happening is the harddrive light being on and the junk bar on the bottom getting larger and larger.
Why does every program inform me in a different way that it has an update, or wants to check online for updates, and why do I need to reboot that often for that?
What is 'fast web search', why does it hyjack my browser and make everything slower and how did it get in there, and how do I get rid of it? (repeat for dozens more spyware/adware).
What is an adware scanner anyway? And why do I still need a virus scanner band-aid in the 21st century? Shouldn't that OS problem be actually solved by now?
Why did my webcam suddenly stop working after a windows update, and why do the Microsoft help pages do nothing more than ask me if their advice helped, instead of actually helping?
Why can't I print a photo on my HP printer with the software that came with windows without it complaining about wrong paper size, unless I download and install a program like irfanview for that?
Staring at 'Configuring updates Step 1 of 3' instead of letting me do what I need to do...
And why does the 'home' version of windows not have simple effects such as a nice 3d flip/cover switcher?
None of the above problems or limitations with Gnome nor KDE...
Maybe the windows ui was grey in 2002 and has candy colors today, it still blows, that's all.