
Ubuntu 10.04 Appearance Changes vs Ubuntu 9.10 - aweber
http://beginlinux.com/desktop_training/reviews/ubuntu-1004-appearance-changes
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baddox
As a huge fan of Linux, I have to say the modern Apple and Microsoft operating
systems look significantly better.

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y0ghur7_xxx
I agree. I find the new kubuntu with kde 4.4 much nicer.

<http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.4/plasma.php>

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sliverstorm
The engine/mechanics/code in KDE 4.4 are great, but I hate every single KDE
theme. Way too much candy, way too cheesy. I personally kind of wish the two
projects would merge in just the right way.

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sandGorgon
very true - take a look at the Klassik theme combined with Skulpture.

I really wish someone would make a better theme - gnome themes look so much
better.

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jsz0
I think it's a big step backwards. It just doesn't fit. The selling point of
Linux, as a desktop OS, would be its stability, reliability, flexibility, etc.
I don't think using these weird exotic colors in such inconsistent ways sells
those points very well. It looks very amateurish. Of course the point is made
you can change the colors/theme easily but let's face it -- lots of people are
going to look at the screenshots and make huge irrational assumptions based on
them. Something cleaner and more professional looking would capture the
essence of desktop Linux better in my opinion. I've always liked the default
CentOS theme:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Centos41-...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Centos41-desktop-
en.jpg)

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kentosi
But you could also argue it the other way.

Staying with a stereotypical light gray desktop theme is easy and doesn't
distinguish it from anything else out there. Mac and windows both made bold
decisions with their UI, not all of which may have appealed to a lot ot people
(remember "pinestripes" on mac? remember the cartoonish look of XP?).

While I do see this theme as slightly unual (in that it's a "dark" theme), I
do applaud them for taking a risk.

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joshfinnie
For as much complaints that people had for this x button being on the wrong
side, I have to say that I am really impressed with the growth between these
two releases.

I understand where Ubuntu was when it came up with the brown design, but they
hit a cord with the linux community and realized that they outgrew what they
originally set out to do. I think the design shown in 10.04 really shows that
understanding.

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andrewvc
Agreed, I personally moved the window controls back, but otherwise 10.04 is a
huge step forward.

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daleharvey
I installed the beta a few days ago, while it isnt an overnight, omg this is
better than osx, it certainly is a big improvement.

the default menu bar is incredibly nice, very similiar to osx, and glad to see
the new weather icons that have a great finish (the old ones were so bad they
were often confused as a bug)

The rest of the changes arent that significant, the new buttons and scrollbars
are nicer but arent a huge improvement. I quite like the toolbar text, dark
themes have always been my preference.

nautilus is still godawful, I am not a particularly huge fan of finder but
nautilus does obviously lack here.

but I did take the time out to try xmonad and I am loving it -
<http://junk.arandomurl.com/xmonad.png> , ill probably write it up soon.

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cabalamat
The big question for me is: if I upgrade to 10.04, will it by default
overwrite my colour scheme and other things I've set up on my desktop?

Because it took me time to set up the colours / fonts / effects / etc the way
I like them, and I'm buggered if I'm going to let some arrogant bastard tell
me I have to either (i) have my desktop they way he wants it not the way I
want it, or (ii) re-do all that work.

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igorgue
Nop, I did that and it will keep all your changes... you'll just notice the
improvements over the notifications area.

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sant0sk1
Looks to me like an unfortunate step sideways in usability. Hopefully I'll be
proven wrong when I try it myself.

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adnam
Are you referring to the positioning of the window control icons?

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pge
It's much more important to me to be able to change the resolution on my
monitor (impossible to do anything other than 480x640 on 9.10) than what color
the default theme is. What I mean to say is that for Ubuntu to displace
Windows in any measurable amount, the things that users expect to work have to
work. While I am happy to edit my xorg.conf file because ubuntu doesn't
recognize certain graphics card/monitor combinations, my mother would not. My
office laptop was recently upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. The
background colors and overall theme changed. After a few days, I didn't notice
it any more, nor was there a HN post about the color scheme change. What I did
notice was that offline folders worked a lot better than with XP. Those are
the changes that actually make a difference to users. Users adapt to different
themes and visuals pretty quickly. Ubuntu has made huge strides in desktop
linux usability, but Canonical needs to continue to focus on ironing out the
last remaining kinks so it "just works."

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kilian
While I really like what they're doing design-wise in ubuntu, the second
screenshot makes me kind of sad. I really think they should strive for less
administration applications, instead of adding more.

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krainboltgreene
All the ones showing are the ones that show up in a default 9.04. The 9.04
example, for some reason, has hidden a few.

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kunley
Yeah well the more important thing seems to be that they changed gnome-over-
compiz setting to gnome 3.0 w/ gnome-shell, which means the compositing window
manager is now part of the gnome. While some ideas in gnome-shell are quite
cool (though obtainable in gnome 2.x as 3rd party stuff like gnome-do
project), the stability on some GPU hw/firmware/driver configurations may be
sucky.

And if you care about your current gnome2+compiz configuration, it will be
most probably messed by upgrading.

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neovive
The nice thing about Ubuntu/Gnome is how easy it is to customize. As long as
Emerald Theme Manager still works on 10.04, this release should be great.

I also prefer the window buttons on the right and it's good to know that we
have a choice. On my MacBook I just have to accept it as is.

One thing I would love to see from Ubuntu is clean fonts working out of the
box like Windows and Mac. I think that would be game changer for desktop
Linux.

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carussell
_One thing I would love to see from Ubuntu is clean fonts working out of the
box_

Sounds like a matter of difference in personal preference. I'm pretty sure
that the way fonts look out of the box is intentional, not a deficiency for
which devs are actively seeking a solution.

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adnam
I've noticed the window manager under Lucid is much more responsive. I'm not
sure if that's just me though, because I'm unfortunately damned with SiS
graphics drivers, and I had to update those manually.

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iamdave
Still using those ugly orange folders, though. Hrm.

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Tichy
Will they ever get rid of the dual task bars (or panels or what they are
called)?

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carussell
They're panels. There's one task bar (window list) on the bottom panel by
default. And you can get rid of them now if you want. I'm reading comments
like above mentioning how Linux Mint's look is aesthetically pleasing. Really?
It's almost all GNOME. Why discuss a whole change of distro to get a different
theme/look? Just change the theme.

It's not even like you're downloading third party apps or doing registry
tweaks/resource hacks on Windows 10 years ago. Context menu→"Delete this
panel". It's less of a hassle than managing your desktop icons. It's just like
making sure Firefox's "Always show the tab bar" preference is set to the value
you want it to be.

More broadly, it seems like any level of hullaballoo about Ubuntu's default
theme is too much. Who actually sticks with the default theme?

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Tichy
I usually stick with the default theme, except for reconfiguring the panels.
Why change the default theme? Last time changing themes excited me was when I
had an Amiga 500.

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carussell
There's hardly excitement from me. My choices are mostly functional; I think
skinning culture is kind of silly (e.g., especially so with the hype about
Mozilla Personas). There are things that I _could_ do to make things look nice
or gimmicky, but I'm definitely happy to do without for functional gains, and
I do.

Here's the end result of my "theming": <http://i42.tinypic.com/2r5b0pi.jpg>

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Tichy
Is it easy to exchange themes? I might be bothered to theme if there is an
easy way to set the theme on every computer I use. I suppose some productivity
enhancements are possible, I just never took the time.

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carussell
System → Preferences → Appearance to tweak installed themes and create new
ones. There's a link there to get more, but there's also <http://gnome-
look.org>. The ones from gnome.org are easier to install, because they send
the "Content-Type: application/x-gnome-theme-package" header, while gnome-
look.org just does plain ol' gzipped tarballs. (Actually gzip vs. bzip vs. raw
tarballs might be up to the uploader, I don't know.) You can also save the
theme packages, and drag and drop them in the appearance preferences window.

Also, terminology. I think "theme" refers to a packaged deal, which can
include window borders, gtk controls, icons, colors, desktop background, maybe
more. So the frustrating thing you might find is that you see a theme you
like, but it changes your colors and gtk controls, and uses an incomplete icon
set, when really all you wanted was the window borders. If you install it, you
can do something like revert back to the default Ubuntu theme, click
"Customize", and change the window border to the one installed by the theme.
This is is probably easier than trying to customize the new theme itself,
especially since if you're used to the Ubuntu theme, you'll probably find that
your desired look has more in common with it than the new one you just
downloaded.

My enhancements are pretty low key. I mute the colors, scale down the font
size to 9 to make more use of screen space, and use the SlicknesS window
border, which has a smaller footprint than the Human window border.

Something else that's mildly frustrating is that the window borders' colors
have almost (completely?) nothing to do with the color scheme. If you think,
"Oh I like this, but I'm going to get rid of the insane colors.", you're
probably out of luck.

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barnaby
I totally can't wait! 7 days left!

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adnam
I already upgraded, and I'm quite pleased with the changes. Unfortunately, the
new default theme is slightly buggy; for example, when you open gvim from a
terminal, you get various error messages show up which are to do with the
window manager. I swicthed back to the "Human" theme, and the error messages
disappeared.

