[Mageia-discuss] On the icons, desktop themes and related stuff

Fri Sep 24 18:41:13 CEST 2010

  Returning on the OS's default theming and colors, I think there are 
+only a few things to change.
+
+Back when Mandrake was created in 1998, the chosen color was blue to 
+reflect the sky. The sky not only shows up stars during the night, far 
+from cities and inhabited places, but also has various colorations of 
+blue that we can use.
+
+I insist on the fact that Mageia needs to save and show in a very 
+visible way it's identity as it should have always been : a good, 
+reliable and easy alternative to the Windows and Mac OS operating 
+systems. I therefore think :
+
+- We keep "Blue" as the default "flagship" color for the official 
+artwork and design, with the possibility of using several nuances of blue.
+- The reference to the sky can give inspiration to the designers who may 
+want to place from magic and beauty in their artwork.
+- We definitely need a refreshing theme for Ia Ora. That's not high 
+priority though as we need that the system works well before that. A 
+theme for both GTK and QT is also not easy to do so we need to take the 
+time to carefully design a new fresh one, with the same fine and 
+professional touch a lot of people do notice and appreciate. Currently, 
+I'd say "That'll do" for Ia Ora in the meantime. The most important 
+thing is to get the OS working really well. Artwork has to come second, 
+especially if there is a lot of work to be done behind.
+- For GTK based environments and applications, I suggest that Mageia use 
+the Gnome-Brave icon set by default. It's blue color and its very neat 
+finishing makes it a modern icon theme, compliant with the light angle 
+usually used on Gnome and other environments. Oxygen does not fit good 
+on GTK at all.
+- Oxygen theme is just fine for KDE and QT, it complies wonderfully to 
+the artwork color and reference. If people have a real problem with the 
+trash can, considering the more important work that needs to be done on 
+Mageia in overall, please talk and convince the artists that made the 
+Oxygen theme to improve it. But there is much more important things to 
+do than to improve a trashcan icon, especially when very subjective 
+observations are made.
+
+People might think we're close to Fedora's artwork and design : well, 
+Mandrake's color theme and the reference to the sky is dated from before 
+the Fedora era and we have the right to keep it.
+
+I see no valid reason to change the artwork fundamentals as it is part 
+of the identity and as Mageia continues with the exact same aim as 
+Mandrake and Mandriva. However, I do think that Mandriva could have done 
+much better on the eye candy side (here, I also speak about the 
+Drakxtools's GUI who do sometimes miss a neat organization and 
+appearance) and I think that Mageia will have to be eye candy to seduce 
+and make people feel at home, even with the default settings.
+
+So basically, I think it's better to keep the essentials and consolidate 
+the artwork by improving what needs to be improved, no useless changes. 
+Mandriva Linux was already  often seen as a pretty system after all. :-)
+