Comedy: On Art and, Specifically, Fedora Art Concepts
Warning: The following post contains comedy. Some people are allergic to it. Symptoms include posting angry comments.
It is interesting to look at the differences in the styles of different distributions. This is often best represented in looking at the art proposals for upcoming versions of various distributions. For example, a typical theme proposal for Fedora looks something like this:
“I was laying in my hammock one night gazing up at the infinite stars when suddenly an idea occurred to me. Gazing out at the vastness of the stars, it seemed to be that those stars perfectly represented Fedora, since Fedora 9 was called “Sulfur” and there has got to be some sulfur out there somewhere.”
A typical Ubuntu art submission, on the other hand, looks more like this:
“ubuntu rulz!!! see my awesum desktop: ubuntu should totally look like dis”
In contrast to both of these styles, OpenSuSe selects its artwork based an automatic algorithm that picks the wallpaper with the most green in it. Given a tie, which happens quite a lot, another script kicks in and posts the hex codes for the most used shade of green in each wallpaper. OpenSuSe contributors then vote on their favorite color (of green.)
I don’t even want to know what Gentoo’s process looks like.
Anyway, today I want to discuss some of the best Fedora art submissions judged, appropriately enough, not by the art but by the concept. I will even go so far as to rank them. First place goes to…
- Dice - To quote directly from the excellent concept description, “dice like a symbol of the variability.” I could not possibly agree more. In fact, I believe that Fedora should change its slogan to “Fedora. It’s just a crap shoot.”
- Eden - The Eden theme goes back to the fundamental parts of a flowering tree, each representing a part of Fedora. I believe that placing a big tree on the desktop of many young and incompetent Fedora users would help remind them that they must remember to water their keyboards at least once a week. Every time I see another Fedora user complain about system problems on some forum, I sigh and prepare to repost my standard response - “Dear Generic Fedora User. You forgot to water your keyboard, you idiot. Have a nice day.”
- Solar - The author of this theme recognizes the simple truth that many miss: the only truly prefect system in the whole universe is the solar system. Based on this knowledge, it is easy to see how Fedora should strive to be as perfect as the solar system its self. The analogy fits perfectly! My only question is: if the sun is the kernel, what is space junk?
August 8th, 2008 at 1:56 am
No, you got it all wrong: the Eden tree is the proof that us, Fedora Art guys, are a bunch of bearded tree-hugers.
/me, disappointed that my Gears concept didn’t made your top 3.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:03 am
What would RedHat’s theme proposal be?
-”Boring grey and blue!”
August 8th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Gentoo’s wallpaper is generated by determining the optimum wallpaper for each user’s specific hardware. Coincidentally, it has been known to take several hours to appear.
August 8th, 2008 at 10:02 am
August 8th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I think Gentoo’s art style is just ’screw it’ and then ship the upstream defaults, possibly branding a ‘G’ green/purple somewhere if the package maintainer feels like it.
Personally prefer the Ubuntu system since you get something that looks good rather than being based on some ideals.
Desktops are supposed to be functional and look good not imply lofty philosophical thoughts, not that “Sulfur” really did that, firstly I thought Fedora 9’s style was ‘waves’ or ‘liquid’ based on the boot screen and wallpaper, it wasn’t untill I read the release name and saw some of the yellow rocks (that only seem to be on the website art not in the distro at all and look more like yellow crystals or gold rather than actual sulfur which is more of a boring browny dull orangy yellow colour).
Also Sulfur tends to make me think of the smell of rotten eggs…
Personally I would be happy with whatever in Fedora 10 provided they get rid of those horrible Cyan window borders by default.
Solar seems like my favourite from the list, but then you have to consider the context, its an Operating System, kinda seems too similar to Sun/Solaris.
August 8th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
You forgot the Slackware process: Include whatever came with the upstream package.
As it should be, of course.
“My only question is: if the sun is the kernel, what is space junk?”
Let’s see: Planets would have to be X…dominant life forms on the planets would have to be window managers…political or ethnic groups would have to be programs…the space program of a political group would probably be most akin to a browser, so space junk would be…blogs.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
nicu - Actually, you should be happy your theme did not make the list. That means I could not figure out how to make fun of it.
August 8th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Solar looks very promising.
August 8th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
The three best looking distros are (in order):
Suse
PCLinuxOS & Fedora (tie)
Suse is simply in a class all by itself, as far as artwork. Some distros are just plain ugly, like Ubuntu, and some distros look like the artwork is run by a bunch of assembly programmers. Then there are some distros that simply have no direction, art-wise, at all.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
The last Solar image reminds me of a Rotavirus.
August 9th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Nice article. Keep it up.
August 9th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
@Type3Singularity
“Gentoo just bundles the defaults”
Which defaults? (^-^) Gentoo has defaults? Where?
I mean the default GUI in a clean Gentoo install is a CLI. After that it’s up to you. Have you ever tried to tell a Gentoo users how their system should be?
They’re only going to complain that it’s not how they want it & change it immediately anyway. That’s why they’re using Gentoo. What self respecting Linux user keeps the default config anyway?
August 12th, 2008 at 9:05 am
“Personally prefer the Ubuntu system since you get something that looks good rather than being based on some ideals.”
looks good = diarrhea brown and savana all around?
August 12th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Well, I’ve known some people who leave everything as is and then ask me why does my desktop look so strange… To which I’m almost bound to aggressively answer “Me: Gentoo, You: Ubuntu”… haha
No, really, very funny post… And I’d say Gentoo designs its artwork according to which use flags are on. And this if and only if the artwork isn’t masked.
And perhaps there’s some Suse renegade working at Fedora who wrote similar scripts to choose shades of blue