Sometimes Things Just Don’t Work: Announcing Ubuntu’s New Theme: “Pile of Crap”
First, a little history: Ubuntu 8.04 (the current release) was supposed to have an all new theme, since it is an LTS release. Unfortunately, that got delayed until 8.10, due out in October. Now, in the month of October and past the artwork deadline, what we have is definitely not an all new theme.
Phoronix has recently posted some screenshots from the daily live cd. Here is a comparison of what the next version of Ubuntu looks like next to the desktop background for Fedora 10, the upcoming version of Fedora.
The comparison is almost laugh-out-loud funny.
It is extremely hard to judge artwork, since one man’s pile of crap may be another man’s masterpiece. The problem is that, when everyone already says your orange theme looks like a pile of crap, don’t actually use a pile of crap as your next background!
I think that the lesson here may be in how each distribution handled their art process. Ubuntu never really had any organization, as far as I can tell. Fedora, on the other hand, had a very structured process with deadlines and a vote at the end. I don’t really care what you think of those methods in theory, just look at the results.
Now I understand that Ubuntu could suddenly come out with something better out of thin air and that Fedora might decide to color the Solar theme brown and replace the sun with a pile of dog crap, but I think there is a clear winner and loser here, at least as far as art goes. Hopefully the next release of Ubuntu will go better and/or something will happen between now and Ubuntu 8.10’s release.
October 1st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I’m all for hiring real artists for Ubuntu theme now. Anyone have a link to pitch in $ to?
October 2nd, 2008 at 1:23 am
I’ve got to agree. First impressions make a difference, and Heron is a dog. The two things users notice up front is the UI/theme and font clarity and quality. Mac excels in the former, Windows in the latter.
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:01 am
Agreed. I was actually pretty happy with the default background with Hardy– I thought it was pretty slick, and an improvement since Gusty. However, the current artwork in Intrepid is vague, generic, and definitely leaves something (or, lots of things) to be desired.
Is there any hope of new artwork before the official release?
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
That is a horrible wallpaper… I liked the previous heron wallpaper, I hope they manage to come up with something more like it for their next release.
I’m a fedora user and I feel sorry for all the ubuntu users who’ve waited so long for the promised new theme. Although its easy to change the theme, its nice to have a flashy new default theme once in a while.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:11 am
I like the Heron wallpaper and I’ve had lots of positive comments from people. I usually defend Ubuntu’s orange theme as being very distinctive, but in this case they’ve gone back to a dull brown wallpaper. There are so many better wallpapers out there in the community that still have some brown or orange, yet are exciting and attractive.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Good news! They replaced the default background (as of oct. 10th). I think this is more on par with how things should look.