Ubuntu Gets a New Visual Identity 683
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."
Coral link to this: (Score:3, Informative)
Looks like the server's starting to buckle under the Slashdot Effect!
Here is the CORAL link to the page with screenshots:
http://www.jonobacon.org.nyud.net/2010/03/03/refreshing-the-ubuntu-brand/ [nyud.net]
Re:Window control buttons on the left? Bad. (Score:3, Informative)
You can close (and minimise, maximise, etc) windows by right clicking on the title bar or even the task bar's button corresponding to that window. This is consistent in KDE and several other window managers.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dear Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 7 has many improvements over Vista.
I love the new window dragging features. Dragging a window to the top maximizes. Dragging to the side takes up half the screen. Dragging the top or bottom bar makes it go full-vertical. Windows Key + Arrow Keys also do those actions (as well as Restore/Minimize). Ctrl + Windows Key + Arrow Keys move windows across monitors.
Pinned taskbar icons remind me of the OS X dock, both of which keep everything ordered and uncluttered. Windows Key + Number 1 key will open a new window for the first taskbar icon, number 2 key for the second taskbar icon, and so on. Jump lists give you quick access to common tasks.
Just the fact that the taskbar buttons can be icon-only (square) means I can dock it on the left of the screen without it being difficult to use. (Again, like the OS X dock... that's how I've run both OS's for quite a while.)
Other than the steps backwards they took with Vista that are still around (like some of the layers of control panel/networking/etc. you have to go through to get anywhere), I generally have nothing but positive to say about the direction Microsoft went with the Windows 7 UI.
Re:Dear Ubuntu (Score:4, Informative)
There's no one forcing you to use Gnome, the default theme or any flavor of Ubuntu; so if you don't like the default Ubuntu which is in your words for "drooling idiots," you are more than free to use one of the 400 Linux distros, one of the ~10 top DEs or the thousands of themes out there.
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Informative)
See this is why I use Xubuntu, the default theme is nice. Also XFCE is better than Gnome, IMHO.
Re:Anonymous (Score:3, Informative)
Dust theme is the way to go.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/DustTheme [ubuntu.com]
Re:Bad window frame button choice (Score:5, Informative)
what is 'infinite-dimension' effect?
I was referring to the fact that a GUI element on the edge (or corner) of a screen has, in effect, infinite size in the given dimension by virtue of the fact that the cursor cannot leave the screen, and thus, any overshot of the cursor in that direction will still leave the cursor over the GUI element.
I believe it's most commonly referenced as an implication of Fitts' Law [wikipedia.org]
Obviously, this is only true when the window is maximised (something I forgot to mention in my original post).
Re:About Time (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Errh, a 3rd server anyone? (Score:1, Informative)
Here you go:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand
Re:Excuse me? (Score:3, Informative)
The UPS trucks are painted "Pullman Brown". This is a paint color originally selected by the company that made the Pullman railroad cars.
It was selected after considerable research: It is the color that can get the most road dirt on it before it LOOKS dirty. This lets them use a long interval between washings, saving money on cleaning while still having equipment that looks decent. When you have a large number of rail cars - or delivery trucks - it costs a LOT to keep them clean-looking. So savings on cleaning adds up fast.
(When my wife or I purchase an offroad vehicle we try to find one with a paint color close to Pullman Brown, for the same reason. My wife's Cheroke is such a color - though a tad redish. My Ford F-150 4x4 is white - which {surprisingly} also can go a long time without washing or looking bad in the kind of road and offroad dust it encounters - though mud looks bad right away and needs a hose-down. Shades of FedEx - literally.)
Re:Window control buttons on the left? Bad. (Score:2, Informative)
You can drag a window in most window managers by pressing alt down and left-button-dragging the window from anywhere in the window. No need to hunt for the title bar.
Along with alt+right-click-draggin to resize, It's one of the biggest features I miss on a windows (and mac) box.
Re:Dear Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
Can you explain this please? As far as I can tell dragging to the top makes it full-screen and dragging to the bottom does nothing special.
Don't drag the window title - drag its edge (either top or bottom one).
Re:Bad window frame button choice (Score:4, Informative)
Another good example is the window close button in Windows. If you maximize a window in either Vista or 7, you'll see that, visually, the close button ends slightly before the edge of the screen. However, if you put the mouse cursor in top right corner - where, visually, it shouldn't hit Close. In practice, though, you'll see that Close is in fact highlighted, to conform to Fitt's law. If I remember correctly, this is actually a very old thing, and has been there since Win95 or somewhere around that.
Same thing goes for Start button - again, it's visually 2-3px off the corner, but nonetheless a click in the corner will be detected as a hit. IIRC, they actually broke that in Vista, and 7 fixed that.
Re:Dear Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Dear Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
I truely hate that resize function, if I move a windows out of the way suddenly windows decides to resize it in some direction losing the "back to resize" functionality I expect from the clickies in the top right corner.
Re:About Time (Score:2, Informative)
The logo typeface needs to be explained (Score:2, Informative)
It appears to be an edited rip of Aakash Soneri [aakashsoneri.com]'s Sone [myfonts.com]. (A comparison [tinypic.com]: Sone is teal, the new logo face is wine, where it overlaps is cobalt blue.) The changes appear to be as insubstantial as adding a slant to ascenders and shifting the baselines of some of the glyphs.
If Canonical modified Sone, didn't license it, and they start freely distributing it ("our global community will still maintain access to the resources needed to construct logos that use the branding" - so either the modified glyphs for the logo as svg, or the modified font itself), that's a dick move.
And if they did license it, then why is an open-source project licensing commercial fonts and calling it a reflection of the project?
Maybe it's a placeholder - who knows? Canonical doesn't say anything about the font's origin or license in the linked documentation, nor does Canonical's Jono Bacon [jonobacon.org] in his nearly identical announcement.
But it is disappointing to see an open source project - whose community already made LGPL-licensed [betatype.com] typefaces [ubuntu.com] for their current logo - make and publicize such a half-assed effort, even in a preliminary stage, without any explanation on the decision.
When you say, as an organization based on community contribution:
And you follow that with a logo that's based on a commercial typeface, you're reneging on that intent in at least one of two ways:
Even if Sone was correctly licensed, and Canonical got permission to modify it for their logo and future redistribution, why not get it from the community?
And if it wasn't licensed correctly, then is Ubuntu following the lead of Arial and just ripping things off in a legal but unethical manner when they can't find what they want in a convenient license?
(And maybe it's a coincidence - a really bad coincidence that still should be fixed. Without any explanation, nobody can tell.)
Choose AND change the GUI (Score:3, Informative)
When you get away from Windows, you can not only choose the UI (bash, ksh, zsh, etc) or GUI [toastytech.com], but also change it. Before Microsoft became such a problem, it was the norm for people to not just tweak but show off their customizations. I know that most people really piss and moan about tweaking the defaults, but it is possible. The knowledge is gone from the mainstream, but the functionality is still there.
Whether you use KDE, CDE, Xfce, or GNOME you can choose not just the theme (appearance) but also the behavior. That goes especially for the window manager [xwinman.org]. You can do more with the window manager than deciding to have jiggly jello effects or not. When you talk about the GUI on a Linux, Solaris or BSD distro you're usually conflating about three things : the desktop environment, the window manager, and the settings for those two. It's not even necessary to run a full desktop, you can get by quite handily with just a window manager. Check out Enlightenment, OpenBox, Scrotwm,
Of course the desktop environment and window manager will come with default settings but those can be changed. If an in-your-face example is needed for just how much these can be configure to meet your needs install plain vanilla FVWM and give it a try. Then after that, install FVWM-crystal theme. Night and day different is there.
Re:Dear Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
KDE doesn't look/behave like Windows either.
Yes, but unfortunately, they chose to take tons of horribly bad concepts from Windows. Down to little things. It’s only a surprise that there is no Clippy in KOffice (but there is something like it in OpenOffice).
Don’t get me wrong, I really like KDE. And I am not only saying this for KDE, but for Gnome and XFCE too.
Examples where it’s like windows (XP mostly):
Now of course OS X and others have those things too. But that’s the point!. Everybody is imitating everybody else. (Back then it was Xerox -> MacOS -> Windows -> others.)
And nobody is actually thinking if this is really the best solution we can come up with after all these years. (In is not. Not even remotely. Actually it’s really slowing us down and an annoying convoluted mess. I know because I’m working on it right now.)
That’s why I really applaud the KDE team, for finally working on the semantic desktop, and a general concept for desktop modules. Of course it’s what I thought up years ago, and I’m way beyond it. (No, I’m not special. I just took the time and thought outside the box. A job that anyone of us can do.) But at least it’s way better than any idea we had before.
Link to the Ubuntu Brand page (Score:3, Informative)
Or you can go direct to the actual Ubuntu Brand [ubuntu.com] page and see the new screenshots as they were meant to be viewed, i.e. larger.
NSFW links above (n/t) (Score:1, Informative)
NSFW links above (n/t)
mildly NSFW links above (Score:3, Informative)
I suspect the linked images are only mildly NSFW, even by prim North American standards. The calendar wallpapers are nudes, but not showing the naughty bits, while the girl with body paint is wearing pants as well as paints.