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

[Thomas Lottmann]

  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. :-)