Debian Ciel -- My Theme Proposal for Squeeze

[MeanDean]

holy crap....you got to be joking...

[canci]

holy crap....you got to be joking...

Please expand... (this should be interesting... ).

[debil]

holy crap....you got to be joking...

Took the words right out of my mouth...

[MeanDean]

might as well went for this one



I wonder if it is too late to do a 'discreet variant' of the spacefun theme.

[nadir]

Now i am very confused. What i did understand:
The next theme will be spacefun. Right?
Who the heck did vote for that?
Not that it does look like old-century only, it is ugly as can be...

It was there from the beginning, but it thought it was by a child. Kind of sad and funny....(sad: it hurts to tell someone: "sorry, pal, but what you did is crap. We won't even consider that.").

You oughta be kidding. I hope i did misunderstand that.
If not i gotta go old-stable.

[dejan034]

Took the words right out of my mouth...

+1

[llivv]

So yous guys voted for the "Huge Space Balls" theme?
I wonder how long even yous guys will keep that theme on your desktops....

I have ciel background in KDE and fluxbox blackbox and I have lipstick in a blackbox/fluxbox style
I'm hoping to get around to loading lisp onto stumpwm for that authentic look...
I've posted huge space balls before in "What's your desktip look like" .... I'm still wondering if anyone liked it......
I have a minty fresh photo of Veronica Zemanova (debian swirl like curl in her hair) that floats wonderfully within the clouds of ciel
But I'm still searching for that elusive theme that will be my definitive default forever......
Hummm what would I suggest for the Debian theme???
The fuglier the better?
maybe that would help slow the migration over the ubantu to debian bridge...

[canci]

I think that themes aren't that important in Debian, otherwise more people would have voted.
Debian is not the 1-click distro solution -- anyone using it expects to fiddle around with it.
Also, most of us have their themes in their home folder, which lets them survive even when
distro hopping.

Debian lives off its own merits -- it's stable, it's fast. I've rarely heard people ranting about
Debian's looks in reviews.

As for why I voted SpaceFun -- well, I like the wallpaper, and only that. The rest (like the splash screen)
looks really Commodore 64 to me. Lisp might technically be better, but I am no fan of that darker
Fedora-style blue. It makes me think of tooth paste (so do Fedora and Mandriva actually).
They also make me think of 2003, of KaZaA and Windows 98. Dunno why. The former version of
the brown wires looks cool, but I just don't like that many details as my background. It's too intrusive.
It looks really cool on the CDs though.

Sorry to say that, but Nightly is just plain ugly for me. So in a way, I'm glad that SpaceFun has won
over the other 2. Also, SpaceFun's wallpaper looks very cool with Shiki-Brave and the Gnome Brave
icons, all of which are in default Debian and don't require you to compile new stuff.

[debil]

I think that themes aren't that important in Debian, otherwise more people would have voted.
Debian is not the 1-click distro solution -- anyone using it expects to fiddle around with it.

+1. This is the reason I didn't comment or vote in the first place.

Anyway, I took another look at the contenders.

• Nightly - Don't like the colors. Subject-matter would've allowed for much more interesting outcome. Also, the city, the moons and binoculars (sic) were a bit ugly. Or bugly.
  
  Space Fun - Wow, is this the stuff that covers the walls of a 10-year-old geek-to-come's room while he's playing with his "Little Scientist Kit"? Subsequent viewings don't make a difference: I'm speechless.
  
  Ciel - Most all-around or neutral (professional looking) of the contenders. Misty or blurry look is nice. Not a big fan of the type of red in the logo though. The earlier version without the "cloud lining" was better.
  
  Lisp Machine - Nice, but in parts only. The earlier versions of desktop background images were a bit too detailed as canci pointed out as well. The image works much better in the final background but why is it blue of all colors? And not a very nice tint of blue either...

From these, I couldn't pick a favorite since no contender plucked the syrupy strings of my heart gently enough. I would've combined the good parts from Ciel and Lisp Machine into a Ciel Machine of sorts, since Nightly and Space Fun were pretty much out of the question for me.

But well, my machines roll in the Sid and Testing wagon anyway so this is a no-issue personally.

[canci]

Ciel - Most all-around or neutral (professional looking) of the contenders. Misty or blurry look is nice. Not a big fan of the type of red in the logo though. The earlier version without the "cloud lining" was better.

...

Lisp Machine - Nice, but in parts only. The earlier versions of desktop background images were a bit too detailed as canci pointed out as well. The image works much better in the final background but why is it blue of all colors? And not a very nice tint of blue either...[/list]

As for Ciel, since the last version, the grey version is back again and is called Ciel Discrete (cf. this image. )

Ulrich, the creator of Lisp, wanted to adjust Lisp to the Clearlooks default theme (as well as the Oxygen theme in KDE which is equally blue dominated). So he created a new version. Theme changes were out of the question (except for GDM/KDM/SLiM), because they were suggested post freeze.

[debil]

Thanks for the info.

[MeanDean]

I think that themes aren't that important in Debian, otherwise more people would have voted.

+1 for me, if I no likey I change it so it isn't important to me. But I would of thought it would of been a bit more important to have a very simple, neutral, universal default theme.

I've rarely heard people ranting about Debian's looks in reviews.

I bet you will hear it now. The only thing missing is zorg and buzz battling it out.

First and foremost, spacefun looks like a kids theme.
Second, it is way to busy. Too many elements. Too much going on.
I prefer my simplified version of the wallpaper
I almost like the star swirl but I never did feel like it 'fit' so it had to go. If I remove the planet and spaceship and then remove the color from the default spacefun wallpaper and have black/grey/white then spacefun looks better to me.

but oh well....whatever...

[nadir]

For me the theme is important.
"simple and neutral" sounds good to me.
ridiculous sounds not good to me. ugly neither.

I bet you will hear it now

Yup. The ones who didn't like http://www.debian.org will be like

[beavenburt]

That really is a crap theme. But then who gives a damn, themes are easily changed. Also on the plus side, a crap default theme like that may well keep the riff raff out.

[canci]

I have abandoned work on Debian Ciel. It is public domain, except for certain parts which are GPL.
I will also cease contributing and working together with the Debian Desktop mailing list, as the
consensus seems to be that people who do not contribute should have no right to vote on
non-technical things such as theme creation. This leads me to believe that a more widespread
vote was not favoured by some of the people on the mailing list and was therefore deliberately
not properly announced. Here is the discussion which led to my decision:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/ ... 00108.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/ ... 00110.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/ ... 00111.html
... (and possible follow-ups).

I seriously find it rather bold of the people involved to suggest that everyone who does not
contribute is automatically lazy and should not have a right to vote. What if a train cut off my
hands and I was unable to use Inkscape properly? Personally, I believe that everyone is capable
of voting for a theme -- it is not a matter like, say, how gcc is compiled or a similar technical issue.

Thank you for your feedback and support!

[omenest]

I couldn't believe my eyes when my system booted after this "upgrade" to desktop-base 6.0.0. package.
Theme that won the contest is absolutely revolting. As already said by other members of this community: 'What were you thinking?!'

I downgraded to 5.0.6 desktop-base and made sure to:

Code: Select all

echo "desktop-base hold" | dpkg --set-selections

Good riddance, kiddie theme!

[cynwulf]

I don't have desktop-base installed so I've missed out on that.

[canci]

It's still in Sid (lol, almost wrote Squid. That's when you mix packages, right? ).

Here is some "consensus" from the Debian mailing list about the decision making process:

I've been following the discussion on -desktop and, FWIW, I thank you
for having established a decision process. More generally, I thank the
-desktop team for having worked on the topic, a topic to which nobody
was paying attention to even if it was self-evident that time was
ticking out.

Let's not forget that do-ocracy is the default decision making device in
Debian: who does the work, gets to decide. A nice feature of do-ocracy
is that it is very easy to get an opportunity to decide: just do the
work

So please, go ahead in implementing your decision, and thanks for that.

> To all people criticizing the decision-making process, feel free to be
> here on time for Wheezy, participate in theme making, discussion,
> packaging, whatever, I really think we need sensible input on this.

I'm confident that everybody which is now unhappy on how the decision
has been made will be there for Wheezy, helping out -desktop starting
from day 1 of the development cycle. Of course input from everyone is
welcome also on how similar matters should be decided *in the future*,
but I believe comments should be better postponed past Squeeze release,
when we will all be way more relaxed and in planning mode.

Cheers.

So yes, that basically means if you're born without hands or are in bloody
pain because you have cancer and cannot contribute to theme creation,
then no1 gives a rat's behind what you think about it. Neat, eh?
Debian is a do-ocracy...

[omenest]

It's still in Sid (lol, almost wrote Squid. That's when you mix packages, right? ).

Here is some "consensus" from the Debian mailing list about the decision making process:

I've been following the discussion on -desktop and, FWIW, I thank you
for having established a decision process. More generally, I thank the
-desktop team for having worked on the topic, a topic to which nobody
was paying attention to even if it was self-evident that time was
ticking out.

Let's not forget that do-ocracy is the default decision making device in
Debian: who does the work, gets to decide. A nice feature of do-ocracy
is that it is very easy to get an opportunity to decide: just do the
work

So please, go ahead in implementing your decision, and thanks for that.

> To all people criticizing the decision-making process, feel free to be
> here on time for Wheezy, participate in theme making, discussion,
> packaging, whatever, I really think we need sensible input on this.

I'm confident that everybody which is now unhappy on how the decision
has been made will be there for Wheezy, helping out -desktop starting
from day 1 of the development cycle. Of course input from everyone is
welcome also on how similar matters should be decided *in the future*,
but I believe comments should be better postponed past Squeeze release,
when we will all be way more relaxed and in planning mode.

Cheers.

So yes, that basically means if you're born without hands or are in bloody
pain because you have cancer and cannot contribute to theme creation,
then no1 gives a rat's behind what you think about it. Neat, eh?
Debian is a do-ocracy...

Success of the open source phenomena was based on the bazaar principles: work of what started as a small base of hackers received tremendous feedback from everybody that got in contact with the code these hackers produced. This feedback enabled prompt responses, bug fixes, new features added and a vast increase of base programmers that did the work on FOSS projects, making it thrive in the realm of world wide web.

In this case, we have a select closed group of individuals that refuses to acknowledge public peer review and instead pats each other on their backs for doing a good job. Meritocracy as a principle might even pass for kernel design (e.g. Linus still calling the shots and directing the general development goals of kernel), but this is artwork we are talking about. For all the practical purposes, this select piece of art will be viewed far more then kernel panic messages, say. Take real-world example: paintings in museums aren't viewed only by artists who painted them. Joe Regular probably never drew anything more complex than tic-tac-toe grid in his life, but he still has every right to go to the museum and voice his opinion about paintings he sees there.

I'm sorry for having to resort to such primitive parallels here, but after seeing the said artwork in action and realizing the merits of 'do-ocracy', this seems like the appropriate approach to reach out to some.

[canci]

I think the parallel to art is only half right. Art can be anything you want. Whether people like it or not,
is their problem. Whether you make it for the masses, or just for yourself, is also your decision.
I see the Debian theme as having 2 functions: 1. the artistic expression and 2. a practical dimension.
Whether you want to respect no. 2, is entirely up to you. But I think it would make sense to ask someone.

Voting on what theme is getting chosen is an entirely different thing and should, whenever possible, be
open to anybody. I understand that there is a horizontal discrimination when it comes to voting on what
scheduler is to be used in the kernel or similar. But everyone has an opinion on art (or art for decorative
purposes, or whatever you might call OS themes). Also, it's not like voting on what colour you like is akin
to assessing Shakespeare.

But what really strikes me here is that they nonchalantly discriminate everyone who actually is not even
able to contribute to themes. I am talking about disabled people, about users who do not know how
to use Inkscape, or do not have the time to go into it. Practically, this more or less discriminated everyone
who was not doing things in the Desktop mailing list. So, if you are only subscribed to the kernel list
(if such a thing exists), then you had little chance of even knowing about the vote? Does it work like that?
And even though you might work on very essential stuff no one can live without, you are left out. Bummer!