Ubuntu changing its look [LWN.net]

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 3, 2010 21:54 UTC (Wed) by kh (guest, #19413) [Link] (6 responses)

I could put up with brown, but purple?!? I usually just ignore default themes because I just don't care that much, but I might actually have to start spending time altering colors.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 3, 2010 22:00 UTC (Wed) by jonas.bonn (subscriber, #47561) [Link] (1 responses)

Haven't you heard? Purple is the new brown.

Not exactly purple

Posted Mar 3, 2010 22:20 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Argh, that horrible aubergine (eggplant) color pops up again!

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 3, 2010 22:26 UTC (Wed) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link] (1 responses)

Purple is not necessarily bad, but the gradient from purple to orange has some really ugly intermediate colors. I think it's better to have those colors strictly separated, and do gradients between something like purple and blue. I created a quick color test, which I think looks decent: http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/1727/colortestw.png

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 3, 2010 22:49 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link]

Purple is not bad at all it was one of Sun's recognition mark for years, say what, decades!

When they initially started with brown, people associated it with dirt, mud and uh some "completey different" things that need not be elaborated upon here. No doubt they want to get away from these associations. Orange would have worked, but their theme ended up being brown, not orange. (Amateur designer's hint: don't have any pixel with a lightness below 128/255 for Orange.)

Now, the first association I had with purple was http://cinie.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/pimp.jpg . In a way, that seems to just _completely fit_ Ubuntu.

Colour choice

Posted Mar 4, 2010 11:04 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

I expected that by now user interfaces would have returned to being mostly black and white, now that every device has a colour display and it's not cool and shiny any more. After all, the document or the web page you're displaying is what needs to capture the user's attention, not the chrome around it.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 13:07 UTC (Thu) by maro (guest, #34315) [Link]

To be fair, all the good colors are already taken.

I think it's good they use different colors. You can recognize a
distribution on thumbnailed screenshots like this:

Red: Red Hat
Green: SuSE
Blue: Fedora
Ripped off Mac OS X interface with l33t fonts collected all over the
internet: Ubuntu

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 3, 2010 22:16 UTC (Wed) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link] (9 responses)

Quite like it, although I really hope they aren't going to move the window control widgets to the left side of each title bar. Why would you want to do that?

Also, it would be great if they fix my pet peeve with rounded corners. Make them look rounded, sure, but make them _behave_ square. Otherwise if you have a non-maximised window in the corner, and you do a Fitts-law slide and close, you end up closing the (maximised) window behind because the click sneaks through the tiny gap left by the rounded corner. <sigh>

Gerv

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 1:06 UTC (Thu) by cowsandmilk (guest, #55475) [Link] (6 responses)

Too many gooks are moving to Apple, so they have to replicate Apple's design decision to put the
close, etc. on the left....

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 12:05 UTC (Thu) by cmsj (guest, #55014) [Link] (4 responses)

too many *what*?!

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 13:51 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link] (2 responses)

I reported the comment with the racial slur to lwn@lwn.net LATE last night.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 14:00 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

I suspect the word was probably not intended to be used as a racial slur (I had to look it up).

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 14:31 UTC (Thu) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]

If it were meant as a racial slur, I would think it would have made more sense. As it is, it looks much more like a typo. This incident reminds me of an old George Carlin bit where he talks about the "7 dirty words you can't say on TV" - none of those, however, were racial slurs.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 14:13 UTC (Thu) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link]

I strongly suspect this is a typo/thinko for "geeks". It would be an enormous non-sequitur for it to be a racial slur on South-East Asians. (I had to look that up too.) Calm down :-)

Gerv

Let's be careful please

Posted Mar 4, 2010 14:10 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

I don't know if this was meant to be offensive or not, but I certainly expect that some readers will take it that way. I believe an apology would be in order, and let's not see any more of this kind of slur, please?

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 19:40 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

As the interfaces keep changing and I have little time to customize every system I work with, I find myself increasingly relying on the keyboard. I hope Alt-F4 would work regardless of the position of the close button.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 19:51 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

Quite like it, although I really hope they aren't going to move the window control widgets to the left side of each title bar.

They will probably be configurable, although I don't know why I would think that, since very little else in Gnome is.

Why would you want to do that?

It makes the Ubuntu desktop look more like OS X and less like Windows, which may create the impression among mainstream users that Ubuntu is a premium brand. (They may have said as much on the branding page, but I didn't read it-- I can't stand that sort of thing. The pictures are nice :)

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 0:39 UTC (Thu) by abadidea (guest, #62082) [Link] (11 responses)

Auuuugh I hate the new logo font! I like the old one, so symmetrical and balanced! This one just looks tipsy!

Yes, I am sure I will eventually forget, just like I've forgotten Mandriva used to be Mandrake, Pidgin used to be Gaim, Google's favicon has gone through a few iterations...

But until it fades in memory, the new font will drive me insane.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 6:55 UTC (Thu) by joseph_mayer (guest, #61137) [Link] (10 responses)

It also looks like a DTL-Prokyon ripoff. That is a expensive
commercial font. One can smell trouble ahead. See:
http://www.dutchtypelibrary.nl/Prokyon_rdrct.html

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 8:22 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

Typefaces are not copyrightable. You can 'rip them off' all you feel like and it's completely and perfectly legal. There is a long history behind of this and it exists for good reason. (The modern concept of 'IP' is just flat-out insane.)

Now the actual scalable font _implementation_, the *.ttf file or whatever, would be copyrightable (for good reasons) (but not bitmap fonts, maybe ironically). As long as you made your own fonts from scratch you'd be fine. You can copy whatever typeface you want, but the actual font is something you'd have to make on your own.

Now all of this is USA law; it varies in other countries. If you want to protect your typefaces in the USA they are patentable. Again for good reason. Good luck getting one though... patent laws for typefaces were established in saner times and thus you actually have to acheive something remarkable to get one, Seeing how typefaces have been around since the dawn of printing presses that is going to be extremely difficult to accomplish. (Entirely unlike software patents.)

IANAL

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 9:09 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

You might want to read

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal_considerations_for_fonts

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 11, 2010 20:05 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

Also consider the case of the Fedora logo: Fedora has got permission to use that typeface for that word and use only.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 13:10 UTC (Thu) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link] (1 responses)

The memepool needs to know the concept of a 'design patent' (U.S.) or design rights (E.U.) for the appearance of an item, not how it works or is constructed. Design rights were created in the UK to to stop people using copyright to stifle a market for similarly-designed items or spare parts. the legislation was created to assist entrepreneurial endeavours. The governing tests for infringement of a design {right,patent} monopoly centre around whether an alleged copy is 'substantially similar'.

Typefaces *are* copyrightable as a creative work and additionally can be protected by design patents (e.g. US design patent D1 is for a typeface) or design rights.

Stating the myth that rules about creative endeavour, invention and reputation which are lumped together under the banner of 'intellectual property' are 'flat-out insane' (sadly) won't stop people using those rules to steal your lunch.

K3n.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 16:53 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Typefaces *are* copyrightable as a creative work and additionally can be protected by design patents (e.g. US design patent D1 is for a typeface) or design rights.

Yes.. I did mention that Typefaces are patentable in the USA, but the patents are rare and hard to get. I think there are a total of 150 patents in total and they last specifically for 14 years. The latest typeface I could find that was patented was Lucida and that was in 1994 and is expired now. But I did not do a exhaustive search.

And it's true that Fonts are copyrightable in the USA. Not all fonts.. scalable fonts are copyrightable, but bitmaps of fonts are not. Typefaces are not copyrightable.

Now in the UK and in Germany this may be different, but I only know the USA laws.

One thing to keep in mind is that:
Fonts != Typeface

In at least scalable digital fonts are concerned. Font is the implimentation and Typeface is the appearence if I understand everything correctly. (I am not sure of that).

IANAL

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 8:35 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

Oh, and besides that they don't even look alike. There are simularities, like with the point on the lower case 'u' and how the lower half of the 'b' shape looks.

But the porportions of the shapes, relative thinknesses of the lines to the size of the font, and most of the other shapes are different. For example the 't' is very different.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 13:22 UTC (Thu) by joseph_mayer (guest, #61137) [Link] (3 responses)

Have a look at the direct comparison here:
http://typophile.com/node/68016

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 16:58 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

Yeah. Like I said they are different. The shapes are different, the porportions are different. There
is simularity in how the points on the 'n' 'b' and other shapes are, but otherwise they are
different.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 17:25 UTC (Thu) by joseph_mayer (guest, #61137) [Link] (1 responses)

If you look closely at the comparison you'll immediately see
that the designer of the Ubuntu logo took DTL-Prokyon as the
starting point of his design. He changed a few Bézier curves
here and there, but that's not enough to call it a different
and original design. Hell, even the hight of the horizontal
line of the »t« is identical.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 20:04 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Maybe he did use it as the starting point for his new point. Maybe not. I suppose you could ask him. There hundreds of thousands san serif fonts all over the place. They all follow the same basic structure and have similar elements.

Google'ng around for 'san serif' you can find lots of fonts that are very similar, but have different heights, shapes of the o's are all different, or thinknesses, or the 't' is different. So on and so forth.

On these two fonts the opennings are different shapes. The letters go to different heights. The 't' is completely different. The 'U' is capitolized as Ubuntu is a proper noun, but in the font you pointed out the capitalized versions are very different hieght and use different shapes then the lower case ones. Notice how in order to get the horizontal line in the 't' to line up the other guy had to make all the other lines in the fonts be offset from each other. The bottom of the 't' does not line up, neither does the top. So on and so forth. Not to mention they are completely different shapes.

While the one you pointed out may have inspired the ubuntu font, there is no way that these are the same ones. When the Ubuntu guy releases the ttf files for the font in a few weeks then you will be able to have a more solid comparison.

Logo wankage

Posted Mar 4, 2010 1:21 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

Evidently they don't have enough to think about.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 1:38 UTC (Thu) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]

New typeface for Ubuntu wordmark is boring.

Cultural significance?

Posted Mar 4, 2010 3:03 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (1 responses)

Anyone know what the cultural significance of the new and old colours are in non-Western countries?

Cultural significance?

Posted Mar 4, 2010 8:43 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

So many non-Western cultures... where to start?

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 3:12 UTC (Thu) by tetromino (guest, #33846) [Link] (1 responses)

New GTK themes: major improvement; they are not as horrible as the current one. And it's good that Ubuntu will be giving users a choice of a dark and a light theme.
New logo: I'd have to agree with abadidea: the font looks like it's unbalanced and stuttering.
Brown gradients vs. purple gradients: who cares? (Besides the two people who actually use the default background image.)

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 12:58 UTC (Thu) by maro (guest, #34315) [Link]

It seems to be quite common for Ubuntu people to change wallpaper, themes
and icons,at least judging by the insane amount of Ubuntu on sites like
gnome-look.org.

I love that Fedora let me focus on getting work done without too many bells
and whistles, yet always with a nice wallpaper that changes for each release
so I don't get tired of it and have to spend time finding a new one.

Light is a bad idea

Posted Mar 11, 2010 4:21 UTC (Thu) by christian.convey (guest, #39159) [Link]

The light area of the background (center-top) keeps on drawing my eyes to the menu bar just above it. That is, it seems like it's trying to tell me that something important is there, and my eyes obey.

The problem is, there's NOT anything important about that region of the screen.

The design might be interesting, but I think it scores low on usability.