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First impressions of Ubuntu's new look

It was only announced a couple of days ago, and it's clearly a work in progress, but here are my first impressions of Ubuntu's new look.

1. The new logo

The old logo was definitely feeling dated and didn't look as professional as some of its competitors'. The new logo, and new font, offer a cleaner, more modern look and make things look a bit classier. A big thumbs up for this one, I think.

2. The new default themes

At last, the Human themes are going. They've been replaced with two new ones - a dark one (Ambiance) and a light one. Personally, I prefer the appearance of the darker one, but I know some people can't stand dark themes...

If you upgrade to Lucid you'll find the buttons on the windows have switched from right to left, something that I find quite annoying. You can move them back using Gconf.

As with many Gnome themes, they look quite decent, but (and it pains me to say this as a long-term Linux user) they're not up to the standard of the default (or only) themes of Windows 7 or OS X.

The corners of the windows are slightly pixelated as there's no antialiasing in Metacity, the icon set doesn't quite match the colour of the default background, and a few things just make it all feel just a tad mismatched. There are too many colours - several different oranges and reds.

That said, they're a definite improvement. Personally, I think Shiki or Dust are more polished, and that red close button on the Ambiance theme feels wrong. It would be better if it appeared only when hovered over.

3. The new wallpaper

I much prefer the new wallpaper, which is purple, to the vile ambomination that was in the Karmic release.Though it is "a bit gay".

This was a really nasty shade of bright orange and I can't imagine too many people keeping it there as the default desktop. Still, it's not a patch on the excellent Hardy Heron wallpaper, which had massive brand identity - they even released it on a t-shirt.

Annoyingly, either side of my display now sports a 1 pixel white border... Apparently, this is a known bug in Nautilus, so presumably it won't be too long before a kind soul fixes it.

4. The new bootsplash

I love this. This Plymouth theme looks really classy, clean and is tastefully done. Not that I'll get to see it for long as my main machine has raided SSDs and boots in a few seconds!

Published: TechPad.co.uk Saturday 6 March 2010, 2:49 pm
Views: 17,431 times
Filed under: Ubuntu Lucid branding

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