Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo theming during bootup

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Sat, 2006-04-08 at 19:15 +0000, Wiktor Wandachowicz wrote:
> Carsten Lohrke <carlo <at> gentoo.org> writes:
>
> > How do you want not to enforce it?
> Have you actually read the proposal? It's quite sensible and is entitled:
>
>  "Proposal: Integrated boot themes on LiveCDs and installations"
>
> I suppose that the themes would be defaulted to on the LiveCDs and optional
> for regular installations - typical emerge-if-you-need-it situation.

Funny enough, this was something that I heard requested *many times*
when we were at the booth at LWE.  Many of our users think that upstream
defaults are ugly.  I tend to agree.  I would love to see the "branding"
USE flag added *and used* to give us themes.  One of the main reasons
that I chose Gnome over KDE originally was that Gnome had the nice
little Gentoo splash and gdm already had Gentoo themes (even if they
were not the default).  It just also happened that later when I tried to
build a KDE-only CD that I couldn't get it to fit on the CD along with
the other stuff, meaning I would have had to remove other packages and I
was planning on investing more time into determining what should go/stay
before touching it.

> > Still, the basic question is: Why!?
> Because it may lead to the creation of well thought out and integrated themes
> for several programs that are able to use them? Including more robustness
> and/or functionality similar to the one that the gfxboot provides?

How about "Why not?" as an answer?  It isn't like anyone said that you
would have to do the work.  As it stands now, Release Engineering has
someone who does the splash themes for the releases, and this person
could well be tapped to either create or assist in creating a unified
theme set.  It really is funny that Donnie brought this up since this
was something that we were actually discussing at LWE.

> > There's no benefit for the user, who will choose whatever theming
> > he wants anyways.
> I for one would be delighted if there was such new set of themes. I'd use
> them right away. To be honest, I tend to match my bootsplash theme with the
> one that's used on the current LiveCD. Somehow I feel I need that when people
> come and ask me "What Linux distro do you use?". If it happens that they ask
> when I boot my laptop they can watch the nice graphical progress (bootsplash)
> and finally my gdm theme. Having a Gentoo theme here helps to associate the
> theme with the distribution. Nobody forced me to do this. I just like it :)

I tend to agree.  My laptop also runs the same splash theme as the
release.  In fact, it usually is one of the first boxes running it,
since we do testing there before we ever roll it onto a CD.

> > Imho it's superfluous
> To be honest, there are not so many themes out there that are worth
> installing. A good set of Gentoo themes is one of the best ideas
> I've heard for a long time. (!)

You think it is superfluous.  I do not.  I respect your opinion on this.
Basically, you don't have to work on it.  Nobody is forcing you to do so
or even asking you to participate.

> > and therefore wasted time.
> I understand your point. But are you sure that spreading the "negative energy"
> and killing the idea is best? No progress is done without breaking rules
> and working against the inertia of habits.

Sure, it would be wasted time if someone were trying to force *you* to
waste *your* time as you are not interested.  For those of us that are,
it isn't a waste in any sense.

> > I for one favor to stick with that, what upstream provides.
> I guess you should be able to leave with that. No one would "force" you to
> switch the splashes/background/themes unless you wanted it.

Correct.

> And while we are at it, is there any chance that the bug #124920
> could be taken into account while creating new gdm theme?

I don't see why not.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux