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

[Curtis Napier]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> 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.
>

You said everything I wanted to say. I'll add this:

I talked to spyderous and christel about this on irc the other day. I
think we should have a unified Gentoo Theme that cuts across all
projects. I'm willing to theme *.gentoo.org to match and I'm also
willing to help out with theming other things or actually creating the
artwork if we really need help on that front (I'm not an artist but if
we have basic artwork made I can fit it into other things, do layouts,
help patch ebuilds, etc...).

Spyderous already has a new logo started that we can build on. We can
easily take it and build an entire theme around it. We also have the
lila theme and the Gentoo Icon Set we can use as raw material. Both of
them could easily be reworked into something we can use if we need to.

The theme we create could easily be extended to all the other things we
use artwork for, business cards and posters for the live events plus all
the things in the store, etc...

Personally, I think it's time we stopped releasing with the default,
upstream, ugly and boring  themes and start releasing with a unified
distro wide Gentoo Theme. Present the world with a professional face for
a change instead of this ad-hoc-made-in-my-basement look and feel it has
now.

SO, what sort of time frame is everyone looking at here, 2006.1 or 2007.0?