“For a while now, Clearlooks has been the default theme in Fedora; in fact, for a long time, Clearlooks has been the default theme in a number of distros thanks to its place as Gnome’s default. Aiming to give Fedora its own distinct and modern appearance is Nodoka: based on its own theme engine it’s extremely fast, and when seen in combination with the rest of the artwork for Fedora 8 is beautiful. Read on for an interview with Martin Sourada and some screenshots of the theme.”
Thanks for using all the loads of time you have making themes that already exsist. The gnome themes people may as well just not do any themes.
All that work on the slight variation of clearlooks, totally pointless to me but I guess thats free software for you.
Read the article. It is a variation on murrine, not clearlooks.
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Murrine+GTK2+Cairo+Engine?co…
Thats my point, it looks almost identical to clearlooks.
er, not even close.
But they’re both blue!
Seriously, I think the new theme is excellent. I used a theme for WindowBlinds some years ago which had a similarly elegant mix of clarity and simplicity about it. There are no wasted lines/gradients–everything that’s there has a definite purpose. It doesn’t detract from the application window’s contents, yet it is also not hard to discern the controls’ boundaries and current states.
Yes it does. It looks like “Clearlooks meet Murrine” (or vice versa). Not bad, IMHO. Not as flat and boring as standard Clearlooks and not as aggressive as Murrine normally is, but quite nice in between.
In Danish we’d call it “den gyldne middelvej” (The Golden Middle Road). I like that.
It does look very much like plain old Murrine, doesn’t it. Well at least its a nice shade blue. I think I’ll stick with the brown thank you.
Thanks for using all the loads of time you have making themes that already exsist. The gnome themes people may as well just not do any themes.
All that work on the slight variation of clearlooks, totally pointless to me but I guess thats free software for you.
So I suppose this physics undergrad who spent his free time making this theme could have instead been fixing the suspension problems on your laptop, or getting 3D support for some esoteric graphics card?
Why do people assume that if open source devs weren’t “wasting” time doing things like this then they’d be doing whatever the complainer wants them to be working on? If he hadn’t spent time making this theme the only thing that would be different now is Fedora would still use Clearlooks and he would have gotten a slightly higher grade on that problem set he should have been doing at the time.
Does Ranma know? What about Gemna???
–bornagainpenguin (LOLing while he waits to be modded down by people not familiar with anime…)
you failed to write your own name properly
you failed to write your own name properly
Actually I tried to register my name appropriately, only to have the software tell me it was not available. I went ahead with this misspelled version of my name expecting to be able to change it via email to the OSNews moderators but never heard back from them. It’s moot now, given I’ve been using the misspelling for so long…
–bornagainpenguin
i see lots of metacity themes with rounded titlebar corners. they always look horrible and very aliased. i realize that there are limits to what one can do with metacity; but, the pixelated titlebar corners are very aesthetically distracting. bleh.
Modern appearance? …only in a pre-2001/pre-OS X world.
Yes, exactly my thought…. Theres nothing especially ‘modern’ sbout this theme, and just like most of the GTK+ themes out there, it’s flat and unattractive, compared to Mac OS X 10.4.x …. I really think it’s a pity that so many GTK+ themes tend to nglect what’s really important… Consistency and non intrusive behaviour on the desktop … Apple has realized, among all of it’s Mac OS X 10.4.x blunders, that the pin stripe Aqua theme didn’t work at all as well as first thought out in 1999 … They’ve worked on making it look much more ‘quiet’ … But what the Gnome theme developers tend to do is to make ‘almost copies’ of what already exists with very few changes … Nothing serious …
I just thought it’d be better to give the platform at strong, unified look, integrating it with the tool set so that whenever you build applications your default look would be more ‘Gnome 2.20’ than ‘Windows 95’ to look at … Why not revolutionize the way to look at skis and themes, by making them obsolete for the average user and from there on let everyone change it?
There’s a good reason for the gui layouts of commercial OSs to be consistent … Whether you like Mac OS X or not …
Edited 2007-09-21 23:28
There’s a good reason for the gui layouts of commercial OSs to be consistent … Whether you like Mac OS X or not …
Today, both Gnome is a very consistent environment, and don’t think MacOS-X have any advantages over Gnome in this respect. The reason you sometimes see inconsistencies on a Unix/Linux desktop is that there are so many toolkits to chose from, a KDE app will stick out like a sore thumb in Gnome and vice versa.
However, most people will avoid using non Gnome apps on Gnome desktops just like MacOS-X users avoid using X11 apps like OpenOffice on their desktops.
Yes it’s consistent when you compare setups using the same themes, but why even this need for all these skins?
Simply because the default GTK+ look takes us back to Windows 95 and the likes … The situation on Gnome is somewhat comparable to every Windows user having to run Window Blinds or the likes to make his desktop look the least bit appealing …
To me that’s a waste of effort …
Yes, choice is a surely a bad thing.
One color fits everybody – one size fits everybody – one icon set fits everybody – one buttonlayout fits everybody – one font fitz everybody – one ring binds everybody (or how was it?).
Themes are there because people can choose what they like. No default is liked by everybody. The inconsistent default looks in OS X is butt-ugly in my eyes. A degenerated NeXTSTEP.
GTK is not themeable because the default looks like Windows9x. GTK is themeable by design choice. It is meant to be that way so it can fit everybody. That requires easy user modifications to fit different tastes – without changing basic behaviour.
But of course, you prefer one theme to bind them and rule them all in the darkness (as is evident in Safari 3 – a sick blending of oldstyle aqua and dark-grey smooth aluminium with whitespace threwn here and there).
bah, it’s perfectly modern. modern does not mean blinding.
Really? I think OSX theme sucks.
Please, stop trying to postulate your subjective opinions as indisputable facts.
/* edit: Boy, am I gonna get modded down for this! */
Edited 2007-09-22 02:51 UTC
What makes YOU so damn wise in this department?
I bet you mostly hate OS X for not being Linux just as I bet you’re sure that everyone liking OS X and Aqua MUST be Apple ‘fanboys’ or whatever people tend to call it out of a lack of anything more intelligent to say …
Fine if you don’t like it, but that’s YOUR subjective opinion …
CHIIIING! Back to you. What makes you so damn wise?
You’ve been trolling for several posts, and somebody jumps in to tell you he disagree, and you do an ad hominem attack instantly. *sigh*
Yes, and HIS subjective opinion is at least as good as YOUR subjective opinion – even if you obviously only consider YOUR own thoughts worthy.
What makes YOU so damn wise in this department?
The fact that I know the difference between “subjective” and “objective”. You obviously have yet to learn the subtleties of such concepts as “fact” and “opinion”. Let me dumb it down enough for you to process this successfully: just because you happen to think that OSX’s theme is the best thing since the sliced bread, doesn’t actually make it so. Sure, you like it, you think it’s slick, cool, modern and sexy. That’s simply because you like it. Furthermore, all that emotional warmth you feel in the subcockle area of your heart when you look at OSX’s theme makes you elevate your opinion — i.e. your unjustifiable like-dislike preference — to the status of a fact. It’s a common mistake. Hopefully one day you’ll learn to stop making it.
“I bet you mostly hate OS X for not being Linux …”
This would be a bet you would lose. I don’t hate OSX, I just don’t care for it. Much like chocolate chip cookies: a lot people I know really like them, while I personally can’t care less for these tiny confectionary abortions. Just because I don’t like something, does not automatically mean I hate it. Once again, I feel that you are totally oblivioius to the subtle differences, the semantic equivalents of shades of colors, if you please, of such words as “like”, “love” or “hate”. You seem to be labouring under a curiously delusional black-or-white view of the world — if Snifflez doesn’t sing sonorous praises to OSX, he sure must hate it with passion.
“… just as I bet you’re sure that everyone liking OS X and Aqua MUST be Apple ‘fanboys’ or whatever people tend to call it out of a lack of anything more intelligent to say …”
Another bet you would lose completely. Furthermore, now you seem to be transferring your own undesirable qualities (e.g. being completely unaware of the degrees of variation within the like-dislike spectrum) onto me. Sorry, pal, I don’t happen to share your misconceptions. I am well aware of the fact that not everyone who happens to own a Mac is a Mac fanatic. In fact, of all the Mac owners I know (I live close to a college town where lots of kids carry their Mac laptops around with them), I think only 2 or 3 were what you might call “fans”. “Fans”, mind you, not “fanbois” or “fanatics” — another couple of subtleties for you to go and munch on when you’re done reading this comment.
”
Fine if you don’t like it, but that’s YOUR subjective opinion …”
Of course it is, as I have never stated it to be anything else. What an amazing grasp on the obvious!
Modern or not is irrelevant. The important thing is wheter it is easy to read or use, and I think Nodoka is OK in that respect. On the other hand, so was/is Clearlooks. Only the developers can tell whether it was worth the trouble making these improvements.
Anyway, it looks good and thanks for all efforts and tim put into it.
I will stick with Human
The download page for the theme files are in tar.gz format. I would have expected it to be in a rpm format.
With little research, the rpm version is available on Fedora development repositories.
http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/7.91/
http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/development/
I just downloaded the tarballs, compiled it and tried it out.
I do not like the Metacity theme at all, the min,max,close buttons lack constrast and it just feels very plain, very much like he says in the interview…it is a too over simplified.
Theres not much to say about the controls/widget theme, it’s a bit glossier than Clearlooks Classic (But I guess you can tell that from the screen shot in the article). Feels nice and snappy but no more so than any other good theme engine out there [Edit: Unless it’s placebo kicking in, it may be a bit snappier than Clearlooks, GTKperf tests to follow]
It feels a bit like a cross between Human and Clearlooks Classic and it’s quite nice but frankly I think I prefer either of those at the moment.
Overall, I could get used to it [Even though I’m a Gentoo user
]
Despite the criticism here, It’s good to see people trying to introduce *some* variation into the GNOME desktop. So don’t be discouraged Martin.
Edited 2007-09-21 23:29
Here is a quick and dirty 1000 round test with GtkPerf comparing Nodoka and Clearlooks Classic
AMD64 3500+ with proprietary NVIDIA driver v100.14.19 and Xorg 7.3
Nodoka v0.6:
============
GtkPerf 0.40 – Starting testing: Sat Sep 22 00:28:33 2007
GtkEntry – time: 0.54
GtkComboBox – time: 19.11
GtkComboBoxEntry – time: 16.49
GtkSpinButton – time: 3.68
GtkProgressBar – time: 1.10
GtkToggleButton – time: 6.85
GtkCheckButton – time: 5.71
GtkRadioButton – time: 7.21
GtkTextView – Add text – time: 43.82
GtkTextView – Scroll – time: 26.67
GtkDrawingArea – Lines – time: 4.61
GtkDrawingArea – Circles – time: 5.77
GtkDrawingArea – Text – time: 15.20
GtkDrawingArea – Pixbufs – time: 0.23
—
Total time: 157.00
Clearlooks Classic from “GTK+ Engines” 2.12
as shipped with Gnome 2.20
===========================================
GtkPerf 0.40 – Starting testing: Sat Sep 22 00:32:15 2007
GtkEntry – time: 0.53
GtkComboBox – time: 22.25
GtkComboBoxEntry – time: 19.35
GtkSpinButton – time: 4.33
GtkProgressBar – time: 3.25
GtkToggleButton – time: 8.01
GtkCheckButton – time: 6.82
GtkRadioButton – time: 8.52
GtkTextView – Add text – time: 43.58
GtkTextView – Scroll – time: 25.86
GtkDrawingArea – Lines – time: 4.69
GtkDrawingArea – Circles – time: 5.72
GtkDrawingArea – Text – time: 15.02
GtkDrawingArea – Pixbufs – time: 0.22
—
Total time: 168.16
This theme doesn’t look like much more than a variation on others. I’m not so hot on what all of the GNOME/GTK+ themes are, but it doesn’t really seem all that different to others I’ve seen in widespread use. The blue’s nice I guess, and the widgets have been tweaked a little, but that seems to be about it. There are aspects of it which—just as with most themes—look awkward and out of place: the ticks on the checkboxes look completely wrong, the combo-box arrow miniwidget is totally off-centre, the GtkCombo in a disable state’s arrow miniwidget doesn’t look disabled [is that because you can still drop it down? if so, ignore that point], the bold font used for the frames is the proverbial sore thumb, and what on earth is that completely inexplicable additional shade of grey that doesn’t seem to match anything else used for the menu bars all about?
Personally, I think a nice theme only takes you so far: unless the applications are designed with the theme in mind, you either find that they look like they’ve been built to be theme-agnostic (lots of overly-cautious spacing and so on), or they look like crap. If the Fedora guys want to really give their desktop a unique look and feel, they’ll sit down and go through every single GUI element in the default install and fine-tune it to look and feel fantastic and consistent.
There’s no reason why GNOME can’t have applications that look and feel as good as some of the cream of the Mac OS X crop, but somebody who knows what they’re doing has to be there to make it happen.
(Don’t get me wrong, GNOME [and KDE] have come an awfully long way since their inception, but they still seem to be visibly trailing the visual fluidity you get on OS X—not that Windows is any better, of course, but aspiring to be as good as Windows, visually, isn’t much of a goal)
honestly i like clearlooks better. it was a good thing. to many people are focused on diferentiting themselves. i mean hell look at vista. companies are making 3rd party pluginsto make it look like xp and have ofice 07 look like 2003. just because a UI is a bit dated doesnt mean it needs to be replaced..
but over all the screen shots look just fine. but i still have a coppy of redhat linix 8.0 lying around when they started clear looks. good times those were, good times
If I were browsing around for a new theme and stumbled across this one, I’d instantly move on. It’s completely forgettable, boring, plain and just aesthetically un-attractive. It’s the John Major of themes.
I completely disagree, but that was pretty funny
…I think the GTK-theme is nice. Clearlooks meet Murrine. Not too bland (Clearlooks), nor too colorful (Murrine).
Modifying the colors in the GTK-theme to meet the colors of Clearlooks-Quicksilver looks really nice here. Just a slight hint of fancyness without overdoing it.
And it performs better as baadger has shown. I get numbers akin to those on my own gentoo box.
This theme is my new default
i think it’s a beautiful theme, but clearlooks is very, very good. they should have stuck with it
I’ll stick with the venerable Clearlooks for GNOME. Even the new one in GNOME 2.20, though not perfect, is much better in my opinion compared to Nodoka.
Personally, I much preferred the Clearlooks theme in GNOME 2.16. The one in 2.18 is a bit rough-looking while the one in 2.20 is a bit too gradiated.
Nodoka? No, thank you.
Meh. I just like a tight theme that gets out of the way so I can work: Mist. Too bright & glitzy == too distracting.
Maybe a “which Gnome theme do you use” poll would be of interest here.
that’d be fun!
lol i havent used fedora in a while, but even Red Hat’s old theme Bluecurve is better than this. At least it wasn’t a hackjob of popular available themes; Bluecurve was a different approach to unifying the Linux desktop experience.
bluecurve rocked/rocks.
personally i dont like it. it’s ok. i like clearlooks better.
but, seriously, why round the top corners but not the bottom corners of windows. it’s just horrible looking. it’s like wearing a sneaker on 1 foot and a dress shoe on the other.
Hmm, well, I sort of agree. I like the widget theme very much, but the window borders just don’t look right. Looks a little bit like some forgotten fluxbox theme. Why are the buttons not placed in the corner?
It quite saddening to sit in on a forum on themes and not hear a mention for Sun’s efforts for their programming language, Java. As these themes – Metal and its update Ocean – are the clearist examples of how things should be done with widgets detailed to be descriptive of their function and colour palettes selected to be as unobtrusive as possible.
This in all a complete contrast to the efforts of the gentleman above with remits of beauty judged from a wholly personal perspective.
Edited 2007-09-22 06:38
“””
“””
Java apps are not quite as butt ugly, slow, and confusing as they used to be. I guess that’s an improvement.
I really don’t like it when ostensibly technical people spend so much effort discussing themes. But it is perfectly attributable to “bike shedding” (google it)… most people think they can understand UI and so they take a strong opinion and try to somehow get “their” design incorporated into the product as a maker’s mark they can point to. I think that too much attention paid here leads to the dumbing down of the OS enthusiast community.
This theme is pretty ugly IMO. It does no justice to the included “Glossy” theme, let alone most on gnome-look.
Luckily I never settle with the default theme and start customizing everything.
Nothing like painting the ol’ bikeshed to get everyone out bickering.
So. First Redhat comes out with a theme called bluecurve that totally takes the gnome world by storm. Everyone loves it, and redhat does everything it can to keep people from using it. Eventually, some enterprising fellows come up with clearlook, which is basically bluecurve, but better. Clearlooks quickly becomes the default (over the FAR worse Industrial), and everyone is happy.
Now, Fedora wants a more distinguishing theme, even though it comes from the distribution that put out the look they want to stand out from in the first place. Does anyone else find this funny?
“So. First Redhat comes out with a theme called bluecurve that totally takes the gnome world by storm. Everyone loves it, and redhat does everything it can to keep people from using it.”
This is pretty misleading. Bluecurve engine as well as theme is under GPL license which allows anyone and everyone to use it.
Besides clearlooks is a derivative of the BlueCurve engine and never had a look that was similar
“Everyone loves it, and redhat does everything it can to keep people from using it.”
Exactly how have they been keeping people from using it? Hiding in plain sight by releasing it under the GPL?
I don’t remember exactly what the problem was (it was a small thing several years ago now), but they did something odd like copyright the artwork while releasing everything. I do remember that people wanted it in other distros and were unable to get it.
EDIT: They trademarked the name “Bluecurve” (and enforced it), which meant it took some tweaking in redhat-artwork to get rid of all references to trademarked names. A version that just changed all “bluecurve”s to “wonderland”s came out quick enough.
Edited 2007-09-24 13:21 UTC
Nuff said.