OSNews will feature a review of the upcoming Linare Professional edition next month. For this new version Linare has developed a new KDE theme along with other updates to their distro. Screenshots.
First Look at Linare Professional
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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That is sure, well um, a lot of green . . .
I doubt Linare is ready. After all, I think I found a button in one of them screenshets that’s not beveled, shadowed, and greenly-tinted.
My god, do those screenshots look incredibly ugly to anyone else?
Wow. Amazingly ugly. I didn’t think it was possible to make a KDE theme so nasty!
STOP Copying Windows Get something Original take for Example Everaldo he has come up with such pretty icons. The first thing I do in any distro is change all the icons to be Crystal. I guess the Focus of the Nerds should now be be on the Eye Candy for
1. Improving the Fonts for LCD screens
2. Now that Mplayer can do it all sit down create a eye candy and Stable UI for Mplayer. And before I get angry comments please I tried gmplayer GUI and all I have to say it sucks.
3. Rewrite OpenOffice so that it gets rid of the bloated code and does not take forever to start. GOD I am usig the Release 680 OO 2.0 amf this things takes forever to start.
Just my 2 cents
But anyway, I was hoping seeing start menu. If they at least cleaned it a little bit (I saw that KControl is still confusing, just as plain KDE).
Linare Desktop comes with all packages required by home users bundled into one CD with KDE 3.1.x and XFREE 4.2.
Funny, no Gnome included, but they still include Evolution (I agree Gaim and Gimp are GTK, Evolution is not). Not that I have something against KDE only distros. I just don’t use them.
And one more. My god that disk partition wizzard, a real *user friendly app* *sarcasm*, probably ment to be used by average rocket scientist. Ok, I know, I spit too much fire. But there could still exist some better interface, this one is THE god damn worst I ever saw in my life
“Everaldo he has come up with such pretty icons. The first thing I do in any distro is change all the icons to be Crystal. I guess the Focus of the Nerds should now be be on the Eye Candy for ”
Everaldo works for linare now and he is the one who designed those themes and icons. find something else to blame
It is cool that they sell a $200 computer with Linare preinstalled. But I think we are actually to the point where they are almost as many Linux distros as there are mainstream Linux distros, yet package availability for even the mainstream distros is nil.
Too many people leading in the Linux community and not nearly enough people that are following.
Why can’t they ship Gentoo on these things and donate a few bucks per install for server and bandwidth expenses?
Yet another half assed attempt at being the “Next Bill Gates(tm)” will only slow the adoption of Linux and make it more difficult to distribute software.
Will people ever just offer packages for Linux instead of constantly reinventing the same part of the wheel?
“Release 680 OO 2.0”
its a test release if its based on 2.0.
1.1.1 is the stable release
“y god that disk partition wizzard, a real *user friendly app* *sarcasm*”
its just the kde module displaying partition information as it is. there is nothing changed from whats available inside kcontrol
nobody needs to even see it
Should be: “almost as many Linux distros as there are mainstream Linux apps”
Everaldo works for linare now and he is the one who designed those themes and icons. find something else to blame
No he does not. Everaldo works for Lindows Inc.
nobody needs to even see it
I see, that’s why they posted screenshot of it.
I completely agree that there are entirely too many of these dinky little distros out there. Debian and Fedora are big enough and differ enough in philosophy that they merit their own distros (I really wish SuSE and Fedora desktops had merged at some point…they’re both extremely high quality, but they scratch the same itch). Gentoo is fantastic for source-based. Slack always has and always will be around. Now there MAY be some room for Xandros/Lycoris/Linspire/Other Cute KDE-based toy desktop but in a limited number. However, the number of these distros that are out there has reached epidemic proportions. How many different people have this hankering to slap a neat theme on top of KDE and call it something new and useful? They’re doing nothing but hurting linux adoption.
Really, if you MUST re-theme KDE and try to ship it as something novel, don’t break compatibility with existing distros. Make the package management compatible with Debian or Fedora, both of which have massive amounts of community-supported packages. People developing linux software are already supporting SuSE, Fedora, and Debian…how many more do we need throw at them before they say “enough is enough!”
Yes they look quite hideous to me as well. Green and chunky.
YUCK! it is almost as ugly as suses default theme… and i fail to get the point in trying to imitate windows xp look in green. *everyone* is complaining about the windows xp default look so *what is the point* in imitating it and even uglyfie it EVEN MORE by making it green?
so people would feel comfortable in switching. People like familiarity not drastic change. Now if they could make the virtual desktop buttons and clock match they’d have something going for them.
Hey-
This really looks great. Installer is really superb. New thought on the start button.
Green wallpaper seems a little dark.
Now, that gets the award for the ugliest KDE desktop ever…. I didn’t think KDE can look that bad.
I like it. Bright primary and secondary colors are nice….
That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen… 8|
I like the theme. Good job. But I think they need to
clean up the wall paper.
Cheers
Truely fugly, way too much green. When will KDE fans learn that desktops should not look sugar-coated unless you’re marketing to the 2-9 year old range.
If there is a GOD, Linare will go bankrupt. Its this kind of BS that gives linux distros in general a bad name.
The KDE theme looks good but on the window decorations, the Minimize, Maximize and close buttons look like the windows XP buttons stretched… those really need some work.
Also, I see a lot of Gnome applications on the Linare default desktop so I can definitely see a need for a matching GTK theme to go with the new KDE theme, otherwise the desktop is inconsistent.
The rest looks interesting.
That has to the nastiest and ugly UI I have ever seen.
So what is the point of this distro? I mean Lindash, or whatever the name is this week, is for complete newbies. Slack is for those who want ultimate control. Debian is for those who want uber-stable. Gentoo is for those who want automated source. What niche is Linaire trying to fill? And I agree totally, that desktop is SOOOOOOO green! What is wrong with a flat desktop and smaller icon files such as Reinhardt? Sometimes less truly is more.
I don’t see a point in paying 20 bucks for a theme. But, I think it’s attractive.
What distro is this based on anyway?
Looks promising, perhaps alittle more work. I’ll hold further comments until I’ve try it myself though.
The installer looks an awful lot like a super-tweaked Anaconda…
Great job it looks real slick better than long haul
IS this based on debian?
The installer (mouse selection) looks like Red Hat/Fedora’s.
The theme seems to be a modification of the “acqua” theme
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=153
Whats wrong with so many distros? Why shouldn’t every compnay that works with linux have their own?
The fact is that 99.9999% of the time they are ALL compatable. What exactly is the drawback of so many distros? Is it packages? Pretty much every disto out there uses one of three basic kinds of packeges:
RPMs –
redhat
mandrake (actually an RPM derivitive I believe)
all the redhat based distos (arch, whitebox, etc)
Lycoris
Debian’s apt system –
Debian (duh)
‘cute toy desktops’
(Xandros, Linspire, etc)
Knoppix
plain old tarballs –
slackware
gentoo (portage doesn’t contain actual software, just ebuilds)
Honestly, if you using a distro for which none of these is a supported way to install software, you are probably using a very specialized one.
No, I dont think so. It looks different.
Please forgive the blind mand that produced those window decorations.
That is without a doubt the most horrible desktop I have ever seen.
Have a look at Mandrake’s or Fedora’s Default desktop and learn?
Okay, it’s very green in the screenshots. Anyone who clicked around would note that it’s not necessarily the default, this screenshot shows it in blue with no green at all (see http://linare.zoovy.com/product/00012345679).
I will say this: it’s the nicest icon set I’ve seen thus far. And it DOES look professional and user friendly.
The problem with a user oriented distro being discussed on a technology site is that you have to wade through the tech bullshit. This looks much more useable to me than most distros. I’d put one of my users in front of those screens long before I’d leave them a default Fedora desktop, a Slackware or Gentoo or vanilla Debian install, or even Linspire 4.x with that ghastly Keramik.
This has polish, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s changeable anyway.
The uglyest theme ever…
Do you want a matching message board ?
http://www.wowbb.com/
🙂
3. Rewrite OpenOffice so that it gets rid of the bloated code and does not take forever to start. GOD I am usig the Release 680 OO 2.0 amf this things takes forever to start.
Have you set the memory usage to something a little more reasonable? I believe the default is only 9 MB. Most people I’ve talked to that use OpenOffice never knew you could raise the allowed memory usage for it, which for me has drastically reduced startup time. To set it, go to Tools, click Options, then under the OpenOffice.org heading click Memory. Under the Graphics Cache subsection, set “Use for OpenOffice.org” to something more reasonable (mine’s 33 MB). Hope that helps a bit.
It’s based on Redhat9 – according to http://dot.kde.org/1073715786/1073769818/
…that actually likes the green?
Yes
I like the theme. is it under gpl, can I download it somewhere ?
I happen to very much like green, it’s relaxing. However, they overdid it. I think if they had gone with a combination of dark green and dark graphite, it would look very good, but there isn’t enough contrast between the windows and background as it is.
But then w/ theme’s you can always argue about what looks good and what doesn’t, as for the most part it’s all in the eye of the beholder.
– Kelson
As far as I know, a linux distribution is not a theme.
So far, most posts are “what an ugly theme”.
Is there anyone who actually tried it as an operating system?
Are there bugs? Is it stable? Is it fast?
etc…
Themes can be changed.
_STOP COPYING WINDOWS_
i also cant see the point in copying ugly and bloated guis.
one said “its because people should feel comfortable while switching” but i say: if you copying it, why should anyone switch? no one needs to switch when s/he gets the same.
i cant tell of kde cause i never ever use it. while running gnome 2.6 i think thats a step in the right direction. even if theres a lot of work still to do,
(_nautilus is causing me serious psychological harm_)
sorry if my english sucks, me is kraut.
No you are not the only one. I like the green too but I do prefer blue-ish. One think I don’t like is that there is too much “white” in their Control Center modules. It can be changed.
Except from the standpoint of “Hey, $200 PC”. Although it’d be $275 for me, since I’m a Canuck. And I doubt any Walmarts up here carry them. I like green, but that’s over the top.
Apparently, we’re the only ones who saw that the real benefit of Linare is in their low priced computers. After all, do people really need a 3GHz Pentium 4 to write a few reports, surf the web or read email ?
>> _STOP COPYING WINDOWS_
If they would have copied Windows, it would have a much more polished look (not as good as Apple-polish, but still way better than this stuff).
This is just plain ugly and looks like it’s yet another ‘theme’ created by some programmer (who should be programming, not creating art).
>> _STOP COPYING WINDOWS_
>>This is just plain ugly and looks like it’s yet another >>’theme’ created by some programmer (who should be >>programming, not creating art).
AMEN!
No you’re right…there is value in a low-cost computer for writing a few reports, etc. However, I think they really should have preloaded fedora or debian on those babies and maybe tweaked them a little. The last thing this world needs is another distro.
Why do many of you want to slam something for being different. They should be given an award for diverging from the standard KDE look. If the software has the care put into it that the UI seems to have they’ll have a winner.
Gato- Occasionally when you’re reading drivel about really important things like the appearance of a distro’s default theme you run across something that’s actually useful. Out of hundreds of references to OOo’s slow start time this is the first time I’ve seen a fix for it. It’s a good day, thanx.
Problem is, at least for RPMs, that an RPM does not necessarily work across distros. For instance, an RPM for Mandrake might install a config file in a different place than an RPM for Red Hat. Then there’s the issue of different versions of dependencies and stuff.
I wish that RPM-based distros, at least, could come up with standards on where to put certain things.
I don’t mess around with Debian and its derivatives too much.. is that the case with them too?
Personally I immensely dislike the rush to imitate OSX-Aqua which began when the OSX UI was first unveiled in 2000 and ws immediately nabbed by XP and various skinning apps, most desktop window managers and many distros too.
If it weren’t quite so green it’d be a very nice theme, and those window controls look pretty good.
Just be thankful it isn’t all swirly blue with drop-shadows, like everything else these days.
Okay first I am suprised we now have not only a Linux distro called Linspire but also one called Linare. What is Linare supposed to mean? I can’t seem to find any info on this from the developer.
As for their logo it made me laugh since it reminded me of those fitness info commercials for “Participation” (think that was the name). So what does their logo really represent?
Those complaining about the desktop theme being green need to relax. Take a look at the company site and see how green is not the only color theme available for the desktop GUI. I’m assuming from the wierd logo that there are at least 3 colors to choose from.
Unless I’m to tired to see this but I couldn’t verify on the site what kernal this is using, what KDE version the desktop is or even if the distro is RPM based or .deb (Debian) based.
CharAznable,
Re: “Problem is, at least for RPMs, that an RPM does not necessarily work across distros. For instance, an RPM for Mandrake might install a config file in a different place than an RPM for Red Hat. Then there’s the issue of different versions of dependencies and stuff.”
Mandrake is the only rpm based distro that I’ve noticed issues with using other rpm files not compiled specifically for Mandrake. I have installed programs such as Maya, XSI and Shake on SuSE Linux Pro which are officially supported only on Red Hat and didn’t get one dependency conflict error. I’ve even installed OSS files compiled as RedHat rpm and successfully installed with ease on SuSE Linux.
Re: “I wish that RPM-based distros, at least, could come up with standards on where to put certain things.”
RPM is a standard widely used in the corporate industry and also the entertainment industry. This is basically due to Red Hat’s adoption by many companys. As I stated above SuSE Linux doesn’t have an issues with RPM files but Mandrake for some reason does. When trying to install RPM files that had the name RedHat in it Mandrake spit back errors such as missing library files or conflicts with other files.
Another standard being implemented for RPM based distros is the OS/program manager. Since Novell recently open sourced Yast you should see this being adopted by other RPM based distros. Sun is the first company I have seen to jump on using Yast for their new desktop being developed. Maybe Mandrake will dump Disk Druid and their own installer for Yast which they could contribute by further developing it. With it’s auto-dependency checker and it’s intelligent file management this should improve Mandrake, possibly resolving previous issues.
Not bad. Looks different UI. But they definitely
need to change the wall paper. Wall paper is the one
troubling too much.
RE: Am I the only one…
No you are not the only one who likes it.
RE: I think it is quite interesting
I think people just like to complain.
I love that theme, I would download that and install it on my own machine. HOWEVER, I am colour-blind, it might be why I find that theme so pleasing to my eyes.
This is not a wind-up, I really am colour-blind and I do like that theme.