Call for participation: an ubuntu default theme lead by the community?

[mpt]

@frederik-f

It’s pretty clear: system/base apps have that squircle. And Firefox is a brand Pretty easy if you ask me. The same applies to windows10, system apps have that symbolic microsoft-goes-flat icons. The rest doesn’t.

As an Ubuntu theme developer, you’re highly familiar with which apps Ubuntu ships by default, and which apps are developed on gnome․org. Maybe that knowledge gives you a mental model of which apps are “system/base apps”. But given that you thought Rhythmbox should have a squircle icon, but Sam now does not, it is not “pretty clear” even amongst theme developers.

As for being “a brand”, that isn’t necessarily a separate thing. For example, App Store, Launchpad, Siri, and Time Machine are a few examples of apps that are integrated into macOS and also have their own brands. In Ubuntu it’s happened once before, too: landscape-client used to be integrated into System Settings, while also representing the Landscape brand.

Least importantly, it’s not the case that in Windows 10, “system apps have that symbolic microsoft-goes-flat icons. The rest doesn’t.” Here are twelve counterexamples from Microsoft itself:

A typical Windows 10 installation has the same kind of jumble we’ll have: even though some Windows ISVs have adapted their icons to the flat style (e.g. Instagram, Slack, WinZip), most have not. It looks less bad in Windows because the tiles strongly impose a shape of their own.

@jaggers

I note @frederik-f has grouped the Suru and non-Suru icons on the launcher, as I would, so perhaps one answer is for the default launcher to just do that for the sake of tidiness? That would signal to the user that it’s “permitted” for the launcher to be a mix, without looking disorderly on first impression.

Agreed, that would be an improvement. I’d put the non-Suru group first, just so that Firefox could go first, to maximize familiarity for new users.

[frederik-f]

@mpt

As an Ubuntu theme developer, you’re highly familiar with which apps Ubuntu ships by default, and which apps are developed on gnome․org. Maybe that knowledge gives you a mental model of which apps are “system/base apps”. But given that you thought Rhythmbox should have a squircle icon, but Sam now does not, it is not “pretty clear” even amongst theme developers.

Sam has a different opinion on 1) his continuation of Suru 2) our theme and 3) gnome and ubuntu themes than we do. It’s okay to have a different opinion but I think I don’t speak for myself only, when I say that Ubuntu users would love to have all their pre installed applications to use the same style of icon.
Ubuntu is a distribution and thus distributes a linux desktop environment.
When GNOME entitles their default/main music application from gnome rhythmbox to gnome music, then Ubuntu does not have to do this automatically. Previously all gnome applications had some funny name. Like nautilus, totem, rhythmbox and so on. In my opinion this does not make them more brandy than now where they are called gnome files, gnome videos and so on. Rhythmbox didn’t make that name switch. Maybe because gnome music is now the “to-go” app in the eyes of gnome (ha! that’s another app: eye of gnome), maybe for different reasons.
But to make a point, only because it is named rhythmbox it is not suddenly a brand. But I could be wrong, ofc.

Generally I try to look on the theme from a user’s perspective, because we do the theme for the user and not to bath in our design. I also use ubuntu with the gnome desktop every day for programming and or making music or whatever. So I am also a user.

My bad with windows10, I think I should use it more often, I thought it would only be those new C# apps that are also for their touch desktops.
Ultra subjective: making all icons use a symbolic icon on a square, looks like fisher price So I am glad we have something more “complicated” than this.

[jyaku]

regarding gnome-system-monitor:

I even purged snapd and the old square icon still remains. so it is certainly stemming from the deb

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@frederik-f

Sorry, with all respect, but I highly doubt that. It’s pretty clear: system/base apps have that squircle. And Firefox is a brand Pretty easy if you ask me. The same applies to windows10, system apps have that symbolic microsoft-goes-flat icons. The rest doesn’t.

@d0od disagreed in his article on the Ubuntu 18.10 beta; Joey could you argue here why there should be icon uniformity and how everything could, in practice, be put into squircles?

Some differing opinions on the icons status quo on that article

[frederik-f]

Cool, more opinions, that’s great!
However, should we really continue discussions from omgubuntu in this thread? Don’t you think that’s a bit too much cross linking?
But if you do, why do you only link those pointing in ONE direction?

“The inconsistency of the icon theme” is already fixed, but the fixes will not land in 18.10
( https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/tree/Suru_icon_updates )

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@frederik-f

However, should we really continue discussions from omgubuntu in this thread? Don’t you think that’s a bit too much cross linking?

Yes because the comments are relevant here and I don’t know if theme authors are factoring in the opinions of those on that site. I have been linking this thread to those on there sometimes as well.

@frederik-f

But if you do, why do you only link those pointing in ONE direction?

You can see others praising the theme but I thought what might be useful in this thread would be criticism of theme, possible changes etc.

@frederik-f

“The inconsistency of the icon theme” is already fixed, but the fixes will not land in 18.10

( https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru/tree/Suru_icon_updates )

Great!

[d0od]

@ads20000

Joey could you argue here why there should be icon uniformity and how everything could, in practice, be put into squircles?

I think, Adam, that as I’m not a stakeholder in this my opinion won’t be of much use/relevant – and it’s all a little irrelevant given that Suru is shipping, regardless.

Fwiw, I do not think Ubuntu should use a uniform set of icons. Even with the selection of missing icons, the squircle uniformity is kind of oppressive. The squircle shape doesn’t help as a) the actual bit of an icon that tells you what it is smaller (because of padding) and b) it’s blocky.

With upstream working on a new icon set that is both more modern than before and (crucially) non-uniform, it seems like Suru is duplicate work at best, and change for change’s sake at worst.

Ubuntu should have a strong “brand identity”, but that identity:

a) shouldn’t override established brands (especially for key brands like Firefox, Skype, etc)
b) shouldn’t hinder app devs trying to establish a new brand (icons are key to that)
c) shouldn’t affect Ubuntu’s usability (some Suru icons are confused, similar, or wrong)

Yaru (the odd mis-coloured menu aside) nails this, I think. It allows apps to continue to express their individuality, but with a veneer of consistency. All good.

The icons not so much. Ubuntu is a product built on a diverse, rich and varied open source community. Enforcing a uniform icon shape kinda feels like a counter-intuitive to channel that. Like, we all come in different shapes and sizes, but we’re all still recognisably human – and Suru icons for apps should be the same, supporting diversity and expression, not mandating rigidity, even for those who don’t want to conform.

[frederik-f]

Personally I am not very convinced by this icon theme gnome wants to establish. At least not from the icons I saw until now. The current gnome app icons are overly realistic and very detailed. Now those new icons are hyper flat, have no shadows and look bad at small sizes (also how does this fit to the overly 3D-look adwaita is using?). I am very glad we’ve gone with Suru now for - again - only preinstalled applications.

No one wants to override the firefox brand.

And no one wants to force an icon theme on all possible icons available.

There is a poll about the general feeling on how much Ubuntu should customize somewhere here on the hub and I think that is more representative than the comment section on omgubuntu which is more or less a very toxic zone.

Thanks for the yaru feedback, we appreciate feedback. Without it and without the hundreds of reports on github we wouldn’t have this level of polish we have now.

[frederik-f]

@kenvandine

gnome-logs now uses the correct suro icon! Thank you very much!

[kenvandine]

No problem, I still don’t know why… I didn’t make any changes just did a rebuild of the snap and it fixed it.

[frederik-f]

Great! You are asking the wrong person for this

It was the magic of Yaru

[mr.tech]

I do not understand what is the problematic with the squircle form of the suru icons, for me it has been the best thing that could have happened to ubuntu since the humanity and the gnome icons seem of the 90s.

Suru provides ubuntu with its own identity, apart from recognition, when someone sees a desktop with icons in the form of squircle, it will know that it is ubuntu, but I see some people who do not like the idea, I think it is a double moral concept since all people mostly love the iphone and I know that many here have it, but when steve job I set the pattern of rounded icons for IOS, everyone accepted it and everyone who uses their iphone only show off how nice their iphone is, with those icons ordered and with the same shape, at least that’s what I see in my country, to upload an application to the AppStore all forget the identity of the brand and create their rounded icons for your applications.

Changing the shape of the icons is not a cancer of design and brand identity, that is evolving, and that is what ubuntu is trying to do since it was stuck with humanity and ambiance. Follow upstream does not identify what distribution is ubuntu and what is fedora or linuxmint, just imagine three distributions using adwaita and gnome icons and tell me which is which? You will not know how to tell me because the non-advanced user of Linux will see the same.

So now I just look at how to support an initiative, we only criticize the product, making judgments about the work of others based on our own tastes and points of view, and we have forgotten the fundamentals of Linux and free software, where the power is modify and redistribute attributing to the author ?, it is so difficult to use a distribution as ubuntu and if you do not like the default experience go to gnome-look.org and change the pac of icons ?, well if we do it, but it is easier to give our opinion on the internet, whether or not we are right and criticize the community’s effort.

And remember if you ever wonder about the linux stalemate and its low market share, I will give you this answer:

It is summarized to the little support of some people of the community!

[jaggers]

@d0od - looking at your three red lines, I think they apply more to a vision where all Ubuntu icons are Suru squircles. That would have to be achieved through masking or redrawing icons or a mix of the two. Due to a mix of principles (respecting brands, etc.) and practical concerns (lack of masking,etc.), I don’t think that’s on the table?

Seems to me that the main idea (e.g., @frederik-f) is for pre-installed core apps to be Suru, and third party apps - especially ones the user installs - to have their own normal icons, that are recognisable brands. If nothing else, that’s at least realistic

I think the mixed approach already looks good, because I find the launcher much more appealing when the “usual suspects” (terminal, files, etc.) have uniform squircles. And I think the mixed approach can look great if a bit of thought is given to grouping/ordering, given that the distinction (Suru versus non-Suru) reflects something meaningful and isn’t completely random. People might disagree on whether it reflects something that most users care about but it’s not like a coin was flipped for each app.

The arrangement of the launcher and the app grid can make the difference seem obvious and helpful, rather than haphazard and bewildering, as I’ve suggested above (all IMHO as ever).

I would use the analogy of interior design. In your flat, you might have some stand-out items that don’t follow the general style. E.g.: maybe your dishwasher is so nondescript it’s almost invisible, but you have a futuristic vacuum cleaner with bright colours. That isn’t automatically a problem. Maybe you don’t care who made the dishwasher, because it’s a generic one, so it makes sense for it to blend in with the general kitchen style. But the vacuum is a Dyson, and you chose Dyson because you’re a fan of the brand, and you’re happy for it to stand out.

By the same token, you might look at your OS and see a calculator and a calendar that follow the house style, which aren’t branded and just happened to come with the OS. When you want to do a sum, you click on the calculator. You don’t care who made it. It’s just a calculator. You’re glad Ubuntu shipped with one, because you sometimes need one, but that’s the extent of your emotional engagement.

But when you see the Firefox logo and the Inkscape logo, with their distinctive colours and shape, it’s all right for them to stand out, because one is a flagship app for an alternative OS - “we have Firefox!!” - and the other is something you chose yourself, over other apps that do the same thing. The only caveat to this approach is, you don’t leave your Dyson somewhere daft like the middle of the room. You put it somewhere that a) is convenient when you need it and b) looks tidy too.

Personally, as a former “squircle fanatic” I now think this is a balanced and achievable approach for a really good-looking Ubuntu. You end up with a suite of default apps that carry the house style, and some “Dysons” (mostly chosen by the user) that make a point of having their own branded identity. I don’t think users will find that alienating, as long as the stand-out apps have identities they care about (either because they instinctively look for them when they try Ubuntu for the first time, or because they actively chose them, and prefer them to other apps that do the same thing).

[frederik-f]

+1

I think we are really crossing the line of madness sanity, when we consider apps like the system calculator and the system calendar to be a brand.

And since Yaru continues with the design ideas of Unity8, Suru is still THE ubuntu icon theme. It was MADE for Unity8/ubuntu touch.

Also, there are other bigger distros who use icon themes, that are far more “radical” than ours. Rarely I have seen any uproar (though I do not consider some loud minority to be an uproar) for those distros.

That’s all my personal view on this topic. However, I can speak for the Yaru team, that we do not plan to remove the Suru icon theme for 19.4. Jaggers new “last” puzzle piece (after those recent snap fixes) will hit the 18.04 snap at the end of this months to have all pre-installed, not-branded apps Suru icons, and we will probably never add more icons, unless Ubuntu changes the set of pre-installed apps.
Some changes to the current icons may happen though.

So to get back to reality, those are the full color apps we end with.
There is exactly 1 brand I see in these icons, and that’s amazon.

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@d0od

I’m not a stakeholder

As an Ubuntu user and journalist I think you most certainly are a stakeholder in the Ubuntu project and the Yaru theme I only wish you had spoken out more earlier on when things were more flexible! But additional opinion should be expressed here and, I stress again, you definitely are an Ubuntu stakeholder, anyone who uses Ubuntu is!

@d0od

Suru is duplicate work at best, and change for change’s sake at worst

So you would advocate scrapping any deviation from GNOME’s icons, end-of, at least by default? It’s certainly more ‘upstream’ which is an objective of Yaru…

@mr.tech Yes, ultimately if you can’t stand a theme then change it, but dissenting opinion should be expressed here where possible because this is the thread that devs use to consider feedback, not necessarily elsewhere See the quote below

@frederik-f

Thanks for the yaru feedback, we appreciate feedback. Without it and without the hundreds of reports on github we wouldn’t have this level of polish we have now.

Separately:

@frederik-f

Also, there are other bigger distros who use icon themes, that are far more “radical” than ours. Rarely I have seen any uproar (though I do not consider some loud minority to be an uproar) for those distros.

I mean, Ubuntu is almost certainly the biggest desktop distro, hence it gets more talk and flak than other distros, which in a sense is a good sign rather than a bad one. But yes, look at Elementary OS for example, they deviated so far from GNOME that they have their own DE and own icons etc (admittedly most of their apps are forked, which perhaps better justifies different icons) and people really really like that relative uniformity - ‘it’s good design’ etc!

[eaglers]

I will also express my opinion about the icons of Suru and the theme of Yaru.

When I first saw Unity 8 in a YouTube video, I was amazed at the beauty and modernity of this shell. I imagined that Ubuntu would become more popular than Windows, and Microsoft would go bankrupt.

But the development turned and decided to go to GNOME. I thought that Ubuntu would fall below the baseboard and become a simple fork of Debian GNOME with 5% of changes.

Put the dock. Thanks for that. Somehow, it allocated Ubuntu from Debian.

I learned about the Suru project from Sam Hewitt, who at that time was also developing the Paper iconpack (also very cool, but Suru is more beautiful). Then I found out about the Ubuntu redesign project. Then the theme was called Communitheme.

About Yaru

If you compare GNOME with Yaru and Unity 8, you will notice that the style of windows in Unity 8 is different. The frames were black, the “Close” button had no background. He appeared when you hover the mouse, and then he was red, not orange.

HeaderBar was separated from the frame of the window and was white. And the headlines are not bold, but thin.

The dock and the top panel were black, even without windows.

The application menu did not open to full screen (although it cannot be changed using the theme)

About Suru

Go to the electronics store, go to the stand with smartphones by different manufacturers and check what kind of icons there are. Are the Google icons changed except shape?

Non-third-party applications are those applications that do not have their own names (Firefox, Rhythmbox, LibreOffice) are meant only to have common names (Music, Podcasts, Screenshot). The exceptions are applications by Canonical, such as Amazon, LXD and others…

After the Rhythmbox icon appeared in the Suru style, I fell into the hell of a perfectionist. I had a feeling that I was using some kind of unofficial “Ubuntu X GNOME+Unity8 Edition” or some kind of amateur distribution like ZorinOS.

Ubuntu is the most popular Linux based OS. Do not believe DistroWatch, which collects information only on page views about distributions. Only fans come there.

View Google Trends statistics. Everybody uses Google.
Even without logging into Google Trends, go to Google in incognito mode and type one letter “u” and you will understand everything yourself.

I believe that the Rhythmbox icon should be removed from Suru.

[frederik-f]

@eaglers

About Yaru

If you compare GNOME with Yaru and Unity 8, you will notice that the style of windows in Unity 8 is different. The frames were black, the “Close” button had no background. He appeared when you hover the mouse, and then he was red, not orange.

HeaderBar was separated from the frame of the window and was white. And the headlines are not bold, but thin.

The dock and the top panel were black, even without windows.

The application menu did not open to full screen (although it cannot be changed using the theme)

Yaru is not a unity8 clone, I’ve written:
“And since Yaru continues with the design ideas of Unity8, …”
Best would be if you would read the threads in the Theme refresh section again if you are interested in how this all came together.

I think this very thread is becoming to an infinite loop. This is the 1797 posts and most people will not read the whole thread anymore no matter how much beer and snacks they bought.

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In future it’s probably best to link people to the wiki, additional justifications should be added there as necessary, then we can just link to that if duplicate questions/criticisms come up?

[frederik-f]

Good idea!

We really need to update this after 18.10!

[jaggers]

@eaglers

After the Rhythmbox icon appeared in the Suru style, I fell into the hell of a perfectionist. I had a feeling that I was using some kind of unofficial “Ubuntu X GNOME+Unity8 Edition” or some kind of amateur distribution like ZorinOS.

I don’t think there’s any harm in being practical here. I’m not sure a typical first-time user thinks, “I wonder if Rhythmbox is installed?” (I’m including Linux novices in this scenario). They think, “So how do I play mp3s?”

For that reason, I think it’s fine for Rhythmbox to have a Suru icon, and I actually have a mild personal preference for the generic music player icon (white notes on a pink background) if that won’t alienate the Rhythmbox developers. If nothing else, it’s an extra bit of colour on the launcher

In either case, it’s not one I feel strongly about. But I do think it’s a slightly different case to something like Firefox, where the average new user will have feelings about specific web browsers, and benefit more from instant brand recognition.

More generally, I do know what you mean about the danger of the amateur/unofficial feeling. I felt the same when I looked back at my work-in-progress version of LibreOffice Writer. If you take the theme too far, it might feel like a hobby project to “pimp” the desktop, rather than a credible OS, where established brands show up in their familiar forms. I don’t think that’s much of a danger with Rhythmbox, though. For that app at least, it’s more helpful for users to get a clear clue about how to play mp3s.