Phew, Ubuntu’s New Light Theme Won’t Be Default After All

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For anyone reading the “article” from the misinformed @d0od on OMGUbuntu, here’s a few comments to stop the fudge from spreading :stop_sign:

…Adwaita, unlike the Yaru theme, is developed by designers, undergoes usability testing,…

Did you know that some of the recent changes (or should I say improvements) in Adwaita comes from the Yaru design and members of the Yaru team?

Gnome and usability testing? I doubt that. Like when Gnome moved buttons in dialogs to the headerbar? Could you link to the test data behind that decision?

…We ran a poll to see if the theme change met with your approval and the majority verdict (44.19%) preferred the existing “mixed” theme with dark header bars…

From the poll is seems that it’s a pretty even split between lovers and haters. IMO that’s a very tiny majority :balance_scale:

…and based (seemingly) on personal feeling rather than hard user data is that such changes are rarely well thought out or rarely well received…

If you think that defaulting to a light theme was suggested because of a personal feeling and you at this point still don’t understand the technical theming problem we’re trying to solve here, I’m out of words.

…Right now Ubuntu’s community-based design team seem focused on creating a theme that’s as close to Adwaita as possible because… Well, because.
So by all means go ahead and stitch the Yaru GTK theme to the seams of another — but you should ask: why bother making a tribute theme when you could just ship the real thing?..

From the comments:

…if the “aim” of the new design direction is to dial Ubuntu’s distinctiveness down to the point of irrelevance (aka ‘be as close to Adwaita as it can’) why bother at all?

Perhaps you’ve missed the entire “Please don’t theme our apps” drama. We are trying to be good open-source citizens - working with upstream. We didn’t give up our initial Yaru design to these Adwaita changes without grief, but the goal is maximum compatibility, rock-solid stability and low maintenance (for us downstream so we can focus on contributing directly upstream).

In general, I find that article to be very negative worded. Joey weren’t exactly subtle when sharing his own opinion about the light Yaru version here or in the previous articles. It is his site, so he is entitled to share his opinion, but it’s just so sad that this site is the source where thousands and thousands of people get their daily Ubuntu releated news.

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I read that article and I thought “OMG” :man_facepalming:.

It makes no sense to think the upstream Gnome volunteers are more legitimate “designers” than the Yaru volunteers and it’s incredibly disrespectful to write stuff like that in a blogpost. Regardless of whether he brings valid criticism, why does he think it’s ok to treat human beings like that? People who volunteer their time for a free product…

The whole reasoning also doesn’t make any sense. He’s bashing the Yaru theme and designers, but he’s at the same time “thankful” the original Yaru theme will stay the default? Or does he not understand Yaru light is actually ubuntu-colored Adwaita?

Don’t let this stuff get to you. You’re all doing amazing work, and it really shows in the actual user feedback.

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What’s wrong with this?

Ambiance
Ambiance1366×768 104 KB

This is the old Ambiance theme and Ubuntu Mono Dark icons on today’s Ubuntu Eoan installed few hours ago.

Screenshot from 2019-09-30 23-33-55
Screenshot from 2019-09-30 23-33-551366×768 188 KB

Was there anything wrong with that theme to kill it off? Nice looking Trash can, btw.

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Honestly people don’t know, especially companies that dark should be default

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In general his blog is great but this article was a bit infuriating, I agree, he even referenced one of the most negative and senseless threads here Maybe, it's time to drop the "Unity look" from default Ubuntu? as the kind of discussion that we have to had… While the real discussion is indeed ongoing in two or three much more focused and productive threads.

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If you think, people would come to Ubuntu just for the nostalgia for the Unity Look…especially the newcomers. Funny that you gave a link to that “senseless” thread!

Suru clones are nothing new in the Linux world. Had been there for years.

Using an unmaintained Desktop Icons extension by the original author as a system extension is also not going to help, which points to someone else’s extension in gnome-shell-extensions. The author names don’t match. This too is misleading. Install it in another distro and see what happens.

How nice to live in a world, where no one criticises!

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Hey I’m just criticising.

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He totally ignored the reason - openly discussed - about the rebase onto Adwaita. Once I got that, I realized it’s just an annoying post about what he prefers, not much interesting.

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Read the comments, not only what he writes.
What’s wrong with typical Ubuntuish Ambiance and Radiance, btw?

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I did

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So we go from being Ubuntuish to gnomish?
As Ambiance and Radiance are still good, there was no real reason to go full gnomish?

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@chanath you are, once again, totally off topic. Please stop derailing the thread.

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The question is about Ubuntu’s theme, so not off topic.
There was two standard Ubuntu themes, and I don’t see anything wrong with them. Below is the Radiance theme from 17.04 from April 2017. Quite nicely working on today’s Ubuntu Eoan.

Screenshot from 2019-10-01 16-01-34
Screenshot from 2019-10-01 16-01-341366×768 193 KB

So, was there a reason to drop those two themes?

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I already replied to this question, but since the topic is quite long and already discussed I linked the thread, which I link again

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Maybe discussed between some, but if the standard Ubuntu themes are still working, there’s no real reason to spend energy creating a new one, is there? Just to create a new theme?

Unity look and the Unity themes. :slight_smile:

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Discussed by many more than some. Again, read the thread, it’s all there, no need to ask again really.

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Because if this interesting argument you guys with OMG Ubuntu here, something good had come about;
while, both Adwaita and Yaru has problems with the gnome shell in Eoan, when working with the newer desktop icons extension, Ambiance and Radiance doesn’t. Drag and drop works to and fro from the desktop, without hiccups.

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Looks like we are going back the same path as the “Unity look” thread.

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Guys, please stop. This isn’t cool to be using this platform to bitch about people who have opinions and write about them elsewhere. If you want to comment on a post, go comment on the post, no need to turn this into a place to moan about other people or their opinions.

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