Hi design team -
So, obviously there has been a lot of discussion over the last few days about the desktop background in Fedora 15 and GNOME 3 but since there seems to be still a bit of confusion about it, I wanted to step back and try to write things down a little more formally and hopefully explain better why we'd like to do something a little different for GNOME in Fedora 15.
("We" here is basically the set of people who work to package up GNOME for Fedora - almost all of us combine upstream maintainership of modules within GNOME with work on making the Fedora desktop. For example, I'm the lead maintainer of GNOME Shell and the Mutter compositor upstream, and also handle gnome-shell, mutter, metacity, and several other packages within Fedora.)
GNOME 3 in Fedora 15 is a big deal. For perspective, GNOME 2.0 was released in June of 2002, and it was first shipped in Red Hat Linux 8. We started specific work on the GNOME 3 release in October of 2008, over 2 years ago. So, as you can imagine, there's a lot of effort being put in on the GNOME side to make a big splash about the GNOME 3 release and really do a good job about getting information out to people about what's new and exciting in GNOME 3.
Part of publicity about GNOME 3 is establishing an image in people's minds about what GNOME looks like. The GNOME 3 look has many elements ... the widget theme, the black top panel and status icon drop downs, the fonts we use, and so forth. One prominent part of the appearance is the background. (The background has a new functional role in GNOME 3. As well as being behind all the users windows, it also provides the background to the GNOME "Activities Overview". You can see how this works, for example, in the screenshot in http://blogs.gnome.org/fmuellner/2010/11/16/moving-forward/)
If someone reads about GNOME 3 and gets excited about it and wants to try it out, then they'll need to try it out within a Linux distribution There's no way to install and try out "GNOME" by itself. Quite a few different distributions will be shipping GNOME 3 this spring, but we expect Fedora to be one of the most popular, if not the most popular of those distributions. (Ubuntu is going their own way with Unity and will not be featuring GNOME 3.)
After going and getting GNOME on some distribution, the user blogs about their experiences or writes an article, we'd really like it if the focus was on what's new in GNOME 3 not how it was integrated and modified for one distribution or another distribution. Changing the background seems like a pretty minor modification, and functionally it is a pretty minor modification, but it is also a major visual modification. Suddenly a screenshot is no longer a screenshot of GNOME 3, it's a screenshot of GNOME 3 as modified for a particular distribution.
We want Fedora to be the showcase for GNOME 3 and to be a good example to other distributions about how to package GNOME 3. So, to go along with the release splash for Fedora 15, we'd like to make special request that for this release we use the GNOME background in the Fedora GNOME packages and hence in the default Fedora desktop.
I want to be clear that this is not in any way saying that we don't like the Fedora backgrounds ... the recent Fedora backgrounds are great, and keep on getting cleaner and more professional looking every release. The issue is rather a question of trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks, one per distribution.
To try and provide a few answers to questions that already have come up:
* Is this really just for Fedora 15?
Yes. The request is specifically to ship the GNOME background as the default for Fedora 15.
* Would the Fedora background be available for GNOME users?
Yes. The desktop background is a place for users to customize their desktop and express their personality ... there is no idea that we'd restrict that customization. GNOME will ship a varied collection of different backgrounds. Providing the Fedora design team's background as another option makes a ton of sense to me.
* Is the GNOME background really that distinctive?
A background that looked like nothing anybody had ever seen before would likely be a pretty strange background. So, yes, it's possible to find previously released backgrounds that are very similar. But that doesn't mean that the overall combination of visual features involved in GNOME 3 isn't distinctive and memorable.
* What about the rest of the artwork?
I think trying to adapt the entire set of artwork in Fedora to have different looks for different spins is probably more confusing then anything else. The GNOME default background matches pretty well with the Fedora look, so it's not going to be jarring to switch to it after seeing the standard Fedora artwork for boot.
* What about other desktops in Fedora?
We're not trying to say that there is anything fundamentally different about the GNOME desktop in Fedora than any other desktop; While we do think GNOME 3 is a special occasion for GNOME, every desktop should be able to work with the Fedora design team to figure out what makes the most sense for a release.
And while I think it would be a bit strange and confusing for other desktops to use a GNOME background as their default, there's no barrier for other spins to include the gnome-themes-standard package and depend on the /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/backgrounds/stripes.jpg if they want.
I know the desktop is a big part of the expression of Fedora's design personality and its a lot to ask of the design team to have something else as the default background for the default desktop for this release, but I think it is a distinct positive for the release of GNOME 3. And working together with upstream well is something that's fundamental to Fedora. So hopefully a lot to ask is not too much to ask :-)
Please let me know what additional questions and concerns you have and if we can move forward on this. Thanks!
- Owen
On 12/17/2010 01:54 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
We want Fedora to be the showcase for GNOME 3 and to be a good example to other distributions about how to package GNOME 3. So, to go along with the release splash for Fedora 15, we'd like to make special request that for this release we use the GNOME background in the Fedora GNOME packages and hence in the default Fedora desktop.
As I understood the opinions in the latest team IRC meeting, blog comments, mailing list discussions and direct contacts with community members, the general opinion is such a move would be detrimental to Fedora's own image and of little use for GNOME promotion.
I want to be clear that this is not in any way saying that we don't like the Fedora backgrounds ... the recent Fedora backgrounds are great, and keep on getting cleaner and more professional looking every release. The issue is rather a question of trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks, one per distribution.
Can you name at least one other *relevant* distro that will use the same background as default? Especially if they know this may be *our* default?
What about the rest of the artwork?
I think trying to adapt the entire set of artwork in Fedora to have different looks for different spins is probably more confusing then anything else. The GNOME default background matches pretty well with the Fedora look, so it's not going to be jarring to switch to it after seeing the standard Fedora artwork for boot.
Case in point: the GDM background would be the same as the GNOME background or as the general-purpose background used by all the other spins? Which one of the spins will have an inconsistent experience? The same about the Plymouth colors. We are supposed to use *vertical stripes* or not in GRUB, Anaconda, firstboot etc.? How about website identity?
On Friday, December 17, 2010 08:10:44 am Nicu Buculei wrote:
On 12/17/2010 01:54 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
We want Fedora to be the showcase for GNOME 3 and to be a good example to other distributions about how to package GNOME 3. So, to go along with the release splash for Fedora 15, we'd like to make special request that for this release we use the GNOME background in the Fedora GNOME packages and hence in the default Fedora desktop.
As I understood the opinions in the latest team IRC meeting, blog comments, mailing list discussions and direct contacts with community members, the general opinion is such a move would be detrimental to Fedora's own image and of little use for GNOME promotion.
I want to be clear that this is not in any way saying that we don't like the Fedora backgrounds ... the recent Fedora backgrounds are great, and keep on getting cleaner and more professional looking every release. The issue is rather a question of trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks, one per distribution.
Can you name at least one other *relevant* distro that will use the same background as default? Especially if they know this may be *our* default?
What about the rest of the artwork?
I think trying to adapt the entire set of artwork in Fedora to have different looks for different spins is probably more confusing then anything else. The GNOME default background matches pretty well with the Fedora look, so it's not going to be jarring to switch to it after seeing the standard Fedora artwork for boot.
Case in point: the GDM background would be the same as the GNOME background or as the general-purpose background used by all the other spins? Which one of the spins will have an inconsistent experience? The same about the Plymouth colors. We are supposed to use *vertical stripes* or not in GRUB, Anaconda, firstboot etc.? How about website identity?
I'm not against even making theme based on Gnome/KDE stripes - it should work for both Gnome 3 and other desktops and still retains our Identity. Gnome 3 would have stripes based theme but with Fedora feel there - win and profit for both projects!
Last time I proposed it, it wasn't accepted but still I think this can work. It could bring some "personality" to spins - to combine upstream themes with Fedora ones. But it involves much more work.
R.
Wow..... Just heard about this now. With all due respect, this is BULLSHIT. You are telling me you couldn't have told the team earlier? Maybe BEFORE we all started ramping up to do the F15 wallpaper? This decision must've been in the works for quite some time.
This is disappointing as hell. I had expected nonsense like that within the Ubuntu community, but not with Fedora. This would've been a chance to really set Fedora apart and create the best Gnome 3 experience everywhere in an open and transparent way. We've said so since the last GUADEC. That is what the Design Team is for. If we just dictate a wallpaper from up hight, that maybe transparent but it's not open. At least not in my understanding of it. And now this, out of nowhere. What exactly is the Design Team doing for F15 now? Why are we even there at all?
Sorry if this sounds pissed off, but that is basically the way I feel right now.
# Fabian A. Scherschel # Host & Producer, Sixgun Productions # Member, Fedora Design Team
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Jaroslav Reznik jreznik@redhat.comwrote:
On Friday, December 17, 2010 08:10:44 am Nicu Buculei wrote:
On 12/17/2010 01:54 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
We want Fedora to be the showcase for GNOME 3 and to be a good example to other distributions about how to package GNOME 3. So, to go along with the release splash for Fedora 15, we'd like to make special
request
that for this release we use the GNOME background in the Fedora GNOME packages and hence in the default Fedora desktop.
As I understood the opinions in the latest team IRC meeting, blog comments, mailing list discussions and direct contacts with community members, the general opinion is such a move would be detrimental to Fedora's own image and of little use for GNOME promotion.
I want to be clear that this is not in any way saying that we don't
like
the Fedora backgrounds ... the recent Fedora backgrounds are great, and keep on getting cleaner and more professional looking every release.
The
issue is rather a question of trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks, one per distribution.
Can you name at least one other *relevant* distro that will use the same background as default? Especially if they know this may be *our* default?
What about the rest of the artwork?
I think trying to adapt the entire set of artwork in Fedora to have different looks for different spins is probably more confusing then anything else. The GNOME default background matches pretty well
with
the Fedora look, so it's not going to be jarring to switch to it after seeing the standard Fedora artwork for boot.Case in point: the GDM background would be the same as the GNOME background or as the general-purpose background used by all the other spins? Which one of the spins will have an inconsistent experience? The same about the Plymouth colors. We are supposed to use *vertical stripes* or not in GRUB, Anaconda, firstboot etc.? How about website identity?
I'm not against even making theme based on Gnome/KDE stripes - it should work for both Gnome 3 and other desktops and still retains our Identity. Gnome 3 would have stripes based theme but with Fedora feel there - win and profit for both projects!
Last time I proposed it, it wasn't accepted but still I think this can work. It could bring some "personality" to spins - to combine upstream themes with Fedora ones. But it involves much more work.
R.
Jaroslav Řezník jreznik@redhat.com Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno
Office: +420 532 294 275 Mobile: +420 602 797 774 Red Hat, Inc. http://cz.redhat.com/ _______________________________________________ design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
Rgds, Caius 'kaio' Chance - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/user:kaiogg On 17/12/2010 9:23 PM, "Fabian A. Scherschel" fab@sixgun.org wrote:
Wow..... Just heard about this now. With all due respect, this is
BULLSHIT. You are telling me you couldn't have told the team earlier? Maybe BEFORE we all started ramping up to do the F15 wallpaper? This decision must've been in the works for quite some time.
This is disappointing as hell. I had expected nonsense like that within
the Ubuntu community, but not with Fedora. This would've been a chance to really set Fedora apart and create the best Gnome 3 experience everywhere in an open and transparent way. We've said so since the last GUADEC. That is what the Design Team is for. If we just dictate a wallpaper from up hight, that maybe transparent but it's not open. At least not in my understanding of it. And now this, out of nowhere. What exactly is the Design Team doing for F15 now? Why are we even there at all?
Sorry if this sounds pissed off, but that is basically the way I feel
right now.
# Fabian A. Scherschel # Host & Producer, Sixgun Productions # Member, Fedora Design Team
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Jaroslav Reznik jreznik@redhat.com
wrote:
On Friday, December 17, 2010 08:10:44 am Nicu Buculei wrote:
On 12/17/2010 01:54 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
We want Fedora to be the showcase for GNOME 3 and to be a good
example
to other distributions about how to package GNOME 3. So, to go along with the release splash for Fedora 15, we'd like to make special
request
that for this release we use the GNOME background in the Fedora GNOME packages and hence in the default Fedora desktop.
As I understood the opinions in the latest team IRC meeting, blog comments, mailing list discussions and direct contacts with community members, the general opinion is such a move would be detrimental to Fedora's own image and of little use for GNOME promotion.
I want to be clear that this is not in any way saying that we don't
like
the Fedora backgrounds ... the recent Fedora backgrounds are great,
and
keep on getting cleaner and more professional looking every release.
The
issue is rather a question of trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks, one per distribution.
Can you name at least one other *relevant* distro that will use the
same
background as default? Especially if they know this may be *our*
default?
What about the rest of the artwork?
I think trying to adapt the entire set of artwork in Fedora to
have
different looks for different spins is probably more confusing
then
anything else. The GNOME default background matches pretty well
with
the Fedora look, so it's not going to be jarring to switch to it after seeing the standard Fedora artwork for boot.Case in point: the GDM background would be the same as the GNOME background or as the general-purpose background used by all the other spins? Which one of the spins will have an inconsistent experience? The same about the Plymouth colors. We are supposed to use *vertical stripes* or not in GRUB, Anaconda, firstboot etc.? How about website identity?
I'm not against even making theme based on Gnome/KDE stripes - it should
work
for both Gnome 3 and other desktops and still retains our Identity. Gnome
3
would have stripes based theme but with Fedora feel there - win and
profit for
both projects!
Last time I proposed it, it wasn't accepted but still I think this can
work. It
could bring some "personality" to spins - to combine upstream themes with
Fedora
ones. But it involves much more work.
R.
Jaroslav Řezník jreznik@redhat.com Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno
Office: +420 532 294 275 Mobile: +420 602 797 774 Red Hat, Inc. http://cz.redhat.com/ _______________________________________________ design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
Hi,
I had not been contributing to Design Team ever (too rusted to do).
The request from Gnome team sounds logical to them and they have their right for their stand point. However, this is somehow a damage to the oss community imho. The top 3 things an user notice the differences as a distro are booting screens, window theme, and default wallpaper! I am not here to bring on the flame, but acceptance of this disminish our Fedora identity and our branding as well.
Rgds, K410
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:23:49PM +0100, Fabian A. Scherschel wrote:
Wow..... Just heard about this now. With all due respect, this is BULLSHIT. You are telling me you couldn't have told the team earlier? Maybe BEFORE we all started ramping up to do the F15 wallpaper? This decision must've been in the works for quite some time.
This is disappointing as hell. I had expected nonsense like that within the Ubuntu community, but not with Fedora. This would've been a chance to really set Fedora apart and create the best Gnome 3 experience everywhere in an open and transparent way. We've said so since the last GUADEC. That is what the Design Team is for. If we just dictate a wallpaper from up hight, that maybe transparent but it's not open. At least not in my understanding of it. And now this, out of nowhere. What exactly is the Design Team doing for F15 now? Why are we even there at all?
Sorry if this sounds pissed off, but that is basically the way I feel right now.
Can we cool down the rhetoric just a bit? That would really help this discussion be more constructive, so thanks in advance Fab.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that sketching had just begun for F15 wallpaper. Is this request undoing a really huge amount of work? For instance, I don't see any entries yet here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F15_Artwork
I'm not saying people haven't been coming up with good ideas! I'm sure there's a lot of excitement over creating a cool F15 wallpaper. What I'm saying is, as far as I can tell, the team isn't a mile down the road already, and being asked to double back.
I'm looking at the Design team schedule here: http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-15/f-15-design-tasks.html
According to the schedule, the "Design wallpaper" task just started three days ago. So it seems to me this request comes at a pretty good time, seeing as how that task lasts about three weeks. We just don't want to take all three weeks to debate and decide, then, right?
Personally, I really like the idea that Fedora is being asked to be the tip of the spear showing off the new GNOME 3. A lot of work has gone into it, and not just by people inside Red Hat, but by a wide community of free software contributors. I think Jaroslav mentioned that getting artwork to marry up might be a little more work. There are still splashes, GRUB, supplemental wallpapers, and other work to be done. But I also see there a *LOT* more contributors/ninjas on this team than we've had, say, a couple years ago! And for the first time we'll have a team lead who is 100% devoted-by-dayjob to facilitating Design team work for the *entire* cycle. So it seems doable, if the team wants to take on that challenge.
On top of that, I seem to recall that the Desktop Live image for F-15 was slated to be larger than CD-sized. If that's the case, with proper coordination between teams, why not look into having an entire set of supplemental wallpapers created by the Fedora Design team included in the Desktop Live image? I'm not sure we've ever included those by default before, but it would be a great way to let people further customize their Fedora desktop, out of the box and in a Fedora specific way if they want.
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.comwrote:
Can we cool down the rhetoric just a bit? That would really help this discussion be more constructive, so thanks in advance Fab.
That implies that there actually *is* a discussion. From what I've read so far, this "special request" wasn't a request at all and didn't sound like something that was really negotiable.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that sketching had just begun for F15 wallpaper. Is this request undoing a really huge amount of work? For instance, I don't see any entries yet here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F15_Artwork
I think all who worked on this so far were under the impression that we were working on the default wallpaper. Of course, this isn't undoing any work but I think it's a huge disappointment for the people who were working on this. I couldn't make the actual meeting but I was prepared to put a lot of effort into a wallpaper proposal, I'm not sure the arrangement that we have now warrants that.
According to the schedule, the "Design wallpaper" task just started three days ago. So it seems to me this request comes at a pretty good time, seeing as how that task lasts about three weeks. We just don't want to take all three weeks to debate and decide, then, right?
OK, let me put this bluntly: This "request", if it goes through, will take away maybe 80% of what the team actually influences in a release for the F15 cycle. At least that's my impression (keep in mind that I haven't been with the team all that long). You are basically asking us to put aside all previously established pratices on voting for the final default wallpaper among several wallpaper candidates prepared by the team and third parties. And who knows if this isn't going to be the way we'll do it from here on out? As much as I like Fedora's upstream policy, applying that to artwork is silly IMHO. Either that or having a Design Team at all is.
Personally, I really like the idea that Fedora is being asked to be the tip of the spear showing off the new GNOME 3. A lot of work has gone into it, and not just by people inside Red Hat, but by a wide community of free software contributors.
Nobody is doubting that. But does that mean we have to ship the default wallpaper? If we had known this earlier, maybe we could've been involved in the creation of that default wallpaper then.... I have been saying for ages that having a kickass Gnome 3 setup could be a really huge step in setting Fedora apart visually (something that is badly needed IMO) and I can't really see how shipping the default wallpaper in Fedora is helping Gnome Shell. If Gnome Shell is really defined by their wallpaper, we have a lot bigger problems than I though...
On top of that, I seem to recall that the Desktop Live image for F-15 was slated to be larger than CD-sized. If that's the case, with proper coordination between teams, why not look into having an entire set of supplemental wallpapers created by the Fedora Design team included in the Desktop Live image? I'm not sure we've ever included those by default before, but it would be a great way to let people further customize their Fedora desktop, out of the box and in a Fedora specific way if they want.
That sounds great, but it sure sounds to me like you're trying to appease the Design Team for having its biggest responsibility taken away. As I said, I have no clue when the idea to ship the default Gnome art came up or where exactly it originated but I think the whole Design Team should have been included in the discussion right then and there.
Fab
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 02:40:38PM +0100, Fabian A. Scherschel wrote:
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.comwrote:
Can we cool down the rhetoric just a bit? That would really help this discussion be more constructive, so thanks in advance Fab.
That implies that there actually *is* a discussion. From what I've read so far, this "special request" wasn't a request at all and didn't sound like something that was really negotiable.
I just read the post here by Owen and it specifically says "request." Anything else is reportage or inference.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that sketching had just begun for F15 wallpaper. Is this request undoing a really huge amount of work? For instance, I don't see any entries yet here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F15_Artwork
I think all who worked on this so far were under the impression that we were working on the default wallpaper. Of course, this isn't undoing any work but I think it's a huge disappointment for the people who were working on this. I couldn't make the actual meeting but I was prepared to put a lot of effort into a wallpaper proposal, I'm not sure the arrangement that we have now warrants that.
Again, we're considering a request, not responding to a directive.
According to the schedule, the "Design wallpaper" task just started three days ago. So it seems to me this request comes at a pretty good time, seeing as how that task lasts about three weeks. We just don't want to take all three weeks to debate and decide, then, right?
OK, let me put this bluntly: This "request", if it goes through, will take away maybe 80% of what the team actually influences in a release for the F15 cycle. At least that's my impression (keep in mind that I haven't been with the team all that long). You are basically asking us to put aside all previously established pratices on voting for the final default wallpaper among several wallpaper candidates prepared by the team and third parties. And who knows if this isn't going to be the way we'll do it from here on out? As much as I like Fedora's upstream policy, applying that to artwork is silly IMHO. Either that or having a Design Team at all is.
I'm not asking, I'm giving my opinion on a request that was made by someone else. I think it sounds like a cool opportunity to provide support for an upstream community of free software developers. Perhaps our decision might be influenced as well by whether Fedora gets any recognition for featuring the GNOME 3 release.
Are you saying that if the Design team doesn't provide the specific default wallpaper for every release, there's no point in having one? That seems like a really broad exaggeration to me given all the other things I've seen the team doing beyond just release artwork. I'm not saying wallpaper isn't important -- re-read my message and you'll see that I mean exactly the opposite.
It's precisely because Owen understands the visibility of the wallpaper that he went to great length to explain the nature of his request. So it's unfair to say anyone's not sensitive to that, because that seems to me to be the entire reason the request was made. I'd hope we're not becoming a team or project that has no ability to constructively address requests or find ways to promote great free software.
Personally, I really like the idea that Fedora is being asked to be the tip of the spear showing off the new GNOME 3. A lot of work has gone into it, and not just by people inside Red Hat, but by a wide community of free software contributors.
Nobody is doubting that. But does that mean we have to ship the default wallpaper? If we had known this earlier, maybe we could've been involved in the creation of that default wallpaper then.... I have been saying for ages that having a kickass Gnome 3 setup could be a really huge step in setting Fedora apart visually (something that is badly needed IMO) and I can't really see how shipping the default wallpaper in Fedora is helping Gnome Shell. If Gnome Shell is really defined by their wallpaper, we have a lot bigger problems than I though...
Check out Owen's request again to see if it helps clarify this. He indicated this is a one-time branding opportunity to help GNOME 3 with marketing their release, and specifically set out reasons for the request.
On top of that, I seem to recall that the Desktop Live image for F-15 was slated to be larger than CD-sized. If that's the case, with proper coordination between teams, why not look into having an entire set of supplemental wallpapers created by the Fedora Design team included in the Desktop Live image? I'm not sure we've ever included those by default before, but it would be a great way to let people further customize their Fedora desktop, out of the box and in a Fedora specific way if they want.
That sounds great, but it sure sounds to me like you're trying to appease the Design Team for having its biggest responsibility taken away. As I said, I have no clue when the idea to ship the default Gnome art came up or where exactly it originated but I think the whole Design Team should have been included in the discussion right then and there.
I'm not trying to appease anyone, I'm simply saying why I personally feel this could be a worthwhile one-time concession. Agree or disagree, but it's not necessary to attach conspiracy theories. I found out at the same time you did (well, later really, since I came into the discussion late, not being at the meeting, for which I apologize!).
And personally I think creating wallpaper is not the biggest responsibility for the Design team. It may be one of the most widely visible ones, but it's not the most important IMHO. I think the most important responsibility of the team is handling the many requests for design from the community that come up regularly, both connected to releases and for completely ad-hoc tasks. Those requests help Fedora contributors have amazing presence at shows, create cool displays, attract people to the project, and so forth. Wallpaper is part of that responsibility, traditionally, but I don't think it's the overwhelming majority.
On a completely separate note, I really dig the fact that the default GNOME wallpaper has a theme that's very Fedora compatible -- blue shaded and generally taking into consideration design principles from some previous Fedora releases. If it were really incompatible with what we generally provide, I might have a different opinion, but it's quite nice and seems like the kind of thing we might produce for a release ourselves. I guess for me that really tips the scales and makes this seem like an opportunity to collaborate rather than have a turf war.
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 4:49 PM, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.comwrote:
I just read the post here by Owen and it specifically says "request." Anything else is reportage or inference.
Is it? I wasn't attending the meeting but it really looks like it is being pushed through to me. I mean, honestly, who on the Design Team would be in favour of this and why? I strongly urge those who are to speak out. I am not saying this is a conspiracy, all I am saying is that it's against how I understood we've done things in the past and it takes away a big hallmark of the Design Team work for a reason that surely don't benefits the team members as design contributers.
It's precisely because Owen understands the visibility of the wallpaper that he went to great length to explain the nature of his request. So it's unfair to say anyone's not sensitive to that, because that seems to me to be the entire reason the request was made. I'd hope we're not becoming a team or project that has no ability to constructively address requests or find ways to promote great free software.
Maybe we as the Design Team should vote publicly on the request then.
Check out Owen's request again to see if it helps clarify this. He indicated this is a one-time branding opportunity to help GNOME 3 with marketing their release, and specifically set out reasons for the request.
How exactly is it that they need marketing? They will be the default in Fedora and the official future of the Gnome project. I can see how Unity needs branding and a marketing boost, but that's because they aren't the official upstream shell. Did people need to explicitely advertise Nautilus when Gnome 2 came out?
I'm not trying to appease anyone, I'm simply saying why I personally feel this could be a worthwhile one-time concession. Agree or disagree, but it's not necessary to attach conspiracy theories. I found out at the same time you did (well, later really, since I came into the discussion late, not being at the meeting, for which I apologize!).
Sorry, I really didn't want to make it sound like a conspiracy. It's just that they way Mo talked about this special request looked a bit odd in the IRC logs. Once again, I am sorry I couldn't be there and ask the questions in person at the time.
And personally I think creating wallpaper is not the biggest responsibility for the Design team. It may be one of the most widely visible ones, but it's not the most important IMHO. I think the most important responsibility of the team is handling the many requests for design from the community that come up regularly, both connected to releases and for completely ad-hoc tasks. Those requests help Fedora contributors have amazing presence at shows, create cool displays, attract people to the project, and so forth. Wallpaper is part of that responsibility, traditionally, but I don't think it's the overwhelming majority.
OK, we definitely have a different view of the team then. Maybe it is because I haven't been on board that long. All I know is that people outside Fedora think that's what we are doing... May be a communication / PR issue then.
Fab
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 23:42 +0100, Fabian A. Scherschel wrote:
Maybe we as the Design Team should vote publicly on the request then.
That's certainly one approach we could take.
How exactly is it that they need marketing? They will be the default in Fedora and the official future of the Gnome project. I can see how Unity needs branding and a marketing boost, but that's because they aren't the official upstream shell. Did people need to explicitely advertise Nautilus when Gnome 2 came out?
Nautilus and GNOME are not at the same level. GNOME 2 came out in 2002. It will be out in 2011. That's a big deal. The Linux and even computing in general environment is drastically different than it was in 2002. This is not the year of Linux on the desktop. It may never be if we don't try to reach a wider audience. This is what the GNOME 3 folks are trying to do. To make our < 1% of desktop users grow, to make software freedom more accessible to a wider range of people, to help make what we all work on matter more.
So, yeah, I do think they need marketing.
Sorry, I really didn't want to make it sound like a conspiracy. It's just that they way Mo talked about this special request looked a bit odd in the IRC logs. Once again, I am sorry I couldn't be there and ask the questions in person at the time.
How did I talk about it that made that impression? Can you help me understand?
OK, we definitely have a different view of the team then. Maybe it is because I haven't been on board that long. All I know is that people outside Fedora think that's what we are doing... May be a communication / PR issue then.
People outside of Fedora think we're going with the GNOME 3 wallpaper????
~m
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 12:23 +0100, Fabian A. Scherschel wrote:
Wow..... Just heard about this now. With all due respect, this is BULLSHIT. You are telling me you couldn't have told the team earlier? Maybe BEFORE we all started ramping up to do the F15 wallpaper? This decision must've been in the works for quite some time.
There's no secret cabal meeting a backroom to make decisions about how we configure GNOME in Fedora; just a bunch of developers with overfilled todo lists.
Obviously, the GNOME artists have been working on the look of GNOME 3 for a while and selected the stripes background months ago. But it was really only yesterday when we saw the notice for the sketching sessions for the Fedora 15 background process that we connected the dots and realized that couldn't be two things configured as the default background for GNOME 3.0 in Fedora 15.
I certainly apologize for not bringing this up earlier. We should have brought it up earlier. (But it's still pretty early in the process, too, right?)
This is disappointing as hell. I had expected nonsense like that within the Ubuntu community, but not with Fedora. This would've been a chance to really set Fedora apart and create the best Gnome 3 experience everywhere in an open and transparent way. We've said so since the last GUADEC. That is what the Design Team is for. If we just dictate a wallpaper from up hight, that maybe transparent but it's not open. At least not in my understanding of it. And now this, out of nowhere. What exactly is the Design Team doing for F15 now? Why are we even there at all?
Our general approach with the GNOME components in Fedora is to work upstream whenever possible. It's very seldom that there's a change that makes sense in Fedora that doesn't make sense upstream. So we try to just do the change upstream.
I think we'd see the art the same way; if the icons can be improved, if we can do a more attractive widget theme, then we should do that for GNOME.
So, I guess we haven't necessarily seen the need for a big process to design artwork for GNOME 3 in Fedora 15 that is separate from the normal flow to design artwork for GNOME 3. The GNOME artists are very friendly and open to people getting involved. You can find them on #gnome-art and #gnome-design on GimpNet.
Obviously, there's work to be done to coordinate the user experience for GNOME 3 and Fedora and make it fit together - at every level from how the websites interact on down. There's still a few months to make that happen.
- Owen
On Friday, December 17, 2010 03:44:37 pm Owen Taylor wrote:
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 12:23 +0100, Fabian A. Scherschel wrote:
Wow..... Just heard about this now. With all due respect, this is BULLSHIT. You are telling me you couldn't have told the team earlier? Maybe BEFORE we all started ramping up to do the F15 wallpaper? This decision must've been in the works for quite some time.
There's no secret cabal meeting a backroom to make decisions about how we configure GNOME in Fedora; just a bunch of developers with overfilled todo lists.
Obviously, the GNOME artists have been working on the look of GNOME 3 for a while and selected the stripes background months ago. But it was really only yesterday when we saw the notice for the sketching sessions for the Fedora 15 background process that we connected the dots and realized that couldn't be two things configured as the default background for GNOME 3.0 in Fedora 15.
I certainly apologize for not bringing this up earlier. We should have brought it up earlier. (But it's still pretty early in the process, too, right?)
This is disappointing as hell. I had expected nonsense like that within the Ubuntu community, but not with Fedora. This would've been a chance to really set Fedora apart and create the best Gnome 3 experience everywhere in an open and transparent way. We've said so since the last GUADEC. That is what the Design Team is for. If we just dictate a wallpaper from up hight, that maybe transparent but it's not open. At least not in my understanding of it. And now this, out of nowhere. What exactly is the Design Team doing for F15 now? Why are we even there at all?
Our general approach with the GNOME components in Fedora is to work upstream whenever possible. It's very seldom that there's a change that makes sense in Fedora that doesn't make sense upstream. So we try to just do the change upstream.
I think we'd see the art the same way; if the icons can be improved, if we can do a more attractive widget theme, then we should do that for GNOME.
So, I guess we haven't necessarily seen the need for a big process to design artwork for GNOME 3 in Fedora 15 that is separate from the normal flow to design artwork for GNOME 3. The GNOME artists are very friendly and open to people getting involved. You can find them on #gnome-art and #gnome-design on GimpNet.
Obviously, there's work to be done to coordinate the user experience for GNOME 3 and Fedora and make it fit together - at every level from how the websites interact on down. There's still a few months to make that happen.
Fedora is not Gnome only :) What about Gnome 3 Fedora Remix for Gnome demo version? Other desktop environments are using these approach - it's very easy to do it, everything can be rebranded but mention Fedora Remix somewhere :)
If not a Remix, I don't care if Gnome spin goes with non Gnome theme anymore - it's up to you, your responsibility, your choice Fedora or Gnome ;-) But we need then answer for other spins/old Gnome 2.x - are we going to prepare theme for F15 (looks like, I'd appreciate that, you guys here rocks!), or should we go to upstream wallpaper too (upstreams would be happy then ;-). But it's decision not only for F15 but F15+ - skipping from our, to upstream's theme, then back is not a good idea. Very inconsistent behaviour.
Jaroslav
- Owen
design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 16:09 +0100, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
On Friday, December 17, 2010 03:44:37 pm Owen Taylor wrote:
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 12:23 +0100, Fabian A. Scherschel wrote:
This is disappointing as hell. I had expected nonsense like that within the Ubuntu community, but not with Fedora. This would've been a chance to really set Fedora apart and create the best Gnome 3 experience everywhere in an open and transparent way. We've said so since the last GUADEC. That is what the Design Team is for. If we just dictate a wallpaper from up hight, that maybe transparent but it's not open. At least not in my understanding of it. And now this, out of nowhere. What exactly is the Design Team doing for F15 now? Why are we even there at all?
Our general approach with the GNOME components in Fedora is to work upstream whenever possible. It's very seldom that there's a change that makes sense in Fedora that doesn't make sense upstream. So we try to just do the change upstream.
I think we'd see the art the same way; if the icons can be improved, if we can do a more attractive widget theme, then we should do that for GNOME.
So, I guess we haven't necessarily seen the need for a big process to design artwork for GNOME 3 in Fedora 15 that is separate from the normal flow to design artwork for GNOME 3. The GNOME artists are very friendly and open to people getting involved. You can find them on #gnome-art and #gnome-design on GimpNet.
Obviously, there's work to be done to coordinate the user experience for GNOME 3 and Fedora and make it fit together - at every level from how the websites interact on down. There's still a few months to make that happen.
Fedora is not Gnome only :) What about Gnome 3 Fedora Remix for Gnome demo version? Other desktop environments are using these approach - it's very easy to do it, everything can be rebranded but mention Fedora Remix somewhere :)
If the team doing the default Fedora desktop switched and did a GNOME remix instead this cycle, who would do the default Fedora desktop? (I'm sure you'd be happy to switch the default to KDE for this cycle, but... ;-)
And how would we distinguish between the two different downloads when presenting options to the user? We'd basically be offering the user the choice between two different almost identical things because we couldn't come to a decision.
If not a Remix, I don't care if Gnome spin goes with non Gnome theme anymore - it's up to you, your responsibility, your choice Fedora or Gnome ;-) But we need then answer for other spins/old Gnome 2.x - are we going to prepare theme for F15 (looks like, I'd appreciate that, you guys here rocks!), or should we go to upstream wallpaper too (upstreams would be happy then ;-). But it's decision not only for F15 but F15+ - skipping from our, to upstream's theme, then back is not a good idea. Very inconsistent behaviour.
I don't think doing something different for Fedora 15 for GNOME and then not doing it for Fedora 16 is going to be that disruptive to the user. The backgrounds are different every release and the stripes background is within the realm of something that would make a plausible Fedora background. It's not a huge foot emblem sitting in the middle of the desktop, and it's even blue.
My suggestion to you guys if we go this route is really to keep the change as minimal as possible and proceed as normal with the other desktop backgrounds and the rest of the art.
Obviously if the art team feels its a waste of time to do a set of art when the background image in that art set is only an optional choice within GNOME then something else will have to be figured out, but it seems that there still is a lot of exposure to the art set elsewhere and on other desktops.
- Owne
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 11:01 -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
If the team doing the default Fedora desktop switched and did a GNOME remix instead this cycle, who would do the default Fedora desktop? (I'm sure you'd be happy to switch the default to KDE for this cycle, but... ;-)
And how would we distinguish between the two different downloads when presenting options to the user? We'd basically be offering the user the choice between two different almost identical things because we couldn't come to a decision.
Yeh unfortunately I kind of think such a spin would be hard to not dub the "political mess spin" and would likely be an embarrassment for us as a project :-/ I say this having worked with some of you on our new website download pages. It would *not* be an easy job to come up with the wording there.
My suggestion to you guys if we go this route is really to keep the change as minimal as possible and proceed as normal with the other desktop backgrounds and the rest of the art.
Obviously if the art team feels its a waste of time to do a set of art when the background image in that art set is only an optional choice within GNOME then something else will have to be figured out, but it seems that there still is a lot of exposure to the art set elsewhere and on other desktops.
It is also worth pointing out that our design will be visible in the default download behind GDM so it will get exposure in the default download besides syslinux / grub / anaconda / firstboot... Syslinux in F15 btw is going to look a LOT nicer :) I've been poking at it a bit http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/fedora-installation-user-experience-i...
~m
On 12/17/2010 06:01 PM, Owen Taylor wrote:
If the team doing the default Fedora desktop switched and did a GNOME remix instead this cycle, who would do the default Fedora desktop? (I'm sure you'd be happy to switch the default to KDE for this cycle, but... ;-)
Yes, if you do a remix, nobody will object on whatever branding you apply to it, as long as it is not our *default* download.
And how would we distinguish between the two different downloads when presenting options to the user? We'd basically be offering the user the choice between two different almost identical things because we couldn't come to a decision.
One is the default download, linked practically from everywhere and the other one is listed on the spins page, on the same level with everybody else.
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 3:44 PM, Owen Taylor otaylor@redhat.com wrote:
Our general approach with the GNOME components in Fedora is to work upstream whenever possible. It's very seldom that there's a change that makes sense in Fedora that doesn't make sense upstream. So we try to just do the change upstream.
I think we'd see the art the same way; if the icons can be improved, if we can do a more attractive widget theme, then we should do that for GNOME.
I appreciate what you are trying to do here, but to be honest, if I had wanted to work on the Gnome 3 look and feel I had joined the Gnome Design Team. As it stands, I have chosen to work on Fedora's design and you can't deny that you are trying to substantially neuter the impact of our team and of Fedora branding as a whole here...
So, I guess we haven't necessarily seen the need for a big process to design artwork for GNOME 3 in Fedora 15 that is separate from the normal flow to design artwork for GNOME 3. The GNOME artists are very friendly and open to people getting involved. You can find them on #gnome-art and #gnome-design on GimpNet.
Obviously, there's work to be done to coordinate the user experience for GNOME 3 and Fedora and make it fit together - at every level from how the websites interact on down. There's still a few months to make that happen.
So I guess what you're saying is that wallpapers should be upstream from now on and we should divert our attention elsewhere?
Fab
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 10:26 +0100, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
Case in point: the GDM background would be the same as the GNOME background or as the general-purpose background used by all the other spins? Which one of the spins will have an inconsistent experience? The same about the Plymouth colors. We are supposed to use *vertical stripes* or not in GRUB, Anaconda, firstboot etc.? How about website identity?
I'm not against even making theme based on Gnome/KDE stripes - it should work for both Gnome 3 and other desktops and still retains our Identity. Gnome 3 would have stripes based theme but with Fedora feel there - win and profit for both projects!
Last time I proposed it, it wasn't accepted but still I think this can work. It could bring some "personality" to spins - to combine upstream themes with Fedora ones. But it involves much more work.
In some ways, using the stripes background as the main Fedora 15 theme is attractive to me if the design team wanted to go that route. It gives good consistency and maximum impact.
But it also seems a bit weird. If we're making Fedora 15 all stripey to celebrate GNOME 3 being in Fedora 15, isn't it weird if you download the XFCE or KDE spins and don't get GNOME 3 and still see all the stripes?
I'm also expecting it would make it much harder for me to make my case for other distributions to also use the GNOME background as the default background.
- Owen
On Friday, December 17, 2010 04:48:00 pm Owen Taylor wrote:
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 10:26 +0100, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
Case in point: the GDM background would be the same as the GNOME background or as the general-purpose background used by all the other spins? Which one of the spins will have an inconsistent experience? The same about the Plymouth colors. We are supposed to use *vertical stripes* or not in GRUB, Anaconda, firstboot etc.? How about website identity?
I'm not against even making theme based on Gnome/KDE stripes - it should work for both Gnome 3 and other desktops and still retains our Identity. Gnome 3 would have stripes based theme but with Fedora feel there - win and profit for both projects!
Last time I proposed it, it wasn't accepted but still I think this can work. It could bring some "personality" to spins - to combine upstream themes with Fedora ones. But it involves much more work.
In some ways, using the stripes background as the main Fedora 15 theme is attractive to me if the design team wanted to go that route. It gives good consistency and maximum impact.
But it also seems a bit weird. If we're making Fedora 15 all stripey to celebrate GNOME 3 being in Fedora 15, isn't it weird if you download the XFCE or KDE spins and don't get GNOME 3 and still see all the stripes?
I'm also expecting it would make it much harder for me to make my case for other distributions to also use the GNOME background as the default background.
Other distributions already are doing it this way for Plasma Desktop! Even one based on stripes theme [1] - it does not work for us as logo is involved in design. So it should be much more easier to convince them to do it than just "throw away your brand/identity".
For more info, see [2], [3].
Quoting Pinoheiro - "We don't want to kill each of the distributions own branding, we want to share, I would not slap a KDE logo on top of your distribution logo, nothing like that. What we are after is creating something that is recognizable across the room something people can see as recognizable, a "hey that is pretty and I have seen it some ware else". I would do my best to keep a strong visual connection to the specific distro brand but in a way that one brand doesn't kill the other."
You can find it even in Design team mailing list archive.
Jaroslav
[1] http://ivan.fomentgroup.org/blog/2010/08/12/distribution-branding-and- stripes/ [2] http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2009/06/sharing-brand.html [3] http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2009/06/building-brand-together.html
- Owen
design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 09:10 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
On 12/17/2010 01:54 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
We want Fedora to be the showcase for GNOME 3 and to be a good example to other distributions about how to package GNOME 3. So, to go along with the release splash for Fedora 15, we'd like to make special request that for this release we use the GNOME background in the Fedora GNOME packages and hence in the default Fedora desktop.
As I understood the opinions in the latest team IRC meeting, blog comments, mailing list discussions and direct contacts with community members, the general opinion is such a move would be detrimental to Fedora's own image and of little use for GNOME promotion.
There certainly have been concerns and negative opinions expressed. My goal here is to as best as possible address those concerns and explain how this is important to GNOME and and a good thing in terms of Fedora and GNOME working together. Which I think is a good thing for Fedora.
I want to be clear that this is not in any way saying that we don't like the Fedora backgrounds ... the recent Fedora backgrounds are great, and keep on getting cleaner and more professional looking every release. The issue is rather a question of trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks, one per distribution.
Can you name at least one other *relevant* distro that will use the same background as default? Especially if they know this may be *our* default?
I'll certainly talk to the OpenSuSE and Debian GNOME maintainers and try to make convince them to make the same choice. I'm much more likely to succeed in that request if I have the support of the Fedora design team already lined up. And I really don't think how we configure our desktop should be held hostage to getting Debian to do the same thing. Fedora should be a leader here in working well with upstream.
What about the rest of the artwork?
I think trying to adapt the entire set of artwork in Fedora to have different looks for different spins is probably more confusing then anything else. The GNOME default background matches pretty well with the Fedora look, so it's not going to be jarring to switch to it after seeing the standard Fedora artwork for boot.
Case in point: the GDM background would be the same as the GNOME background or as the general-purpose background used by all the other spins? Which one of the spins will have an inconsistent experience? The same about the Plymouth colors. We are supposed to use *vertical stripes* or not in GRUB, Anaconda, firstboot etc.? How about website identity?
My proposal is is straightforward:
Once you select a user and log in to GNOME, you get the GNOME default background. All other artwork follows normal Fedora procedures.
While there are some mockups about how we'd like GDM to look like to match the rest of GNOME 3 (See http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-design/plain/mockups/static/user-sel... ) they aren't going to be implemented in this cycle, so there's already a visual transition between the login screen and the desktop.
- Owen
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Owen Taylor otaylor@redhat.com wrote:
My proposal is is straightforward:
Once you select a user and log in to GNOME, you get the GNOME default background. All other artwork follows normal Fedora procedures.
While there are some mockups about how we'd like GDM to look like to match the rest of GNOME 3 (See
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-design/plain/mockups/static/user-sel... ) they aren't going to be implemented in this cycle, so there's already a visual transition between the login screen and the desktop.
Hey, Owen!
Don't get me wrong, I love Gnome Shell, Gnome 3 and all the fantastic stuff you are doing! I mean this. But I can't support you in this. I really think this step is a huge mistake and it helps neither Fedora nor Gnome. I wish I could've been at the IRC meeting this week where this came up (there was absolutely no way I could've attended this week) and I would've said the same there.
I strongly believe distributions should be more than a collection of packages. They need their own visual identity. I think while Canonical pushes this way too far in one direction with Ubuntu, this move would push it too far in the opposite direction. Red Hat obviously knows this since I strongly believe there is no way they would give this up for RHEL. So why should we for Fedora?
Anyway, this is all just personal opinion and I am in no position to decide anything obviously. I just wanted to voice my concerns.
Fab
On 12/17/2010 03:40 PM, Owen Taylor wrote:
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 09:10 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
On 12/17/2010 01:54 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
I want to be clear that this is not in any way saying that we don't like the Fedora backgrounds ... the recent Fedora backgrounds are great, and keep on getting cleaner and more professional looking every release. The issue is rather a question of trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks, one per distribution.
Can you name at least one other *relevant* distro that will use the same background as default? Especially if they know this may be *our* default?
I'll certainly talk to the OpenSuSE and Debian GNOME maintainers and try to make convince them to make the same choice. I'm much more likely to succeed in that request if I have the support of the Fedora design team already lined up. And I really don't think how we configure our desktop should be held hostage to getting Debian to do the same thing. Fedora should be a leader here in working well with upstream.
With that you just invalidated your point above about "trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks", all this "using the upstream" make sense *only* if everybody that matters is doing it.
My proposal is is straightforward:
Once you select a user and log in to GNOME, you get the GNOME default background. All other artwork follows normal Fedora procedures.
So by default I get a GDM with vertical stripes and when choosing anything else than GNOME Shell (be it the classic panel or Xfce), the background image will change, while if I go to use the Shell, the background stays consistent? That's treating everything else as second-class.
While there are some mockups about how we'd like GDM to look like to match the rest of GNOME 3 (See http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-design/plain/mockups/static/user-sel... ) they aren't going to be implemented in this cycle, so there's already a visual transition between the login screen and the desktop.
So we make so much noise for an incomplete desktop. It look to me like GNOME 3 is not ready enough to receive such strong promotion.
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 15:59 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
On 12/17/2010 03:40 PM, Owen Taylor wrote:
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 09:10 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
On 12/17/2010 01:54 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
I want to be clear that this is not in any way saying that we don't like the Fedora backgrounds ... the recent Fedora backgrounds are great, and keep on getting cleaner and more professional looking every release. The issue is rather a question of trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks, one per distribution.
Can you name at least one other *relevant* distro that will use the same background as default? Especially if they know this may be *our* default?
I'll certainly talk to the OpenSuSE and Debian GNOME maintainers and try to make convince them to make the same choice. I'm much more likely to succeed in that request if I have the support of the Fedora design team already lined up. And I really don't think how we configure our desktop should be held hostage to getting Debian to do the same thing. Fedora should be a leader here in working well with upstream.
With that you just invalidated your point above about "trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks", all this "using the upstream" make sense *only* if everybody that matters is doing it.
The first two looks that I want to coordinate are the look of upstream - the look we are going to feature on gnome3.org when that launches. And the look of the distribution I care most about: Fedora. Hopefully that will provide a good basis to get other distributions to take take same approach, but I simply don't have a lot of influence over what Debian does.
My proposal is is straightforward:
Once you select a user and log in to GNOME, you get the GNOME default background. All other artwork follows normal Fedora procedures.
So by default I get a GDM with vertical stripes and when choosing anything else than GNOME Shell (be it the classic panel or Xfce), the background image will change, while if I go to use the Shell, the background stays consistent? That's treating everything else as second-class.
Please reread what I wrote.
(Note that the fallback mode of GNOME 3 which uses gnome-panel and metacity uses all the same components and configuration for background selection and display as the normal mode will have the same background.)
- Owen
Hi Nicu,
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 09:10 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
On 12/17/2010 01:54 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
We want Fedora to be the showcase for GNOME 3 and to be a good example to other distributions about how to package GNOME 3. So, to go along with the release splash for Fedora 15, we'd like to make special request that for this release we use the GNOME background in the Fedora GNOME packages and hence in the default Fedora desktop.
As I understood the opinions in the latest team IRC meeting, blog comments, mailing list discussions and direct contacts with community members, the general opinion is such a move would be detrimental to Fedora's own image and of little use for GNOME promotion.
So there's a few things to consider here.... for example, the GNOME marketing team is actually engaged in an effort to create a series of videos showing off different aspects of GNOME 3 for the launch (some details here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/Gnome3In30Seconds ... I saw one of the videos at the Boston Summit but I'm not sure where they are online, I'll look for a copy though - they are impressive!) If they use the default GNOME wallpaper, but we use a different wallpaper, there's a missed opportunity for shared materials there. E.g., we could use the videos (which are openly licensed of course!) as part of our website without having to modify them or re-shoot them.
It is true that KDE 4.5 shipped with a wallpaper that is strikingly similar to the GNOME 3 wallpaper, but I've talked to a few KDE users and it seems that it was not ever set as the default wallpaper for a KDE release so it doesn't have the same brand attachment to KDE that the GNOME 3 team is looking to achieve.
Another thing to think about is the larger struggle between upstreams' branding and downstream branding. GNOME 3 isn't trying to produce a desktop that shoves the GNOME foot in your face constantly and competes with the Fedora brand. The GNOME logo really doesn't appear anywhere. I think they are going for a more neutral look that won't override the distro branding leading up to the desktop, and won't confuse users over what they are using. This is in stark contrast to say the HTC Sense UI on my Android phone, which definitely had me confused for the first few weeks I had the phone. E.g., "is this a real Android phone? or is this some HTC knockoff? Whaaaaat?" You know it's not like we're being asked to put something like this in: http://julbgordo.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/nascar-vehicle.jpg
If we as a team choose to consider Owen's request, there won't be brand confusion between Fedora and GNOME - the Fedora brand will be strong from the website / DVD sleeve through the install and bootup process (Fedora splash graphics for the installer & firstboot, syslinux & grub... Fedora logo for plymouth) and when it gets to the desktop part it'll be neutral... not GNOME. Although I'm think the default webpage in the browser will be a Fedora start page too, so Fedora branding doesn't quite end at the desktop.
Finally I think another thing to consider this as an F15 request is that we will, as a result of GNOME 3 being released by default in Fedora first (freedom features friends -first-) get a lot of newcomers to Fedora, whether they're journalists or GNOME fans from other distros - so either way we decide we are going to get a big influx of folks who haven't tried Fedora before, and it's because of GNOME 3. It's a big opportunity for us as a distro.... it may be a decision point for a lot of users who have considering switching to us and would have a big reason to check us out. Since they are getting us, as Fedora, more attention, it seems quite reasonable to me to at least consider the GNOME 3 team's request.
I want to be clear that this is not in any way saying that we don't like the Fedora backgrounds ... the recent Fedora backgrounds are great, and keep on getting cleaner and more professional looking every release. The issue is rather a question of trying to provide a single look for the GNOME 3 release rather than a series of looks, one per distribution.
Can you name at least one other *relevant* distro that will use the same background as default? Especially if they know this may be *our* default?
What about the rest of the artwork?
I think trying to adapt the entire set of artwork in Fedora to have different looks for different spins is probably more confusing then anything else. The GNOME default background matches pretty well with the Fedora look, so it's not going to be jarring to switch to it after seeing the standard Fedora artwork for boot.
Case in point: the GDM background would be the same as the GNOME background or as the general-purpose background used by all the other spins? Which one of the spins will have an inconsistent experience? The same about the Plymouth colors. We are supposed to use *vertical stripes* or not in GRUB, Anaconda, firstboot etc.? How about website identity?
I asked Owen some very specific questions yesterday about this, here is what I learned about the proposal:
- The GDM background will *not* be the same as the GNOME background. It's going to be this team's (Fedora design team) design. When the user logs in with their username & password is when the switch will happen.
- We can ship the Fedora background by default (no additional package installation required... out-of-the-box is what we're talking here) and place it prominently in the background chooser capplet.
- While using the Fedora background for the GNOME 2 style fallback mode is actually a favorable idea (helps distinguish between the two modes), the way it is currently implemented makes this quite difficult because the same controls are being used for both modes. So this might not be possible but in theory it is an idea the GNOME 3 folks would support were it technically possible.
- We can absolutely design artwork for the rest of Fedora that is harmonious with the GNOME background. We can do this via color palette, meme (stripes, whatever)... it breaks the GNOME 3's visual identity goal to ship the same exact background with the other Fedora desktops but we certainly can work on a heavily-inspired-by version for our own wallpaper. (As we've started to do during the sketching session with the water trails idea.)
I had a lot of the same questions Nicu, and I talked to Owen about it yesterday so I hope some of this helps understand where we'd be if we do as a team decide to consider the request. It is absolutely our team's choice though as dictated by the Fedora board some time ago, and I'm very happy to see that being respected here. I will be quite candid with you and say that my initial internal reaction was quite similar to Fab's :) but the more we ask questions and get more of the story behind why the request is being asked of us, the more I understand why it is important for them and is an opportunity for Fedora and for this team in particular in developing better relations with upstream (an important characteristic of Fedora in general) and consequently our peers in other FLOSS projects.
Again, to reiterate - this is our team's call, it's our decision. Let's be fair and respectful and give it some serious thought. My first priority is to you folks, my friends, our team.... but there has been a rift between our team and the one making the request here and this is I think a good opportunity for us to have a better, friendlier relationship and really just make Fedora kick more ass through that relationship. It's supposed to be freedom, features, friends, first... not freedom, features, oh-no-not-you-again-grrr, first...
~m
On Friday, December 17, 2010 05:03:39 pm Máirín Duffy wrote:
Hi Nicu,
It is true that KDE 4.5 shipped with a wallpaper that is strikingly similar to the GNOME 3 wallpaper, but I've talked to a few KDE users and it seems that it was not ever set as the default wallpaper for a KDE release so it doesn't have the same brand attachment to KDE that the GNOME 3 team is looking to achieve.
Indeed, it's not default Plasma Desktop wallpaper - but of course - we can ship it if needed.
R.
~m
design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
Hi Máirín,
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 11:03 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
So there's a few things to consider here.... for example, the GNOME marketing team is actually engaged in an effort to create a series of videos showing off different aspects of GNOME 3 for the launch (some details here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/Gnome3In30Seconds ... I saw one of the videos at the Boston Summit but I'm not sure where they are online, I'll look for a copy though - they are impressive!) If they use the default GNOME wallpaper, but we use a different wallpaper, there's a missed opportunity for shared materials there. E.g., we could use the videos (which are openly licensed of course!) as part of our website without having to modify them or re-shoot them.
It is true that KDE 4.5 shipped with a wallpaper that is strikingly similar to the GNOME 3 wallpaper, but I've talked to a few KDE users and it seems that it was not ever set as the default wallpaper for a KDE release so it doesn't have the same brand attachment to KDE that the GNOME 3 team is looking to achieve.
Another thing to think about is the larger struggle between upstreams' branding and downstream branding. GNOME 3 isn't trying to produce a desktop that shoves the GNOME foot in your face constantly and competes with the Fedora brand. The GNOME logo really doesn't appear anywhere. I think they are going for a more neutral look that won't override the distro branding leading up to the desktop, and won't confuse users over what they are using.
IMHO this would lessen Fedora's visual identity a lot. Imagine you boot a F15 Desktop Live and what you see is almost pristine GNOME 3 desktop. Where's Fedora in it? Where's our own visual identity in it? Moreover, KDE shipped our wallpaper with the 4.0 release, why should we treat GNOME differently? Is it some new trend?
OK, so upstream wants to promote GNOME 3. I'm not a fan of gnome-shell (quite the contrary), but let them do it. But why the visual identity? It's the behaviour, the work-flow, the experience that makes GNOME 3 from end-user point of view, and it's the visual identity that makes our distro Fedora from end-user POV (among other things, but the visual identity is the first thing you see).
So in short, let's be *first* to ship GNOME 3 and let's be *first* to ship it with our own visual identity. We, the fedora design team, should be leaders in our area as well ;-)
Martin
PS: If majority would support us shipping default GNOME 3 wallpaper as our default in GNOME 3 "spin", instead of having it in prominent place in bg-chooser applet, I'd yield.
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 22:28 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
Hi Máirín,
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 11:03 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
So there's a few things to consider here.... for example, the GNOME marketing team is actually engaged in an effort to create a series of videos showing off different aspects of GNOME 3 for the launch (some details here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/Gnome3In30Seconds ... I saw one of the videos at the Boston Summit but I'm not sure where they are online, I'll look for a copy though - they are impressive!) If they use the default GNOME wallpaper, but we use a different wallpaper, there's a missed opportunity for shared materials there. E.g., we could use the videos (which are openly licensed of course!) as part of our website without having to modify them or re-shoot them.
It is true that KDE 4.5 shipped with a wallpaper that is strikingly similar to the GNOME 3 wallpaper, but I've talked to a few KDE users and it seems that it was not ever set as the default wallpaper for a KDE release so it doesn't have the same brand attachment to KDE that the GNOME 3 team is looking to achieve.
Another thing to think about is the larger struggle between upstreams' branding and downstream branding. GNOME 3 isn't trying to produce a desktop that shoves the GNOME foot in your face constantly and competes with the Fedora brand. The GNOME logo really doesn't appear anywhere. I think they are going for a more neutral look that won't override the distro branding leading up to the desktop, and won't confuse users over what they are using.
IMHO this would lessen Fedora's visual identity a lot. Imagine you boot a F15 Desktop Live and what you see is almost pristine GNOME 3 desktop. Where's Fedora in it? Where's our own visual identity in it? Moreover, KDE shipped our wallpaper with the 4.0 release, why should we treat GNOME differently? Is it some new trend?
I don't think that what was done for the KDE spin for KDE 4 has to be considered some sort of precedent - as far as I know the equivalent request was never made, and if the KDE SIG had made the equivalent request, I hope the the design team would have been open to it.
In general, the way we try to create the Fedora desktop is to create a great desktop upstream and then ship that in GNOME. So, in most ways the Fedora desktop is in fact pretty close to a pristine GNOME desktop.
I know that the tension between this approach and the desire of the Fedora design team to create a distinct Fedora visual identity is probably a sore subject, especially when it comes to theming and the switch from Nodoka to the standard GNOME theme.
But I want to be very clear that we're not trying to conflate together widget theme and background here. They are quite different - in the area of widget theme, GNOME is moving towards having only a single standard theme - it's very hard on application authors to have to make their application look good with many different themes. But the background is absolutely a point of user personalization. And it's a point of distribution customization as well.
We're simply making the request for this release, for Fedora 15, we not do that customization. Because we think that it will make the story we tell to the media and to the user about GNOME 3 and Fedora better and more compelling.
OK, so upstream wants to promote GNOME 3. I'm not a fan of gnome-shell (quite the contrary), but let them do it. But why the visual identity? It's the behaviour, the work-flow, the experience that makes GNOME 3 from end-user point of view, and it's the visual identity that makes our distro Fedora from end-user POV (among other things, but the visual identity is the first thing you see).
Visual identity is powerful. That's, in fact, why we care so much about the artwork in Fedora. If visual identity didn't matter, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Most of the time GNOME is pretty much inevitably something that fades into the background. If the user downloaded and installed something called Fedora the fact that a large fraction of the user experience is "GNOME" is just completely irrelevant to them. But with GNOME 3, we want a big splash; I think the thousands of people that contribute to GNOME deserve a big splash every decade or so :-) ... and that's much more effective if we can have a single visual identity for the GNOME 3 rather than a series of visual identities.
So in short, let's be *first* to ship GNOME 3 and let's be *first* to ship it with our own visual identity. We, the fedora design team, should be leaders in our area as well ;-)
PS: If majority would support us shipping default GNOME 3 wallpaper as our default in GNOME 3 "spin", instead of having it in prominent place in bg-chooser applet, I'd yield.
The reasons why I think a GNOME spin doesn't really make sense were explained in an earlier email.
- Owen
Hi Martin,
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 22:28 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
IMHO this would lessen Fedora's visual identity a lot. Imagine you boot a F15 Desktop Live and what you see is almost pristine GNOME 3 desktop. Where's Fedora in it? Where's our own visual identity in it?
Our visual identity would (if the proposal is accepted) be present on the website, on the DVD disc labels and sleeves, in syslinux, in the installer, in firstboot, in plymouth, and on the login screen. The wallpaper we design will be the default for GDM.
Moreover, KDE shipped our wallpaper with the 4.0 release, why should we treat GNOME differently? Is it some new trend?
I honestly don't remember the KDE SIG ever approaching us with this request. And honestly why would they? - they aren't the default download, so it's not up to this team, it's up to the KDE SIG what to do. This team, the design team, has purview over the default wallpaper in the default Fedora. Spins have always been able to change their wallpapers as they've liked, and we've even designed alternative wallpapers for them at their request (e.g., Education Spin and Security Spin.)
OK, so upstream wants to promote GNOME 3. I'm not a fan of gnome-shell (quite the contrary), but let them do it. But why the visual identity? It's the behaviour, the work-flow, the experience that makes GNOME 3 from end-user point of view, and it's the visual identity that makes our distro Fedora from end-user POV (among other things, but the visual identity is the first thing you see).
They believe the stripes is part of their upstream visual identity. To be fair, they are producing a lot of nice visual materials including videos that have the stripes - because as a DE they must remain neutral wrt distros, so they obviously cannot pick a favorite in choosing a wallpaper. They would like the visual identity then across GNOME-produced materials and Fedora materials and materials produced by journalists and other reviewers checking out GNOME 3 via Fedora to be consistent. This makes sense to me. After F15, it won't be as big a deal since all the hooplah will be over, so at that point we can go back to the standard operating procedure.
So in short, let's be *first* to ship GNOME 3 and let's be *first* to ship it with our own visual identity. We, the fedora design team, should be leaders in our area as well ;-)
I am unsure if we will be the first to ship GNOME 3. Certainly we will be first to ship it by default. I don't understand how we are being leaders in what you suggest here.
~m
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 20:23 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Hi Martin,
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 22:28 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
IMHO this would lessen Fedora's visual identity a lot. Imagine you boot a F15 Desktop Live and what you see is almost pristine GNOME 3 desktop. Where's Fedora in it? Where's our own visual identity in it?
Our visual identity would (if the proposal is accepted) be present on the website, on the DVD disc labels and sleeves, in syslinux, in the installer, in firstboot, in plymouth, and on the login screen. The wallpaper we design will be the default for GDM.
That's not what you see when you boot and log-in to desktop. When someone peeks around my shoulder he should be something like, "oh you're using fedora!", if I use default settings. Furthermore -- if the GDM and plymouth are different from wallpaper, we're breaking the smoothness in desktop spin.
I honestly don't remember the KDE SIG ever approaching us with this request. And honestly why would they? - they aren't the default download, so it's not up to this team, it's up to the KDE SIG what to do. This team, the design team, has purview over the default wallpaper in the default Fedora. Spins have always been able to change their wallpapers as they've liked, and we've even designed alternative wallpapers for them at their request (e.g., Education Spin and Security Spin.)
Spin authors have usually two options * use fedora visual identity * use spin-specific visual identity
I believe the "desktop" spins, i.e. Desktop, KDE, LXDE and XFCE, should fall ideally into the first category, while the others, which are usually thematic (like Security, Education, FEL), fall into the other category. However the final decision is always on the spin maintainers.
OK, so upstream wants to promote GNOME 3. I'm not a fan of gnome-shell (quite the contrary), but let them do it. But why the visual identity? It's the behaviour, the work-flow, the experience that makes GNOME 3 from end-user point of view, and it's the visual identity that makes our distro Fedora from end-user POV (among other things, but the visual identity is the first thing you see).
They believe the stripes is part of their upstream visual identity. To be fair, they are producing a lot of nice visual materials including videos that have the stripes - because as a DE they must remain neutral wrt distros, so they obviously cannot pick a favorite in choosing a wallpaper. They would like the visual identity then across GNOME-produced materials and Fedora materials and materials produced by journalists and other reviewers checking out GNOME 3 via Fedora to be consistent. This makes sense to me. After F15, it won't be as big a deal since all the hooplah will be over, so at that point we can go back to the standard operating procedure.
This makes perfect sense up to the first mention of Fedora to me.
So in short, let's be *first* to ship GNOME 3 and let's be *first* to ship it with our own visual identity. We, the fedora design team, should be leaders in our area as well ;-)
I am unsure if we will be the first to ship GNOME 3. Certainly we will be first to ship it by default. I don't understand how we are being leaders in what you suggest here.
Being the first community that is able to create and maintain a full Fedora visual identity.
Martin
On Sat, 2010-12-18 at 10:10 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
That's not what you see when you boot and log-in to desktop. When someone peeks around my shoulder he should be something like, "oh you're using fedora!", if I use default settings. Furthermore -- if the GDM and plymouth are different from wallpaper, we're breaking the smoothness in desktop spin.
Does this really happen to you though? To be quite honest, when I use my laptop at a coffeeshop in the Cambridge-Boston area (arguably a pretty tech-savvy area), I've either been asked, "Is that Linux?" or "Is that Ubuntu?" I have never been asked, "Is that Fedora?"
Since the wallpaper is blue and honestly not that different in style that the wallpapers we typically do, I can't see it causing much of a break with the other splashes, especially since we are aware of it upfront right now and can account for it in our designs.
Spin authors have usually two options * use fedora visual identity * use spin-specific visual identity
I believe the "desktop" spins, i.e. Desktop, KDE, LXDE and XFCE, should fall ideally into the first category, while the others, which are usually thematic (like Security, Education, FEL), fall into the other category. However the final decision is always on the spin maintainers.
But this is not a policy, and never has been. This team right now does not have that say. It would likely be up to the board to give us that. But it doesn't make sense according to what you said above, because if someone is using the Education spin at a coffee shop what are they going to say?
They believe the stripes is part of their upstream visual identity. To be fair, they are producing a lot of nice visual materials including videos that have the stripes - because as a DE they must remain neutral wrt distros, so they obviously cannot pick a favorite in choosing a wallpaper. They would like the visual identity then across GNOME-produced materials and Fedora materials and materials produced by journalists and other reviewers checking out GNOME 3 via Fedora to be consistent. This makes sense to me. After F15, it won't be as big a deal since all the hooplah will be over, so at that point we can go back to the standard operating procedure.
This makes perfect sense up to the first mention of Fedora to me.
Can you explain why you are confused? How does it not make sense that Fedora is not going to get more downloads and attention as a result of the GNOME 3 release?
So in short, let's be *first* to ship GNOME 3 and let's be *first* to ship it with our own visual identity. We, the fedora design team, should be leaders in our area as well ;-)
I am unsure if we will be the first to ship GNOME 3. Certainly we will be first to ship it by default. I don't understand how we are being leaders in what you suggest here.
Being the first community that is able to create and maintain a full Fedora visual identity.
I don't understand we've been doing that for a long time... what has it bought us?
~m
Why not do a trick. We can use default wallpapers from KDE, Gnome, XFCE and then use a script to put the fedora logo on the screen. Something like: http://catalin-festila.blogspot.com/2010/12/christmas-new-decor-script-for-y... The advantage is that we can customize how we want. If we want to go further, then we synchronize the script with a calendar on your desktop and can display images and text according to major events. Good luck.
Le samedi 18 décembre 2010 à 09:10 -0500, Máirín Duffy a écrit :
I don't understand we've been doing that for a long time... what has it bought us?
Máirín,
You underestimate the team achievements. The design work in recent releases is one of the things that made Fedora a mature distribution (as opposed to the early years of fumbling)
Thought I'd really love to see less blue and abstract designs. And the GNOME 3 proposal is overmuch both of those.
On Sat, 2010-12-18 at 17:04 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
Le samedi 18 décembre 2010 à 09:10 -0500, Máirín Duffy a écrit :
I don't understand we've been doing that for a long time... what has it bought us?
You underestimate the team achievements. The design work in recent releases is one of the things that made Fedora a mature distribution (as opposed to the early years of fumbling)
Thought I'd really love to see less blue and abstract designs. And the GNOME 3 proposal is overmuch both of those.
Oh I absolutely agree on that Nicolas. The thing I'm not sure we can say though is that we've gained 'coffeeshop recognition' or a growth in the number of users due to the integration of artwork across desktops. I think it takes more than that.
~m
On Sat, 2010-12-18 at 09:10 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
On Sat, 2010-12-18 at 10:10 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
That's not what you see when you boot and log-in to desktop. When someone peeks around my shoulder he should be something like, "oh you're using fedora!", if I use default settings. Furthermore -- if the GDM and plymouth are different from wallpaper, we're breaking the smoothness in desktop spin.
Does this really happen to you though? To be quite honest, when I use my laptop at a coffeeshop in the Cambridge-Boston area (arguably a pretty tech-savvy area), I've either been asked, "Is that Linux?" or "Is that Ubuntu?" I have never been asked, "Is that Fedora?"
Well, that's a bit of a problem. For many people linux=ubuntu... People who know fedora will usually recognize it by the wallpaper, or in the older releases with nodoka as well. I was at a scientific conference last week and I was pretty pleased to see a few people whom I could tell just by looking were using Fedora. With theme+wallpaper being the same for F15 as for say Debian and OpenSUSE, we down to "just some linux".
Since the wallpaper is blue and honestly not that different in style that the wallpapers we typically do, I can't see it causing much of a break with the other splashes, especially since we are aware of it upfront right now and can account for it in our designs.
Honestly, if I talk about the wallpaper in question specifically, I'd have to say it would be a rather big step backwards in terms of our artwork quality, and while it looks professional, it's over too simplistic, generic, non-catchy and retro looking (purely my personal opinion).
Spin authors have usually two options * use fedora visual identity * use spin-specific visual identity
I believe the "desktop" spins, i.e. Desktop, KDE, LXDE and XFCE, should fall ideally into the first category, while the others, which are usually thematic (like Security, Education, FEL), fall into the other category. However the final decision is always on the spin maintainers.
But this is not a policy, and never has been. This team right now does not have that say. It would likely be up to the board to give us that. But it doesn't make sense according to what you said above, because if someone is using the Education spin at a coffee shop what are they going to say?
I didn't suggest it should be a policy, just that it's a good-to-have. IMHO the thematic spins are beyond "just Fedora" to the point that they could have their own visual identity, maybe based on the general fedora look. Here the idea is not "oh, look it's fedora" but something along the lines "oh, it's FEL Spin, that's the cool thingie for engineers, based on Fedora!". In a way, thematic spins are downstream for fedora, while desktop spins are just a flavour -- you want, say, LXDE desktop on Fedora, so you go and download LXDE Spin instead of the usual one -- it's also a way to tell our users: "look we don't care about GNOME only, we also have teams of people dedicated to make KDE users happy too!"
What I'd like to say is that Spin maintainers are to decide what brand, what visual identity they want to promote -- their theme, or fedora, or some combination? And our team exists to help them achieve it (among other things). However Fedora goes beyond spins, there's also the traditional Installation DVD, people use applications from across all DEs at the same time. Using a pristine upstream visual identity for some DE would make some sense for a spin made with the exact purpose of following upstream in every aspect, something upstream could point their users to as a reference implementation. Not for a default flavour of a linux distribution. Or that is what I think.
They believe the stripes is part of their upstream visual identity. To be fair, they are producing a lot of nice visual materials including videos that have the stripes - because as a DE they must remain neutral wrt distros, so they obviously cannot pick a favorite in choosing a wallpaper. They would like the visual identity then across GNOME-produced materials and Fedora materials and materials produced by journalists and other reviewers checking out GNOME 3 via Fedora to be consistent. This makes sense to me. After F15, it won't be as big a deal since all the hooplah will be over, so at that point we can go back to the standard operating procedure.
This makes perfect sense up to the first mention of Fedora to me.
Can you explain why you are confused? How does it not make sense that Fedora is not going to get more downloads and attention as a result of the GNOME 3 release?
How I'm confused? How is a visual appearance a block for reusing a video? There's nothing stopping us from telling users: "look this is how awesome F15 looks and if you'd like to know more about the awesomeness of GNOME 3, which will shortly hit other distros as well, there're tons of videos on this project." We would have more attention if we were promoted on gnome.org, or just because we would use GNOME 3, not because we would use pristine GNOME 3 in terms of default look.
How does visual identity shared among distros help promoting GNOME 3? It certainly does not help promoting the distros -- when you can't tell them apart at first look, what the point to differentiate at all (yeah, I know I'm oversimplifying a lot)?
I don't understand we've been doing that for a long time... what has it bought us?
I believe Nicolas more-or-less answered this. But to broaden it a bit -- our artwork is not completely consistent across desktops. When you run a QT app under GNOME or vise versa it will still look out of place and not because of the difference of widget placing. What we've been doing these past few releases is just a tip of the iceberg, but we've improved a great deal. To the point that our team is well known (in a positive sense) in the linux community and that is something to be proud of.
Martin
On Sat, 2010-12-18 at 22:49 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
Well, that's a bit of a problem. For many people linux=ubuntu... People who know fedora will usually recognize it by the wallpaper, or in the older releases with nodoka as well. I was at a scientific conference last week and I was pretty pleased to see a few people whom I could tell just by looking were using Fedora. With theme+wallpaper being the same for F15 as for say Debian and OpenSUSE, we down to "just some linux".
Firstly, we don't know if other distros will do this. Certainly if we don't they're far less likely to consider it.
Secondly, there's a big difference between recognizing Fedora and recognizing Linux. If I'm in China, most of the people there will not be able to tell I'm from New York but they'll be able to tell I'm American. A world where 99+% of desktop users are either Windows or OS X users is essentially China, so asserting 'New York'-ness over American-ness (or Linux-ness, or even wider free-software-ness) is rather fruitless to have a noticeable impact and requires nuances most are not patient enough to listen to or care about. Since 2004 Fedora has had a distinctive visual identity of its own, and unfortunately it's just not all that recognizable in mainstream culture. This is just how it is.
Certainly if I'm in New York a portion of people will be able to tell that I'm from New York City, or more specifically, Queens (a borough of New York City), maybe even the particular neighborhood. And I think right now having 'coffeshop-recognizable' Fedora brand is really only going to impact a Queens-sized or smaller sized group of people. Why don't we try for a larger impact? With the technological landscape changing so fast today - especially with the influx of mobile devices and mainstreaming of cloud-based apps - staring at a 0.010mm section of our navel without looking up to see where we're walking is probably not the smartest thing we could do if we really care about the ubiquity of free software happening in our lifetime.
Honestly, if I talk about the wallpaper in question specifically, I'd have to say it would be a rather big step backwards in terms of our artwork quality, and while it looks professional, it's over too simplistic, generic, non-catchy and retro looking (purely my personal opinion).
So personal opinion on aesthetics here is probably not a useful thread of conversation, especially given that it is clearly a professional-looking wallpaper.
I didn't suggest it should be a policy, just that it's a good-to-have. IMHO the thematic spins are beyond "just Fedora" to the point that they could have their own visual identity, maybe based on the general fedora look. Here the idea is not "oh, look it's fedora" but something along the lines "oh, it's FEL Spin, that's the cool thingie for engineers, based on Fedora!". In a way, thematic spins are downstream for fedora, while desktop spins are just a flavour -- you want, say, LXDE desktop on Fedora, so you go and download LXDE Spin instead of the usual one -- it's also a way to tell our users: "look we don't care about GNOME only, we also have teams of people dedicated to make KDE users happy too!"
But you missed my point - on the one hand you want Fedora to look the same for recognition's sake, but on the other hand it's okay for over half the Fedora spins to not look recognizably Fedora. Why do you make this distinction, I don't understand? Because FEL has a specific purpose it's okay for you if it forsakes Fedora's identity? Spins with the Fedora brand are absolutely *NOT* downstreams... downstreams are 'remixes' which do not qualify to be called Fedora for specific & detailed reasons. The spins hosted on spins.fedoraproject.org are very much fully Fedora.
What I'd like to say is that Spin maintainers are to decide what brand, what visual identity they want to promote -- their theme, or fedora, or some combination? And our team exists to help them achieve it (among other things). However Fedora goes beyond spins, there's also the traditional Installation DVD, people use applications from across all DEs at the same time. Using a pristine upstream visual identity for some DE would make some sense for a spin made with the exact purpose of following upstream in every aspect, something upstream could point their users to as a reference implementation. Not for a default flavour of a linux distribution. Or that is what I think.
One thing we haven't discussed is how this proposal would, if accepted, affect the DVD download. I simply don't know.
People use applications from across DEs at the same time yes, but I do not understand this all-or-nothing visual identity point you're making and why it only applies to a default install. As has already been stated numerous times, this is a request from upstream to use the default upstream wallpaper - only the wallpaper, not replacing any other artwork - to mark the occasion of 10 years of GNOME development. It's a celebratory type of deal. Why everything else would have to be GNOME-flavored in your view I simply do not understand?
How then are we to explain to our users the difference between the default spin and this super-GNOME spin? "Oh, we don't get along with each other and decided not to do upstream a favor? Oh by the way, use Fedora! We work well with upstream, that's why you should use us over other distros?"
They believe the stripes is part of their upstream visual identity. To be fair, they are producing a lot of nice visual materials including videos that have the stripes - because as a DE they must remain neutral wrt distros, so they obviously cannot pick a favorite in choosing a wallpaper. They would like the visual identity then across GNOME-produced materials and Fedora materials and materials produced by journalists and other reviewers checking out GNOME 3 via Fedora to be consistent. This makes sense to me. After F15, it won't be as big a deal since all the hooplah will be over, so at that point we can go back to the standard operating procedure.
This makes perfect sense up to the first mention of Fedora to me.
Can you explain why you are confused? How does it not make sense that Fedora is not going to get more downloads and attention as a result of the GNOME 3 release?
How I'm confused? How is a visual appearance a block for reusing a video? There's nothing stopping us from telling users: "look this is how awesome F15 looks and if you'd like to know more about the awesomeness of GNOME 3, which will shortly hit other distros as well, there're tons of videos on this project."
You've got it backwards. GNOME is making the videos. If Fedora were to use them, it's certainly not a block, but it would look a little weird.
We would have more attention if we were promoted on gnome.org, or just because we would use GNOME 3, not because we would use pristine GNOME 3 in terms of default look.
Why would gnome.org have any reason to promote us if we do not provide some quid pro quo? They asked us for something first, if we say no we surely would be conceited to ask for something in return for nothing.
How does visual identity shared among distros help promoting GNOME 3? It certainly does not help promoting the distros -- when you can't tell them apart at first look, what the point to differentiate at all (yeah, I know I'm oversimplifying a lot)?
It absolutely would help in promoting GNOME 3. It would the other brands - Debian, SuSe, Fedora, etc. - out of the spotlight in news articles and would make it easier to focus on GNOME alone. It would give GNOME and that project's artists an opportunity to get a spotlight they have never had as distros for many, many years now have always plastered on top of their artwork.
I don't understand we've been doing that for a long time... what has it bought us?
I believe Nicolas more-or-less answered this. But to broaden it a bit -- our artwork is not completely consistent across desktops. When you run a QT app under GNOME or vise versa it will still look out of place and not because of the difference of widget placing. What we've been doing these past few releases is just a tip of the iceberg, but we've improved a great deal. To the point that our team is well known (in a positive sense) in the linux community and that is something to be proud of.
Yes, our team is well known for producing solid artwork, and I really don't understand how honoring a reasoned request from an upstream we could not exist without affects that at all.
~m
On Sat, 2010-12-18 at 18:48 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Firstly, we don't know if other distros will do this. Certainly if we don't they're far less likely to consider it.
That's my point. If no-one does it, it wouldn't affect us and it would do nothing to GNOME 3, be it for good or for bad. If we do it, we lessen our visual identity for one release to celebrate a major release of one of the major components of our default desktop. Will GNOME gain from it? I doubt it. When talking about gnome 3, no-one cares about wallpaper, everybody cares about gnome-shell.
Secondly, there's a big difference between recognizing Fedora and recognizing Linux. If I'm in China, most of the people there will not be
<snip> I don't think we're in a direct agreement here. I don't need random windows/mac people to recognize fedora, I'm fine with linux users being able to tell it apart from other distros just by looking. That's not happening if we and at least one another distro uses default gnome settings.
So personal opinion on aesthetics here is probably not a useful thread of conversation, especially given that it is clearly a professional-looking wallpaper.
Wasn't looking to start a thread on this, just a sidenote that in addition that I believe that "politically" I'm against the gnome wallpaper, I also consider it aesthetically less pleasing and modern than what we produced in past few releases.
But you missed my point - on the one hand you want Fedora to look the same for recognition's sake, but on the other hand it's okay for over half the Fedora spins to not look recognizably Fedora. Why do you make this distinction, I don't understand? Because FEL has a specific purpose it's okay for you if it forsakes Fedora's identity? Spins with the Fedora brand are absolutely *NOT* downstreams... downstreams are 'remixes' which do not qualify to be called Fedora for specific & detailed reasons. The spins hosted on spins.fedoraproject.org are very much fully Fedora.
As I said, or implied, to put it simply: if you do net/DVD install you have to, ideally, end up with fedora visual identity. Since the desktop spins are more or less shorthand for installing one of the DEs, along with a selected number of apps as set in comps, via DVD install, it makes sense for them to use the same visual identity.
Specific purposed spins might or might not want to have their own visual identity. It's up to them, but given their target audience it usually makes sense to have some customizations. Yes, it's lessening fedora visual identity, just like having our own wallpaper for DVD installs lessens GNOME visual identity. In that sense, these spins are downstream, even though they're still Fedora.
One thing we haven't discussed is how this proposal would, if accepted, affect the DVD download. I simply don't know.
But that's an important aspect to discuss!
People use applications from across DEs at the same time yes, but I do not understand this all-or-nothing visual identity point you're making and why it only applies to a default install. As has already been stated numerous times, this is a request from upstream to use the default upstream wallpaper - only the wallpaper, not replacing any other artwork
- to mark the occasion of 10 years of GNOME development. It's a
celebratory type of deal. Why everything else would have to be GNOME-flavored in your view I simply do not understand?
So do we want to directly help marketing GNOME 3 (which is IMHO dubious) or simply celebrate their major release? If it's just celebration, why wallpaper? If it's different reasons why only wallpaper?
How then are we to explain to our users the difference between the default spin and this super-GNOME spin? "Oh, we don't get along with each other and decided not to do upstream a favor? Oh by the way, use Fedora! We work well with upstream, that's why you should use us over other distros?"
No, no, you misunderstood. I don't imply we should ship to gnome spins. We should either ship in F15 gnome as pristine as possible or just do it they way we do it usually. Neither of these should of course affect other spins and IMHO also not DVD install.
You've got it backwards. GNOME is making the videos. If Fedora were to use them, it's certainly not a block, but it would look a little weird.
What's weird with pointing to upstream videos which use different wallpaper?
We would have more attention if we were promoted on gnome.org, or just because we would use GNOME 3, not because we would use pristine GNOME 3 in terms of default look.
Why would gnome.org have any reason to promote us if we do not provide some quid pro quo? They asked us for something first, if we say no we surely would be conceited to ask for something in return for nothing.
Either we're shipping F15 Desktop Spin as close to upstream gnome as possible and thus doing a favour to them and so they promote our desktop spin on their page as suggested download of Gnome 3 (or something along these lines), or we do it like we usually do and they don't promote us either. But it would be the promotion on gnome.org (along with the fact that we're shipping gnome 3 by default), not the fact that we're almost canonical implementation of gnome 3 that would gain us more attention. Sorry that I worded it bad.
How does visual identity shared among distros help promoting GNOME 3? It certainly does not help promoting the distros -- when you can't tell them apart at first look, what the point to differentiate at all (yeah, I know I'm oversimplifying a lot)?
It absolutely would help in promoting GNOME 3. It would the other brands
- Debian, SuSe, Fedora, etc. - out of the spotlight in news articles and
would make it easier to focus on GNOME alone. It would give GNOME and that project's artists an opportunity to get a spotlight they have never had as distros for many, many years now have always plastered on top of their artwork.
While this is probably true about gnome artists, I don't believe it would have direct impact on the project as a whole. All the headlines will be the same anyways: "Fedora 15 Delivers the Long Awaited GNOME 3", "Fedora 15: Desktop Redefined", etc.
Yes, our team is well known for producing solid artwork, and I really don't understand how honoring a reasoned request from an upstream we could not exist without affects that at all.
Minds of people don't work this easily. See just the amount of negative reactions here on list (not big, but still present). People will notice that we have failed to produce artwork for F15 that could "beat" the stripes, not that we honored a reasoned request. And those that will notice that it was on a request will ask how big the project must be for us to honor their request. Do we have special dealings with GNOME, or will we grant such request to other DEs? How frequent will that be? Is fedora-design-team going to be squashed by other teams?
Martin
PS: I think we should slowly kill this thread, I'm running "out of ammo", your arguments also haven't been strong enough to make me change my mind and I wouldn't want to make this into a flame...
On Sun, 2010-12-19 at 02:16 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
No, no, you misunderstood. I don't imply we should ship to gnome spins. We should either ship in F15 gnome as pristine as possible or just do it they way we do it usually. Neither of these should of course affect other spins and IMHO also not DVD install.
Why? Again, you are proposing this all or nothing thinking and I completely do not understand it. Can you please explain?
PS: I think we should slowly kill this thread, I'm running "out of ammo", your arguments also haven't been strong enough to make me change my mind and I wouldn't want to make this into a flame...
We have to make a decision.
~m
On 12/19/2010 02:34 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
On Sun, 2010-12-19 at 02:16 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
PS: I think we should slowly kill this thread, I'm running "out of ammo", your arguments also haven't been strong enough to make me change my mind and I wouldn't want to make this into a flame...
We have to make a decision.
~m
Then lets vote on it
On Sun, 2010-12-19 at 02:38 +0100, Onyeibo Oku wrote:
Then lets vote on it
Should we go by FAS design group membership? Meeting attendance? Ticket completions?
I think maybe some key contributors aren't in the relatively new design group. Please check FAS now at http://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts and make sure you're in the 'design' group. If you are not, please contact me - don't apply - and I'll add you.
~m
On Sat, 2010-12-18 at 20:55 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Please check FAS now at http://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts and make sure you're in the 'design' group. If you are not, please contact me - don't apply - and I'll add you.
(after a flood of emails requesting membership)
Please note now is a *really* bad time to test the boundaries/limit of design team membership. We have a solid crew of folks who show up each week and help make things happen. This is not an invitation for a free-for-all. This is just for folks who do show up on a regular basis to the team meetings or otherwise participate on a regular basis but who may have not moved their membership over from the old art group or forgot to request membership after their initial task.
We saw a sudden never-seen-before heightened interest in joining the team the last time we had a vote (for one of the wallpapers, maybe F10.) I really hope folks will be responsible and respectful this time.
~m
Hi All,
2010/12/18 Máirín Duffy duffy@fedoraproject.org
On Sun, 2010-12-19 at 02:16 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
No, no, you misunderstood. I don't imply we should ship to gnome spins. We should either ship in F15 gnome as pristine as possible or just do it they way we do it usually. Neither of these should of course affect other spins and IMHO also not DVD install.
Why? Again, you are proposing this all or nothing thinking and I completely do not understand it. Can you please explain?
PS: I think we should slowly kill this thread, I'm running "out of ammo", your arguments also haven't been strong enough to make me change my mind and I wouldn't want to make this into a flame...
We have to make a decision.
~m
I think that the Fedora Project is in a good spot here in that the default Gnome3 wallpaper is a shade of blue that coincides nicely with the colors that Fedora uses anyway.
The same cannot be said of OpenSUSE, though.
Given the hubbub that is in Fedora where there isn't really a conflict of colors, but other distros would likely have a conflict with the colors, would upstream Gnome be willing to compromise on this? Would upstream be willing to allow distros to create stripe-based wallpapers that include the same design pattern, same degree of saturation, same texture, etc., but use different distro-specific colors? After all, could we really expect OpenSUSE to ship a blue theme? So much of their artwork (website, icon set, metacity theme, etc.) is green. And I have never seen a blue gecko. : (
If we were able get a compromise like this, I think that there would be greater likelihood of buy-in from the various the distros. They would be representing and celebrating Gnome, but would retain key portions of their own distro "self." Perhaps even Ubuntu would be willing to ship an aubergine stripe-based theme as part of their wallpaper set (though, of course, not as their default, as they are using Unity).
This could also potentially benefit Gnome, as they could do something like, "Different Colors, One Gnome," or something like that. The Gnome brand identity could be visible in the stripes, while the distros get their identity in the colors.
Jim
P.S. Yes, I am new to this list. I contribute documentation to Xfce and Xubuntu, but subscribe here because the Fedora art team rocks. : )
On 12/19/2010 03:02 AM, Jim Campbell wrote:
Hi All,
2010/12/18 Máirín Duffy <duffy@fedoraproject.org mailto:duffy@fedoraproject.org>
On Sun, 2010-12-19 at 02:16 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote: > No, no, you misunderstood. I don't imply we should ship to gnome spins. > We should either ship in F15 gnome as pristine as possible or just do it > they way we do it usually. Neither of these should of course affect > other spins and IMHO also not DVD install. Why? Again, you are proposing this all or nothing thinking and I completely do not understand it. Can you please explain? > PS: I think we should slowly kill this thread, I'm running "out of > ammo", your arguments also haven't been strong enough to make me change > my mind and I wouldn't want to make this into a flame... We have to make a decision. ~mI think that the Fedora Project is in a good spot here in that the default Gnome3 wallpaper is a shade of blue that coincides nicely with the colors that Fedora uses anyway.
The same cannot be said of OpenSUSE, though.
Given the hubbub that is in Fedora where there isn't really a conflict of colors, but other distros would likely have a conflict with the colors, would upstream Gnome be willing to compromise on this? Would upstream be willing to allow distros to create stripe-based wallpapers that include the same design pattern, same degree of saturation, same texture, etc., but use different distro-specific colors? After all, could we really expect OpenSUSE to ship a blue theme? So much of their artwork (website, icon set, metacity theme, etc.) is green. And I have never seen a blue gecko. : (
If we were able get a compromise like this, I think that there would be greater likelihood of buy-in from the various the distros. They would be representing and celebrating Gnome, but would retain key portions of their own distro "self." Perhaps even Ubuntu would be willing to ship an aubergine stripe-based theme as part of their wallpaper set (though, of course, not as their default, as they are using Unity).
This could also potentially benefit Gnome, as they could do something like, "Different Colors, One Gnome," or something like that. The Gnome brand identity could be visible in the stripes, while the distros get their identity in the colors.
Jim
That's what I thought too
On Sat, 2010-12-18 at 20:34 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
On Sun, 2010-12-19 at 02:16 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
No, no, you misunderstood. I don't imply we should ship to gnome spins. We should either ship in F15 gnome as pristine as possible or just do it they way we do it usually. Neither of these should of course affect other spins and IMHO also not DVD install.
Why? Again, you are proposing this all or nothing thinking and I completely do not understand it. Can you please explain?
Because I don't understand at all why change only the wallpaper. How does that help anyone. It's like doing something half-heartedly to me.
PS: I think we should slowly kill this thread, I'm running "out of ammo", your arguments also haven't been strong enough to make me change my mind and I wouldn't want to make this into a flame...
We have to make a decision.
Agreed. Seems to me like vote is the best option (probably FAS based as not everyone has time to attend an IRC meeting). As I already said, while I'm personally against granting this request, I wouldn't mind granting it if majority of our team is for it.
On Saturday, December 18, 2010 02:23:52 am Máirín Duffy wrote:
Hi Martin,
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 22:28 +0100, Martin Sourada wrote:
IMHO this would lessen Fedora's visual identity a lot. Imagine you boot a F15 Desktop Live and what you see is almost pristine GNOME 3 desktop. Where's Fedora in it? Where's our own visual identity in it?
Our visual identity would (if the proposal is accepted) be present on the website, on the DVD disc labels and sleeves, in syslinux, in the installer, in firstboot, in plymouth, and on the login screen. The wallpaper we design will be the default for GDM.
Moreover,
KDE shipped our wallpaper with the 4.0 release, why should we treat GNOME differently? Is it some new trend?
I honestly don't remember the KDE SIG ever approaching us with this request. And honestly why would they? - they aren't the default download, so it's not up to this team, it's up to the KDE SIG what to do. This team, the design team, has purview over the default wallpaper in the default Fedora. Spins have always been able to change their wallpapers as they've liked, and we've even designed alternative wallpapers for them at their request (e.g., Education Spin and Security Spin.)
Actually I asked for something I proposed here - KDE was in the same situation one year ago... And I still think it's a good idea - to merge upstream/downstream branding - it would work best for both Gnome and KDE, it's long-term solution etc. I'll try to write down the proposal.
But you said it - Gnome spin is now the default one - we should take care about our jewel.
R.
OK, so upstream wants to promote GNOME 3. I'm not a fan of gnome-shell (quite the contrary), but let them do it. But why the visual identity? It's the behaviour, the work-flow, the experience that makes GNOME 3 from end-user point of view, and it's the visual identity that makes our distro Fedora from end-user POV (among other things, but the visual identity is the first thing you see).
They believe the stripes is part of their upstream visual identity. To be fair, they are producing a lot of nice visual materials including videos that have the stripes - because as a DE they must remain neutral wrt distros, so they obviously cannot pick a favorite in choosing a wallpaper. They would like the visual identity then across GNOME-produced materials and Fedora materials and materials produced by journalists and other reviewers checking out GNOME 3 via Fedora to be consistent. This makes sense to me. After F15, it won't be as big a deal since all the hooplah will be over, so at that point we can go back to the standard operating procedure.
So in short, let's be *first* to ship GNOME 3 and let's be *first* to ship it with our own visual identity. We, the fedora design team, should be leaders in our area as well ;-)
I am unsure if we will be the first to ship GNOME 3. Certainly we will be first to ship it by default. I don't understand how we are being leaders in what you suggest here.
~m
design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
On Mon, 2010-12-20 at 10:02 +0100, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
Actually I asked for something I proposed here - KDE was in the same situation one year ago... And I still think it's a good idea - to merge upstream/downstream branding - it would work best for both Gnome and KDE, it's long-term solution etc. I'll try to write down the proposal.
Did you ask here, in the design team? Can you find it in the archives? I looked... you mentioned it was in the archives at some point but I could not find it.
~m
On Monday, December 20, 2010 05:46:17 pm Máirín Duffy wrote:
On Mon, 2010-12-20 at 10:02 +0100, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
Actually I asked for something I proposed here - KDE was in the same situation one year ago... And I still think it's a good idea - to merge upstream/downstream branding - it would work best for both Gnome and KDE, it's long-term solution etc. I'll try to write down the proposal.
Did you ask here, in the design team? Can you find it in the archives? I looked... you mentioned it was in the archives at some point but I could not find it.
Just as a reference, The History... http://www.mail-archive.com/design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org/msg00226.htm...
I expected Gnome will join one day ;-) And I completely understand upstreams - they want their identity, their brand, we can hide them very well. Actually Fedora hides Gnome very well, I'm trying to convince KDE SIG to hide KDE as much as possible :)
The Future But I think - this is the only way how we can live together with upstreams under the same roof. There are several advantages - it would be much more easier for Owen to convince other distros to go this way - as other distros already took this path with Plasma branding (check OpenSUSE wallpapers for example), it's going to work for Fedora, Gnome, KDE, whatever -> win, it's a long term solution (not only F15, someDE release etc). Of course - there are few cons - it's not easy to find the way how to combine downstream/upstream wallpapers. But on the other hand - both Shell and Plasma use desktop in a different way. Now wallpapers are more visible but should not distract from task - are more backgrounds than something nice on your desktop. This means - our wp should be more clean, simple (not without idea!!!) and it should work - to combine it with upstream (again - clean, simple designs). And it's a nice junior job for beginners here :)
R.
~m
design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
Just a few points I wanted to get across after reading my backlog in this thread:
1) Fedora's branding, IMHO, isn't close to strong enough. Compared to Ubuntu we suck in this department. So I see no reason to weaken it further at all. Mo is right, we do NOT have coffee shop recognition but that doesn't mean we should give up, bend over (as Nicu put it) and surrender our efforts - even if it's only for one release. What we NEED to do, is strengthen our branding and work harder. That is why I believe we should reject this proposal.
2) I strongly believe this move won't help Gnome. I love what they are doing with Shell and Gnome 3 but I think they are badly mistaken in thinking that establishing a default look via a wallpaper (of all things) across their different distribution channels will strengthen their brand. Gnome is a desktop, it doesn't have need for a brand in this respect. What they need is rock-solid software with awesome features (just think of the Zeitgeist mess for a second) and a well-planned release. If they spend their time and energy on that it will benefit them a lot more than us shipping their default wallpaper. If the time we wasted with this decision would have been spend on hacking on or thinking about Shell, we and they would already be better off.
3) What Fedora needs most of all is more end-user focus, IMO. I love the upstream work we are doing, but the areas we need to improve is UI polish, marketing and quality control. The first two things are areas where we in the design team can help. We need to develop a strong visual brand that the Marketing Team can use to propel us to a place on the desktop alongside people like Ubuntu. We are technically better, let's also be better in the other areas too!
Sorry for wasting even more of people's time, but I had to get this off my chest.
Fab
On 12/21/2010 05:09 PM, Fabian A. Scherschel wrote:
Just a few points I wanted to get across after reading my backlog in this thread:
- Fedora's branding, IMHO, isn't close to strong enough. Compared to
Ubuntu we suck in this department. So I see no reason to weaken it further at all. Mo is right, we do NOT have coffee shop recognition but that doesn't mean we should give up, bend over (as Nicu put it) and surrender our efforts - even if it's only for one release. What we NEED to do, is strengthen our branding and work harder. That is why I believe we should reject this proposal.
The truth is, is was our deliberate decision to make the branding soft to encourage the re-use of our artwork and derivatives. It was also made to avoid possible trademark problems.
- I strongly believe this move won't help Gnome. I love what they are
doing with Shell and Gnome 3 but I think they are badly mistaken in thinking that establishing a default look via a wallpaper (of all things) across their different distribution channels will strengthen their brand. Gnome is a desktop, it doesn't have need for a brand in this respect. What they need is rock-solid software with awesome features (just think of the Zeitgeist mess for a second) and a well-planned release. If they spend their time and energy on that it will benefit them a lot more than us shipping their default wallpaper. If the time we wasted with this decision would have been spend on hacking on or thinking about Shell, we and they would already be better off.
GNOME is just one piece from the Fedora Desktop (and the Fedora OS for that matters). X.org is another piece, Firefox is another piece and so on.
- What Fedora needs most of all is more end-user focus, IMO. I love the
upstream work we are doing, but the areas we need to improve is UI polish, marketing and quality control. The first two things are areas where we in the design team can help. We need to develop a strong visual brand that the Marketing Team can use to propel us to a place on the desktop alongside people like Ubuntu. We are technically better, let's also be better in the other areas too!
Fully agreed, our desktop is full of flaws and deliberated regressions... in F14 I can't even set my desktop wallpaper to be used ad default, also in GDM???
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Nicu Buculei nicu_fedora@nicubunu.rowrote:
The truth is, is was our deliberate decision to make the branding soft to encourage the re-use of our artwork and derivatives. It was also made to avoid possible trademark problems.
Yes, I know. I believe that was a mistake, but what's done is done. Also, I'm not criticising you for stuff that happened when I wasn't aboard, that would be quite inappropriate.
GNOME is just one piece from the Fedora Desktop (and the Fedora OS for that matters). X.org is another piece, Firefox is another piece and so on.
Yes, a very good point. Gnome *is* a huge part, but still, we have to consider where this could lead to down the road.
Fab
Good point Fab with :"where this could lead to down the road." Gnome is just one desktop environment. Gnome team seems serious. There are other desktop environment, why not have taken the position of Gnome? Will come on April and will have some features, this is clear . What could happen? It's an opportunity? I say it's nothing to lose.
2010/12/21 Fabian A. Scherschel fab@sixgun.org:
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Nicu Buculei nicu_fedora@nicubunu.ro wrote:
The truth is, is was our deliberate decision to make the branding soft to encourage the re-use of our artwork and derivatives. It was also made to avoid possible trademark problems.
Yes, I know. I believe that was a mistake, but what's done is done. Also, I'm not criticising you for stuff that happened when I wasn't aboard, that would be quite inappropriate.
GNOME is just one piece from the Fedora Desktop (and the Fedora OS for that matters). X.org is another piece, Firefox is another piece and so on.
Yes, a very good point. Gnome *is* a huge part, but still, we have to consider where this could lead to down the road.
Fab _______________________________________________ design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
Martin Sourada (martin.sourada@gmail.com) said:
So in short, let's be *first* to ship GNOME 3 and let's be *first* to ship it with our own visual identity. We, the fedora design team, should be leaders in our area as well ;-)
I don't want to stir up too much of a hornet's nest, but does Fedora even *HAVE* a visual identity? AFAIK, it's:
- fedora icon on the panel - MgOpen/Comfortaa on materials/web site - Some sort of blue background each release (with no continuity from release to release)
The first of these isn't noticeable unless you're looking really close; the second isn't relevant to the desktop, and the third is actually satisfied by the proposed change.
Bill
On Mon, 2010-12-20 at 13:13 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
Martin Sourada (martin.sourada@gmail.com) said:
So in short, let's be *first* to ship GNOME 3 and let's be *first* to ship it with our own visual identity. We, the fedora design team, should be leaders in our area as well ;-)
I don't want to stir up too much of a hornet's nest, but does Fedora even *HAVE* a visual identity?
Yes it does. We use a particular color palette and style. To suggest it doesn't I don't think is really being fair.
- fedora icon on the panel
- MgOpen/Comfortaa on materials/web site
- Some sort of blue background each release (with no continuity from release to release)
The first of these isn't noticeable unless you're looking really close; the second isn't relevant to the desktop, and the third is actually satisfied by the proposed change.
From the web page banner to the disc label/sleeve to
syslinux/grub/firstboot/anaconda to the wallpaper there is a common theme.
(these don't show the print collateral but I think show the point of continuity otherwise):
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F14_Artwork
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F13_Artwork
~m
Máirín Duffy (duffy@fedoraproject.org) said:
- fedora icon on the panel
- MgOpen/Comfortaa on materials/web site
- Some sort of blue background each release (with no continuity from release to release)
The first of these isn't noticeable unless you're looking really close; the second isn't relevant to the desktop, and the third is actually satisfied by the proposed change.
From the web page banner to the disc label/sleeve to
syslinux/grub/firstboot/anaconda to the wallpaper there is a common theme.
(these don't show the print collateral but I think show the point of continuity otherwise):
That's continuity within a release, yes. What I'm saying is that there's very little continuity of the artwork from release to release *other* than the color; some are more abstract, some are less, some are sharper (like F-14), some are more soft-focus (like F-13).
What I intended to say is that given that, I would think that a random outside observer could look at *any* distro that has a blue, non-photograph background, and think "hm, must be Fedora", unless they already know which sort of blue backgrounds Fedora has chosen.
Bill
On Mon, 2010-12-20 at 14:18 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
What I intended to say is that given that, I would think that a random outside observer could look at *any* distro that has a blue, non-photograph background, and think "hm, must be Fedora", unless they already know which sort of blue backgrounds Fedora has chosen.
Ah okay I misunderstood. That's a dangerous argument to make if there's any real hope of other distros picking it up :)
~m
On 12/20/2010 09:18 PM, Bill Nottingham wrote:
That's continuity within a release, yes. What I'm saying is that there's very little continuity of the artwork from release to release *other* than the color; some are more abstract, some are less, some are sharper (like F-14), some are more soft-focus (like F-13).
We owe a lot of thanks for this to our friends is the RHDT who killed identity projects like Nodoka and Echo and now will completely change the desktop theme to a dark one with F15.
What I intended to say is that given that, I would think that a random outside observer could look at *any* distro that has a blue, non-photograph background, and think "hm, must be Fedora", unless they already know which sort of blue backgrounds Fedora has chosen.
It would give me a warm smile seeing this happening.
From: "Nicu Buculei" nicu_fedora@nicubunu.ro To: "Fedora Design Team" design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 7:51 AM Subject: Re: [Design-team] GNOME background in Fedora 15
On 12/20/2010 09:18 PM, Bill Nottingham wrote:
That's continuity within a release, yes. What I'm saying is that there's very little continuity of the artwork from release to release *other* than the color; some are more abstract, some are less, some are sharper (like F-14), some are more soft-focus (like F-13).
We owe a lot of thanks for this to our friends is the RHDT who killed identity projects like Nodoka and Echo and now will completely change the desktop theme to a dark one with F15.
While I'm unaware of the catalysts behind the unpopularity of those projects, I certainly agree that they are not in the list of most people's favourites. One of the first things I do when I install Fedora is to change the Icon theme to either Elemetary or Buuf (well, buuf tends towards Ubuntu but its quality is outstanding ... so I endure the colour differences). Now with F15 shipping with predominantly black UI, as seen on the Gnome-Shell/GDM mockups, those themes will drop further down the list. I don't see them blending into the new graphics and that worries me.
If Fedora is defaulting to Gnome3 on F15, then I think we need to pay attention to a befitting Icon them project. I still think that area will score of huge points if we put in the same kind of energy we spend on wallpaper designs --- without deterring from the Wallpaper design traditions. I'll test-run the Gnome-shell with the Echo theme and see how that works out.
What I intended to say is that given that, I would think that a random outside observer could look at *any* distro that has a blue, non-photograph background, and think "hm, must be Fedora", unless they already know which sort of blue backgrounds Fedora has chosen.
It would give me a warm smile seeing this happening.
+1 to that.
-- nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ design-team mailing list design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
Nicu Buculei (nicu_fedora@nicubunu.ro) said:
That's continuity within a release, yes. What I'm saying is that there's very little continuity of the artwork from release to release *other* than the color; some are more abstract, some are less, some are sharper (like F-14), some are more soft-focus (like F-13).
We owe a lot of thanks for this to our friends is the RHDT who killed identity projects like Nodoka and Echo and now will completely change the desktop theme to a dark one with F15.
I was talking about the wallpaper. You apparently like to rehash other things...
What I intended to say is that given that, I would think that a random outside observer could look at *any* distro that has a blue, non-photograph background, and think "hm, must be Fedora", unless they already know which sort of blue backgrounds Fedora has chosen.
It would give me a warm smile seeing this happening.
Then I suggest you join the OpenSUSE and Ubuntu design teams and convince them to adopt blue backgrounds. Perhaps talk to Apple & Microsoft too, and maybe Google for Chrome OS. That's the most direct and logical choice to achieve that.
Given our current desktop trends, the only way you get 'coffeeshop' brand identity currently is:
- have people know what Fedora is (unlikely) - have people know that Fedora backgrounds are ... blue (probably likely, given the first) - show them something Linux-y with a blue background
There is no way that the proposed background breaks this chain.
Bill
On 2010-12-17 11:03:39 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
If we as a team choose to consider Owen's request, there won't be brand confusion between Fedora and GNOME - the Fedora brand will be strong from the website / DVD sleeve through the install and bootup process (Fedora splash graphics for the installer & firstboot, syslinux & grub... Fedora logo for plymouth) and when it gets to the desktop part it'll be neutral... not GNOME. Although I'm think the default webpage in the browser will be a Fedora start page too, so Fedora branding doesn't quite end at the desktop.
I don't think there will necessarily be brand confusion, but I do think that our brand would be slightly weakened if this proposal passes. One of the reasons that I always stick with the default wallpaper (aside from how great it looks) is so that anybody who even gets a glance of my screen can tell that I'm running Fedora, and maybe even strike up a conversation about it :-). While all of the other branding is still very important, the wallpaper is really the only piece that will be seen by other people, and I don't want to lose that by default.
Thanks, Ricky
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 18:11 -0500, Ricky Zhou wrote:
On 2010-12-17 11:03:39 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
If we as a team choose to consider Owen's request, there won't be brand confusion between Fedora and GNOME - the Fedora brand will be strong from the website / DVD sleeve through the install and bootup process (Fedora splash graphics for the installer & firstboot, syslinux & grub... Fedora logo for plymouth) and when it gets to the desktop part it'll be neutral... not GNOME. Although I'm think the default webpage in the browser will be a Fedora start page too, so Fedora branding doesn't quite end at the desktop.
I don't think there will necessarily be brand confusion, but I do think that our brand would be slightly weakened if this proposal passes. One of the reasons that I always stick with the default wallpaper (aside from how great it looks) is so that anybody who even gets a glance of my screen can tell that I'm running Fedora, and maybe even strike up a conversation about it :-). While all of the other branding is still very important, the wallpaper is really the only piece that will be seen by other people, and I don't want to lose that by default.
If our proposal is accepted, you'll definitely have the option of switching to the Fedora wallpaper with 3 clicks of the mouse.
I think it also will be very clear to anybody looking at your Fedora 15 desktop, whatever the wallpaper, that:
- It's not Windows 7 - It's not OS X Snow Leopard - It's not Ubuntu Unity
Do most of your conversations really center on why Fedora is better than, say, Debian?
- Owen
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 18:53 -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 18:11 -0500, Ricky Zhou wrote:
On 2010-12-17 11:03:39 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
If we as a team choose to consider Owen's request, there won't be brand confusion between Fedora and GNOME - the Fedora brand will be strong from the website / DVD sleeve through the install and bootup process (Fedora splash graphics for the installer & firstboot, syslinux & grub... Fedora logo for plymouth) and when it gets to the desktop part it'll be neutral... not GNOME. Although I'm think the default webpage in the browser will be a Fedora start page too, so Fedora branding doesn't quite end at the desktop.
I don't think there will necessarily be brand confusion, but I do think that our brand would be slightly weakened if this proposal passes. One of the reasons that I always stick with the default wallpaper (aside from how great it looks) is so that anybody who even gets a glance of my screen can tell that I'm running Fedora, and maybe even strike up a conversation about it :-). While all of the other branding is still very important, the wallpaper is really the only piece that will be seen by other people, and I don't want to lose that by default.
If our proposal is accepted, you'll definitely have the option of switching to the Fedora wallpaper with 3 clicks of the mouse.
I think it also will be very clear to anybody looking at your Fedora 15 desktop, whatever the wallpaper, that:
- It's not Windows 7
- It's not OS X Snow Leopard
- It's not Ubuntu Unity
Will it be clear that: * It's not OpenSUSE? * It's not Debian?
Ubuntu isn't the only other major distro and when it comes to community driven effort, Debian is IMHO our main competitor.
Martin
On 12/18/2010 09:58 AM, Martin Sourada wrote:
Will it be clear that: * It's not OpenSUSE? * It's not Debian?
Ubuntu isn't the only other major distro and when it comes to community driven effort, Debian is IMHO our main competitor.
Martin
Maybe if openSUSE adopted a green version of the stripes and Debian had a tinge of Red to it. Then the Gnome design people would have effectively given other distro-based designers a holiday too.
I see legitimate concerns from both sides and the fact that the wallpaper (in question) is blue, makes the Gnome proposal attractive. If this is really a one-time thing and other distros buy it ... I think we can live with it (though I wish Fedora had a stronger set of icon themes to match the coming gnome graphics ... we could score great points there)
On 2010-12-17 06:53:55 PM, Owen Taylor wrote:
Do most of your conversations really center on why Fedora is better than, say, Debian?
No, but I think the fact that it's recognizable as Fedora does help the brand ever so slightly. I'm not trying to say that changing the default wallpaper will kill my Fedora-spreading activities - just that it will probably weaken Fedora's branding in some amount.
Thanks, Ricky
design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Fabian A. Scherschel -
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Nicolas Mailhot -
Nicu Buculei -
Onyeibo Oku -
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Ricky Zhou