My experiment with dark themes

There are two things that I have never changed in my Mandriva installation. They are the GTK theme and the Metacity window decoration. Mandriva’s default GTK theme, in my opinion, is one of the best default themes on a Linux desktop. Recently, I wanted to test how some of the dark themes measured against it. I would like to mention that I have a strong dislike for darker themes and this is one of the reasons I want to use it and see if I can come out good after a week or so. So, I embarked upon an experiment to use a top dark GTK theme and see how things work out after a period of a week or two.

I downloaded the Shiki-Colors GTK and Metacity themes and installed them. Shiki colors is one of the top themes on gnome-look.org. I already use the GNOME-Colors icon theme which is one of the best icon themes around. After all the setup, my desktop looked something like this.

My Desktop

As far as the experience was concerned, I breezed through Day 1 – the day I changed everything. However, on Day 2, as my laptop booted, I was a bit surprised first and then realized I had changed everything the previous day. Guess I have not got used to the dark theme yet . Let me see how it turns out at the end of the week

A new look

I have always had a fascination for blue as it looks cool and professional at the same time. However, there has been a big itch inside me to try something new. Unfortunately, I ended up with something blue.

This time I decided to do a makeover of my blog and to keep away from blue. I tried various themes and finally choose the Cutline theme which is all white. The themes is clean and simple and I like it. I have retained the custom header for now while I get something good to replace or even try to make a custom header myself.

As for something useful, I had tried Slax a while back and would write about it in the coming days.

Bluecurve Classic

About 8 years ago, this time of the year, I used Linux for the first time. I had read about how stable, versatile, open, configurable it was. I tried my first Linux distro. It was not one of the biggies. It was PCQLinux a derivative of Red Hat Linux. Fedora was still sometime in the future. I installed the distro on the same machine that I still have and use. My old and reliable P3.

The first thing I was impressed was the looks of Linux. Belive me or not, I liked Bluecurve, the theme and the window decoration more than Windows look and feel. And here is a screenshot of how Bluecurve looked then. It changed a bit in Fedora Core 1 but I still like the classic look.

Bluecurve

Times have changed and today we have a lot of new themes and styles, but the “curve” has its special place in my heart. It is a great feeling to look back and see how far Linux has come

Custom Header Image

It has been eight months since I started writing here at WordPress. All these months I never thought of having a custom header image. Somehow today I felt I had to change the default header image.

So I started searching and landed at this wonderful site. It has got a collection of graphics which can be readily used for header images of websites and blogs. I checked out the various sections and then picked the one I am using now. Registration is mandatory if you want to download something from the site.

Immediately after changing the header image, I did not feel that it made any difference to the site, but after a few visits and careful observation, I feel my blog looks better.

Whats your favorite skin?

Many applications today take on various themes/skins. Skins come in several flavors ranging from sports team to operating systems and a myriad of colors. I use a couple of skinnable applications. Once I select a skin, I stick to it almost forever until I come across one that is better than what I currently use.

My criteria to select a skin is

• Easy on the eyes – This is the number one priority. The skin should have the least amount of strain on the eyes. Skins with subtle colors help in this regard.
• Features of the app are easily visible – I hate to use a skin that make the interface too small and makes it very difficult to use the application
• Consume less Memory – Though this might not be a concern on most modern computers, it does help when you have several programs running simultaneously.
• Real Estate – A skin should not occupy valuable screen space more than required. This allows to user more productive

Over the years when I search for new skins for my apps, I find the watery (aqua) skins are particularly preferred and have the highest downloads. I don’t see a valid reason why. Maybe it resembles MacOS or its ease of use is great.

Personally I have used the following skins for a while – more than a year that is

• Winamp - Default skin. Satisfies all my criteria
• Opera - Emil. Clean and easy on the eyes. Blends Well with Windows XP and Clearlooks theme on Linux
• Firefox - iFox. My favorite aqua theme.

Almost every other application in Linux is skinnable or wholly customizable. So I am not going to discuss about them. GAIM, Kopete, Firefox, Opera, Amarok, XMMS and even the splash screen, login screen are customizable.

There could be several other apps that are skinnable, like Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger for which I retain the default skin for the sake of less memory consumption. Load fancy skins on all your favorite apps and you could end up slowing your computer to unimaginable levels.

Pour in your thoughts!!!