Why do so many linux distros have such lame themes?

FWIW, Netrunner uses KDE. Maybe you would have had better luck with Linux Mint's KDE spin or Kubuntu?

 

That's the thing with Linux: Freedom. Mint can be green, and so you can change it. Ubuntu can be orange, and so you can also change it.
But the best part, if you don't know, is that you can change the Desktop Environment's appearance or simply change to another DE.
Mint uses Cinnamon/MATE and you can customize the cra* out of them. Don't like it? Go for GNOME or KDE or XFCE or LXDE or Xmonad or whatever the hell you feel more confortable with.
Want a neutral coloured theme? Search for it or create your own (just like Mint, Ubuntu, etc, etc, etc, etc, did). Isn't it pretty that we can do that?

Or go for Arch. No packages are modified here, you get everything just as the developers want *o*

 

Hahahaha! I can just imagine the resulting thread if mattdocs12345 tried Arch...

 

Heheheheh! I don't think so. I think he would like it very much, although he would obviously complain about the install process

 

Agreed. I'm completely happy with my Arch theme. Thankfully, I don't subscribe to the lazy way of learning, so I'm not here staring at the command prompt.

 

Why would I even bother with a distribution that has "do-it-yourself" approach. I already said, I like out of the box experiance. Just for the same reason why the Arch users wouldn't use iPAD as their primary computer. Just for the same reason why a person that needs a pick up truck for his work wouldn't buy a BMW.

Anyways. I ditched LM for Netrunner which is so much easier to customize to the way I want it to be. Much better out of the box experiance when it comes to theme management.

Users like you keep Windows users from switching. Seriously, Linux community needs to be more accepting.
Maybe the title of the thread came a little bit too strong, for which I sincrely appologize but there was no need to attack another Linux user for just for wanting an easy out of the box solution for his computing.
This thread should be closed now because it is going completely off topic.

 

I apologize if it seemed like I was attacking you. That was not my intention at all. Like you just said, you prefer an out-of-the-box experience (which Arch is definitely not!) and I was just making a joke about it. Again I'm sorry; I didn't mean to offend.

 

Ok. No problem.

 

I said the same thing a few months ago before I tried Arch.

Why use it?

* Upstream software that works as the developers intended, no icon modifications or any modification at all;
* By far the fastest distro I've ever used;
* By far the most customizable. It's MY distro, and no one else's.
* Gets you to know a lot more about how Linux works;
* Better security, since Arch repos are really bleeding edge and maintained by dozens of maintainers. If some package gets a security patch upstream you'll get it right away. On Ubuntu security patches will get backported. Manjaro repos are maintained by a single guy and delayed for about a month compared to Arch. You can't expect to get updates for certain packages to get passed through more quickly if there is a security problem. So you'll be left vulnarable for about a month.
* Arch forces you to learn the distro and how to maintain it. If you can set something up you know the basics of how to maintain it. You'll be exposed to all the Arch specific tools like pacdiff, which you'll need to maintain anything that is based on Arch. I bet you money that most Manjaro users never heared of pacdiff and what pacsave and pacnew files are and why you'll sooner or later run into problems if you ignore them. It doesn't come with a wrapper for the Arch User Repo, which really is a plus. If you want to use one you'll at least have to use the AUR the proper way one time with makepkg and learn about the package management. You'll need that knowledge anyway someday. More to this here: http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2013/04/09/helpers/
* More bleeding edge. If you need the newest feature in the kernel for radeon power management you'll get it first.
* It's not a downstream distro. Anything that has to follow what upstream does like what Ubuntu is to Mint or Arch Linux is to Manjaro is at a disadvantage. Downstream constantly has to adapt to what the base distro does and can't influence any changes on their own. That leads to more and more fragmentation between the base distro and the spinoff. Manjaro for example already doesn't use the same version of the package manager as Arch Linux does, because they had to fork it after Arch Linux dropped some features that Manjaro needed. Arch Linux is fast moving which makes it very hard for anything to keep up. The nature of rolling release requires manual interventions from time to time (about once a year) if the changes in the system are siginifcant. I remember Arch Bang (another Arch Spinoff) users getting completely screwed when Arch Linx moved some symlinks for glibc. If you use Arch Linux you'll follow the "Annoncments" RSS feed or better subscribe to the arch-dev-public mailing list. You'll know about changes well in advance and how to manage them. If you are using "Arch made easy" you might think you're immune to this. Nope you're not.
* The installation is a lot more flexible and not tied to a specific way of doing things through some step by step installer. If you know what you are doing you can install proper Arch as fast as any spinoff with some complex installer that is more likely to have bugs due to its complexity.

Nobody here attacked you. The task of taking opinions is up to you.
All that is keeping you from switching is yourself, there are TONS of newbie-friendly distro's and if you don't like one you can customize them. So what if sometimes it requires a few extra digits on the Terminal? That's normal. And if even so you think that's not what you like, then maybe you should stick with Windows.

 

Who said I don't use Terminal?

There are plenty of distro's out there that work out of the box. Why would I switch to Arch if I can have a more noob friendly one? Especially that Im the kind of person that likes out of the box experiance.

 

I assumed that after you complained about having to manually replace things.

I already said the advantages. Clearly Arch isn't for you.

 

Hello All

What is wrong with twm anyway

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8403291/twm.jpg

Seriously: gNewSense looks pretty corporate, fits in with the Thinkpad, crew cut and blue shirt I tend to wear. I use the Faenza icons and the Unity theme for the modern flat look.

 

Damn! Didn't know twm was capable of that!

 

1995 called and wants it's GUI back!

 

1989-ish Google tells me. TWM is part of X basically - you can find it on anything with an X installed. So have twm running with Vi in a terminal window and you have a Retro environment.

I think you are looking at Motif/CDE in the mid-1990s on commercial UNIX.

I used DWM on a desktop with wired connection for about a year, I was doing a lot of writing then. Very minimal, 'quiet' and focused. The irony being you can do the same with Gnome 3.10 and a couple of extensions... and a lot more RAM and processor cycles!

 

Which extensions exactly? I'm curious to try that setup

 

Haven't tried any of the tiling extensions as I am on 1024 by 768 on the laptop. I just had each application full screen in its own virtual desktop and switched using keyboard shortcuts.

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/208/panel-settings/

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/545/hide-top-bar/

I recollect these two worked together on RHEL7 beta which uses Gnome Shell 3.10 I think, but it might have been Debian Wheezy which is on GS 3.4 (must keep notes). I also used the Privacy settings in System Settings on RHEL7 to switch off notifications.

DWM worked well as a desktop session...

http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/linux-dwm-window-manager-on-debian.html

 

Back to the topic. I decided to run openSuse, I limited the green a little bit and this is the most beautiful UI I have had a pleasure to work with.
Of course its out of box experience has been very poor. No codes, no flash, no software store but I managed to pimp it with Mrk's guide and it works quite well. I also had several crashes but these ironed out after the update. Something that was expected since Mrk already warned us about it.
So from the UI experience Open Suse is #1, followed by Netrunner and then goes everything else I tested.

 

openSUSE is a great distro, it probably has the best DE integration, be it KDE or GNOME or XFCE or LXDE. It has it's problems (which I personally consider a lot), but in the end it's a nice distro and has the best install process I've ever seen (apart from the bug when you encrypt your disks).
About the codecs: It's rather controversy since openSUSE is targeted at mid-range users, some don't want the codecs by default, some do. But it's easy to install them anyways.

 

I agree and was impressed with OpenSUSE too. In my eyes, it was the most visually appealing of all the distributions I tested.

Have you tried creating any custom themes yet? I'm finding some things are pretty easy to change, but getting a handle on the settings in the GTK2 and GTK3 files is quite time consuming.

 

No, I haven't. The distro that desperately needs a make over is Linux Mint. If LM got what Suse has it would have been definitely the top distro. Same if Suse got the LM's stability and out of the box experience, it would have been very good too.
If Im gonna get into theme making then it will be probably LM because this is the distro that's almost there but just needs a better theme/UI.
What LM needs is:
- larger high quality icons
- unification of fonts and bold level between different parts of the OS, something that its themes currently don't control!. Meaning no matter what theme I used there are those little quirks that don't change ie the odd looking tray with time and tools on the bottom right.
- task bar needs to have it's own color and modifications without affecting the cinnamon menu
- mint logo is kind of dull and needs a redesign to be something more exciting like openSUSE/Apple or feel more professional like Microsoft.
These are just little things that kept annoying me with LM. Although, stability wise LM is still my distro to go. And If I find too many bugs in SUSE then I will for sure fall back to LM and try to live with it.
Right now Im slowly getting to know linux which became my hobby in the past year. Maybe after I get more comfortably I will start looking into theme making. Although I fear that some things in LM would require little under the hood change but hopefully there are work-arounds.