tomhudson's Journal: Ask Matt Asay: "Why is Ubuntu so fugly?"

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1552282&cid=31163196 - good thing I have karma to burn :-)

Why is Ubuntu so fugly?

"Seriously, what were you guys thinking? The Great Pumpkin only comes once a year.

Everyone made fun of XP and the Fisher-Price theme ... but Ubuntu is worse. It looks like it was thrown together by a bunch of Hallowe'enies.

"Oh, but it's earth colors, like autumn!" Sure, pick the time of year when everything DIES! That sends a great subliminal "use-me-be-happy" message.

Fall colors - remind people that Old Man Winter is right around the corner, it's only going to get worse for the rest of the year, slush and ice and heating bills and salt stains on your boots and coat and clothes and the dogs dragging dirt in from the freshly sanded sidewalks all over the comforter and ice storms and dead cats frozen in snowbanks flying through the air as the municipal snowblower sucks them up and ... you get the picture.

You want companies to take you seriously, you don't have your reps wear a bow tie so they don't look like Bozo the Clown, and you don't make your prime product offering look like the artwork from a pumpkin pie box.

If you have to do a pie-themed color scheme, order a pizza pie and use that for inspiration. Everyone likes pizza. Or do apple pie - American Pie! Even the Band Campers can relate to that! Or cherry pie. There are so many nerds in basements who dream of cherry ...

It's not just ugly - it's fugly-ugly. Even in Soviet Russia.

It is ugly on the screen. It's so ugly it's obscene.
It is ugly every day. It is ugly like old whey.
It is ugly on a boat. It is ugly with a goat.
It is ugly like brown turd. It is ugly as a nerd.
It is ugly, don't you see? It is ugly like green pee.
It is ugly, all the way. It is ugly, Matt Assay!
I will not use it on a boat. I will not use it with a goat.
I will not use it at the fair. I will not use it in my hair.
I will leave it with the nerds. They like it colored like brown turds.
I will leave it, Matt Assay, It makes my eyeballs bleed all day.

In summary, you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and that color scheme works great - for your competitors.

But...

[RM6f9]

But... why are you holding back? C'mon, tell us how you *really* feel about it...

Let's be serious for a moment

[drachenstern]

Know what color scheme core is most likely to be well regarded?

Blue.

Politicians shirts and all that good stuff. Good soothing colors.

But know who primarily uses blue in their themes? Apple, IBM, KDE, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter.... The list goes on and on and on and ... (you get it right?)

So who's that one that stands out? The brown red and yellow one! - yay turd colors. ( >.> )

As for what colors are options, lessee a list and some representative ideas:
Red or Orange - makes people angry or consci

Re:

[Qzukk]

You forgot *OMG Pink!*

Re:

[drachenstern]

No.

No I didn't.

Or rather:

Thanks again for that painful reminder.

.

. :p

Might I suggest...

[damn_registrars]

Using Kubuntu instead? Same release schedule from the same team, with the same package management. Same core everything, same hardware support, same access to same support resources. But instead of the hacktacular GNOME environment you get KDE, which hasn't been fisher-price-ified or recolored to match an outhouse.

And besides, deep down you didn't want GNOME anyways.

Re:

[Shadow Wrought]

'Tis for that reason that I use Xubuntu. Light weight and blue!

Re:

[Doctor O]

But man, what a cunt KDE has become. I download Kubuntu every time there's an update and try it in VMware, but I wondering what they were thinking. In KDE3, it was a "classic" Windows lookalike, while GNOME was the OSX lookalike (yeah, I know, I'm typing this from a Mac).

When Microsoft failed to produce a new Windows year after year, that was the great chance for Linux on the desktop. And what did the OSS scene make of it? A glaciously moving GNOME and a completely unusable crock of shit KDE that wasn't eve