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Graphics Software

New Themes.org Almost Ready; Needs A Little Help 170

Posted by Hemos from the getting-by-with-a-little-help-from-my-friends dept.
Daelin writes: "Themes.org is almost ready to re-open! They need people to write submission guidelines and then maintain the item queue for item types that people want covered, however. This is a chance for some people to help out a hub which connects several different communities."
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New Themes.org Almost Ready; Needs A Little Help More

New Themes.org Almost Ready; Needs A Little Help

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  • Themes.org (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sagacious_gnostic ( 319793 )
    This really is a great site.

    Over the last few months while they've been "static" I must admit that, on occasion, i've been annoyed at nothing seemingly happening.

    Knowing (personally) some of the maintainers at irc.themes.org and that they're probably as annoyed as I was helped me look at things in a different perspective though.

    These guys work hard and deserve every praise they get, and no critisism (critique is ok)... they don't get paid for this remember. I know at least one person responsible at irc.themes.org was considering resigning from his position because of lack of progress... just glad he didn't. I'm just glad that things _are_ happening. Kudos to the themes.org team.

  • Collaboration At Its Best (Score:4, Interesting)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Sunday September 16, 2001 @01:26AM (#2304802)
    Themes.Org has to be one of the best examples to hand out to Linux newbies of the platform's advantages at its best. So many people with varying skill levels contributing their time and efforts to let people pick from hundreds of desktop configurations and appearances.
    Just think about it.

    Each Windowing environment has programmers writing open spec API's to allow people to customize the desktop.

    Then the people who write the software to create and install the Themes. Not to mention graphics editing software and sound editing software.

    Gui, Graphics and sound icon designers working on theme components.

    Individuals and teams putting the peieces together to create hundreds of themes with a consistant look and feel.

    All the user has to do if he/she wants to completely change the look of their desktop or make the computer an extension of their own personality is go to Themes.Org and click the download button.

    Awesome. Nothing comparable comes to mind.

    • It's a bit curious that you mention sound. The content in themes.org is very graphics-centric. Lately I've been thinking why it is so.

      Maybe the problem is software. Sure there are lots of GNU/Linux audio software [condorow.net], but none of it has really reached the same level of sophistication and integration as Gimp [gimp.org].

      • Re:sound (Score:2)

        by N8F8 ( 4562 )
        It may have somthing to do with the relatively recent advancments in audio compression technologies. Unlike graphic formats, where you can simply look at your intended use and easilty find a well established format, audio technologies are in the throws of a massive series of technological advancements. Solidifying on any one or two formats may be troublesome.

        Is there a project equivalent to XFree86 for audio? Like you mentioned I see plenty of audio widgets, but little to make me believe there are well defined standards.

        • There's no Xfree for audio, but there is GNOME for audio (Esound), and then there is KDE for audio (Arts or aRts or something like that). There are probably smaller players on that field as well.

          The driver system is another thing. Linux has one set of drivers, ALSA has one, and maybe all the BSD systems all have too.

          I think you have made an excellent point; there really is no common base for audio like what Xfree is for graphics.

  • I'm sure they needed a lil' slashdotting to test their server too, right? Have some compassion!
  • I've had the same theme for years...black background, white text.
    Before that it was black background, orange text.
    Long time ago it was green background, whitish green text.
    And my first real theme was white background, blue lines, grey text.
  • I've been frequenting the site for ages, and in fact, a theme I found there became my impetus for switching to WindowMaker and never looking back. The old site was a great resource, a novel but ridiculously useful idea, and for me, it became one heck of a time-sink and full-time hobby. Nothing this valuable exists for the commercial OS'es, and I wouldn't be surprised if it converted a bunch of folks to Linux/BSD.

    Here's wishing everyone the best of luck. BTW, I like the new "peachy" color scheme:-)

  • Problem with Themes.org (Score:3, Insightful)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Sunday September 16, 2001 @03:25AM (#2304969)

    The problem with themes.org is that it is TOO good. Why should that be a problem? It's so good that nobody else is even trying; there's no point. Unfortunately, this makes it a single point of failure (I noticed this when attempting to find mozilla themes; when themes.org was down, it was tough to find anything worth downloading.)

    Ok, so that's not a REAL problem, but I have been doing a lot more thinking about redundancy this week. Other people have mentioned this 'problem' about sourceforge, too. We need to make sure that there's not a single point of failure, and that these great sites and the themes/projects are kept going and accessible no matter what bizarre circumstances might happen.

    • SourceForge [sourceforge.net] shouldn't be a single point of failure anymore, the GNU project [gnu.org] now has Savannah [gnu.org] based on the SourceForge code. As far as I can tell it's open to all Free Software (as oposed to Open Source on SourceForge) projects. Upon registering your project you can even apply for it to become part of the GNU project ;).
    • I was actually thinking about if a themes-centric magazine (print w/CD) would do well these days. Basically, a magizine with interviews, how-to's, etc, covering a broad spectrum of Window Managers (not to mention skins coverage on other platforms). On the CD would be, say, a snapshot of some online themes/skin repository (maybe work with skinz.org and themes.org).

      I dunno if the market would be good enough for just that or if you'd also have to add stuff like demoscene's, graphic arts in general, etc. Not that I would mind that. :)

  • Allot of the most popular sites are ran by the target audience. Slashdot gets its content from user submissions, the moderation is done by the users, the posts are the largest part of slashdot.

    Some of my favorite sites are all user driver, blues news, betanews, slashdot, planetsites, freshmeat, themes, infoanarchy, kuro5hin, netctarine and tribalwar. And most of the news sites I read get their submissions and comments from users.

    The only problem I had when Themes went down, its about the only place I know for icewm themes and theme screenshots.
  • am i the only one that thinks the layout and color of the old site look better than the one at alpha.themes.org?

    themes.org is cool.. i've been getting stuff from them even though they are officially not open or whatever, but it just seems to me the other site design worked better and was easier on the eyes..
  • count me in for helpign thsee guys out. once i sober up a bit.

    alright. for those w/o a sense of humor. my point is, even a drunk oss fan is an oss fan, and wants to help progess htings.

  • themes.org alpha site (Score:2, Informative)

    by lqx ( 197236 )
    http://alpha.themes.org [themes.org]

    wasn't that hard to find was it? :)
    • Not hard, considering they POST it in the announcement that's linked to in the Slashdot story. They even provide a nice little link.


      Granted, reading isn't a primary skill for some. And others just aren't familiar with URLs or the whole "this is a link, and you can click on it" concept.

  • Is there a place for collections of icons and bitmaps for use in applications and themes? I couldn't find any sets of icons on themes.org.
    • For backgrounds: From the main themes.org page, select Resources (x.themes.org). Even though there are quite a few Linux/Unix/*BSD-specific papers there, any site with a 10's of thousands of backgrounds will work. Personally, I'm a fan of ayo73's brutish, purple, music-themed Tux (www.73lab.com).

      For icons: You're right. There is no one seperate place for most X icons. Themes often do include new icons or an entire set. For simplicity, icon packs would have to be specific to the window manager and/or desktop so that you don't have to set each individual icon. At that point, why not put it in a theme?
      • I was thinking of collections of icons (with some kind of descriptions or classification) which could be used in building themes. Not necessarily a matching set, just some icons you might want to use. O'Reilly's Unix Power Tools CD has the Poskanzer Bitmap Collection (lots of black and white icons, suitable for very old-school looking themes) but I haven't found a general collection place for free icons anywhere.
        • Try the following sites - some icons are lame, some are not free etc. but there are a load of ideas at least...

          http://www.iconbazaar.com/
          http://www.iconarchive.com/
          http://www.everyicon.com/

          T
          • Thanks for the links: of the three only iconarchive.com looks reasonably sane. I'll submit icons to that site. It would still be better to have a big tarball of icons with descriptions (browsing through images doesn't scale as well as grep does) and no strings attached. But maybe there's not a great demand for that since whatever desktop environment you are using (KDE, Windows, whatever) will come with a standard set of icons and you should use those whenever possible.
      • I have been looking for some icon collections recently too, and didn't find anything on themes.org.

        What I was looking for was generic icons, to use for drawers that I like to organize my most frequently used programs in. Not any application or system icons, but more generic, like the apple or tiger icons by Tigert. On windows there are lots of desktop icon collections available through different sources.

        I think it would be great if themes.org or some other site could set up a categorized repository for Free icons.

  • It would be cool if... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Sunday September 16, 2001 @04:31AM (#2305034) Homepage
    Is there some way to automatically generate RPMs or dpkgs for window manager themes? Linux distributions could include a few hundred popular themes and a way to switch between them: that might get more new users addicted to the whole theming and eyecandy thing. Hmm, maybe not such a good idea ;-).
    • Not automatically, but very easy. Prolly, you should be able to make a template .spec-file (for rpms, I don't know about .deb) for each window-manager/widget-set, and then only change the name/filenameprefixes in it for each theme. You could even make a shellscript which, given the name of the theme, generates it :)

      So, if you know about .deb, or about themeing for different window-managers/widget-set, please contact me via mail, and we could start creating something!

  • themes.org alpha site (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://alpha.themes.org [themes.org]

    wasn't that hard to find was it? :)
  • What they really need are volunteer lawyers; to defend them from the likes of Apple, MS, and everyone else who claims to 'own' themes...
  • as soon as there are some blackbox theme guidlines i've got a whole bunch of them i'd love to submit.


    and running a submission que would be fun, mine would always get in ;)


    blackbox themes & screenshots [truffula.net]

  • hmm (Score:1)

    by xted ( 125437 )
    Most of these creators of the themes.org come off as rude and having an elitist attitude. The times ive been on irc.openprojects.net, ive been disgusted at how people are treated that dont "belong" to certain channels. This is the kind of thing that happens in irc servers all over the place, but it should not be happening on openprojects.net. The problem with it is, osdn is run by these same people. Its not a matter of "just leave the channel if you dont like how you are treated", because it goes further than that. It reaches into responses to comments and emails. These people do an excellent job maintaining osdn, but they need to learn how to deal with people. Being a "computer geek" (call it what you will) is no excuse for being an asshole.

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