Open... and close... and open...

[Swordfish II]

Not boring plain, and, more importantly, not an eyesore.

Eh I prefer function over form. LXDE or XFCE will be my go to regardless of what it ships with

 

[OppositeDay]

It's i3wm master race for me.

 

[levi]

Eh I prefer function over form. LXDE or XFCE will be my go to regardless of what it ships with

Recent tests I've seen suggest XFCE has bloated quite successfully over the years since the Pandora, such that at least in terms of RAM usage that I saw last, Mate outperforms XFCE these days.

 

[Grench]

What does the DE have to do with the news post anyway?

 

[PowerGod]

The DE is the new keyboard

 

[ClockworkCoder]

What does the DE have to do with the news post anyway?

ED needs something to read while he's opening and closing and opening and closing his Pyra...

 

[Pyramancer]

Eh I prefer function over form.

Indeed. I find a lot of themes seem to be a triumph of aethetics over function or a triumph of hedonism over common sense or something. People seem to want something that looks flashy rather than something that can be used. I'm not sure why. Maybe they only look at their computers rather than actually using them.

Putting grey text on a grey background seems to be a favourite folly. The two screen shots posted by Askarus (which are both quite nice) are not too bad in this respect and I could use either one if I turned my display brightness up a bit.

However, the reflection/glare off the widget displaying the selected menu option in the "Mate default dark" screen shot is an example (albeit a not too glaring one (pun possibly intended)) of the sacrifice of functionality. Reflections reduce visibility. The display is there to make information visible. Why deliberately thwart that goal?

 

[Grench]

First of, unlike planned, I have NOT contacted any of the Protoype orderers yet. Sorry for that.
There are two reasons for that: I first wanted to make sure that enough prototypes are there for devs and second: I simply didn't have the time to write the needed informations for the preorderers.
I hope to find some time for that during GamesCom. But right now, only mainboards with bad wifi reception are available - so that's something you'd need to cope with.
But, as promised when you ordered, I will send you a fixed mainboard once they're available in case you still want one of those prototypes.

Are there any updates to this?

Out of curiosity... I keep stating that I'm prototype pre-order #8. I'm not aware of the identities of any of the other 7.

Have any of the other 7 dropped out?

How many mainboards with bad wifi receiption but otherwise working are there? More or less than 8? I.e. will I need to wait for the other 7 to pass over getting a current 'bad wifi' system?

I know that many of the others were keen on getting a special colored case on their prototype. I'll be happy with the clear and/or dull black plastics - mixture of parts from both/either is fine too. Heck, if you have 'unusable sets' from the color case runs, I'd even take a calico case where every(most) piece is a different color.

I don't want to be a 'line cutter', but I also don't want to let 'mostly good' boards sit idle waiting for them to be 'perfect enough' for the first in line.

 

[CFWhitman]

Recent tests I've seen suggest XFCE has bloated quite successfully over the years since the Pandora, such that at least in terms of RAM usage that I saw last, Mate outperforms XFCE these days.

I suspect that the tests you saw were not between Mate and Xfce, but between a Mate version of a distribution and an Xfce version, which each had whichever customisations the distribution makers saw fit to add. I'm guessing that you wouldn't see the same figures in a comparison between Debian Xfce and Debian Mate. I could be mistaken, of course. Perhaps you are referring to a test that used Debian. What makes me suspect not, however, is how little difference there is between Debian with Xfce and Debian with Pekwm or Openbox.

 

[levi]

As I recall, the test I'm referring to was posted by a member of these board to these boards. It was an x86 debian + various DE comparison (run in a VM), booted but idle and RAM used measured using top I think. Hardly scientific, but it fits with my personal experience that XFCE is not as slick as it used to be (which, combined with the fact that LXDE/openbox is more advanced than it used to be, made be switch to that last time I built a system using Archlinux).

 

[CFWhitman]

Well, a quick unscientific test on an old netbook I have running Debian Stretch 32 bit using htop to see how much memory is used leaves me averaging about 185 MB for Xfce and about 210 MB for MATE when Compton is running on both desktops (Compton seems to add about 15 MB of RAM usage, though it seems to improve performance by shifting some of the processing load from the CPU to the GPU on this machine; that is, the machine is snappier when it's running than when it's not).

 

[PCXT]

MATE has strong dependency on widgets (on its panels) and in most configurations there are many of these, so in every configuration the memory usage will be different. Also it depends how tightly these widgets are bound to DE, as using already loaded libraries may not increase memory footprint as using widgets with own libraries sets. Everyone has own configuration for own workflows, usually deviated much from defaults.
I think stronger usage of widgets may be with KDE's Plasma, but KDE is usually very tightly-coupled (to a degree that Krita under Debian needs a significant chunk of newer KDE).

Putting grey text on a grey background seems to be a favourite folly.

Common on many webpages, because the first thing user should see must be ads, these are in better contrast. I found that proprietary software going this way also tends to end as adware.

 

[PowerGod]

As far as I don't like Apple, personally I always found beautiful and functional the MAC interfaces (excluding all the animations and transition effects), it's rounded and shaded but still very readable.

 

[rygD]

Eh I prefer function over form. LXDE or XFCE will be my go to regardless of what it ships with

Not sure what this had to do with desktop themes, but just in case: that is exactly what I am getting at. If it is difficult to work with, like starting into a light, or headaches caused due to stupid color choices, or things vanishing because the text remains black instead of white even though you changed things around(white on white also a problem, probably a bigger one because of the other things I mentioned).

Putting grey text on a grey background seems to be a favourite folly.

In some instances there are simple logical reasons for it (go with greys instead of wasting more time trying to fix everything). I also tried finding other colour combinations to go with dark grey. It is difficult to get just right, so I often go with pure green. It doesn't bother my peepers too much, even if it is a bit tacky looking, and it is usually much quicker/easier than playing around to get it all good, especially the greys.

 

[CFWhitman]

It is difficult to get just right, so I often go with pure green. It doesn't bother my peepers too much, even if it is a bit tacky looking, and it is usually much quicker/easier than playing around to get it all good, especially the greys.

This makes me think of the various green phosphor themes that imitate the look of an old "green screen" monitor.

 

[Swordfish II]

Not sure what this had to do with desktop themes, but just in case: that is exactly what I am getting at. If it is difficult to work with, like starting into a light, or headaches caused due to stupid color choices, or things vanishing because the text remains black instead of white even though you changed things around(white on white also a problem, probably a bigger one because of the other things I mentioned).
.

Where did it come from? The pages of discussion and stats on DEs after we found out what the prototypes had. Just scroll up this page and you can see some.

Just throwing in my 2 cents.

 

[rygD]

This makes me think of the various green phosphor themes that imitate the look of an old "green screen" monitor.

Yeah, that was the same kind of look I was going for way back when I first did it. It turned out that it worked better than a lot of other options against a black background (pure red and blue at full blast bother my eyes). One of the best colors for me, other than a neutral light grey, is a dull orange, almost like a low intensity amber mono monitor.

I think the theme I use on my Pandora is a modified version of one of the green screen type. You got my curiosity up, so I will seek those out the next time I visit those sites. Maybe I will find something better than the green one. (My laptop has one of the themes full of different greys. I mostly stayed away from serif fonts, too, since the display is significantly larger than the Pandora).

Where did it come from? The pages of discussion and stats on DEs after we found out what the prototypes had. Just scroll up this page and you can see some.

Just throwing in my 2 cents.

It didn't seem to fit with what I was talking about in what you quoted. I will probably go with KDE, TDE, or maybe CDE as my default DE. If Mate is what ships as the default I will check that out, and stick with it if it lets me make the changes I want and I can get certain tools I normally use with KDE. If I go for something a bit lighter it will probably be Xfce, due to familiarity and some decent options I like.

 

[fusion_power]

The problem with the included dark ones it's they almost always suck and can be literally headache inducing. Sure, they have been included with OSs for 20+ years, but they usually feel like someone trying to check a box (dark theme, yep) rather than increase usability. I would have to go look at what was included on the Pandora to give specific issues, and maybe there are even done that would have been ok, although I know I spent so much time working everything out that I eventually copied my stuff over to one of my SD cards so that I could save time later.

It can suck for sure. The dark themes included in the Pandora GUI all have issues, mainly undetectable scroll buttons or weird colour decissions like white text over white input fields (google search for example) in a overall dark theme...
I use the dark Firefox theme on my PC to reduce my eyes hurting (Conjunctivitis) , I adjusted the shades so that the contrast is not that big (grey text over dark grey backgrounds instead of plain b/w contreast). I like the dark themes, Askarus showed here, they should be included for sure in the Pyra OS.

 

[kabaiakh]

This makes me think of the various green phosphor themes that imitate the look of an old "green screen" monitor.

https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]