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by panzi 485 days ago
Open source is about taking back control over your software. The sentiment of that website is absurd to me. What I do on/to my own system is nobody else's business. (Though I don't really change much of the theming myself. Changed a few colors slightly and of course the desktop wallpaper.)
2 comments
aprilnya 485 days ago
Did you read the whole page? It’s not about people who theme their own system, it’s about distros that ship themes pre-installed
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d3Xt3r 485 days ago
The sentiment still stands. I can't fault distros from wanting to theme their distro to match their branding. Like, Ubuntu wouldn't be Ubuntu without their signature orange and aubergine colors, Mint and openSUSE have their greens, and SteamOS' have their polished Vapor theme etc. And as an end user and a perpetual distro-hopper, I really appreciate that. I like the consistency that well-made distro themes provide, plus it makes you feel like you're actually using that distro, as opposed to some generic Linux with a vanilla GNOME/KDE shell on top.
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jeroenhd 485 days ago
Sounds fine to me, but these applications are already open source. If you're going to modify and repackage them, at least update the links to the bug tracker to your own.

The consistency is nice and all, but more than once have I seen distro replace a "stop" button with something they deemed similar enough that didn't make any sense in several applications that used them. I've also seen themes mess with spacing, hiding button rows or stretching them in weird ways. On a glance it all looks nice, but when you're using them applications look weird and broken.

Themes are nice, but unless there's an official theming feature (like with the new Gnome accent colours) it's the duty of a distro to inform their users that theme related UI glitches are the distro's fault, and I have seen none of them bother to communicate that.

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panzi 484 days ago
I agree that distributions should make clear what they've changed and link their bug tracker for theming issues. But that's a different stance.
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daghamm 484 days ago
Counterpoint, from the developers pov:

https://github.com/bragefuglseth/fretboard/issues/30

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