Planing for a Revolution
Working on design for the openSUSE project is indeed a hard thing to do. I am not a Novell or openSUSE employee. I do what I do with my free time, which will be drastically reduced soon, because the school year is starting at the end of the month. I am hoping to keep posting as often as I am currently doing it and finding those things that are little, and can be changed for a better openSUSE.
Because I will have less time to work on this, I need to focus my energy and think more practically. I need to make something happen and work it out.
This is the reason why I got in touch with Jos Portvliet from openSUSE. We have been talking recently about how to make some of my ideas become a reality. His input is pretty valuable to me. It is, I think, the first time someone from all the way up there in openSUSE has shown willingness to work through some of these ideas. Jos thinks that the Revolution ideas are good but they need to be focused; and I agree.
We came up with a plan to have some things changed. But here I am officially looking out for help from designers that work on the openSUSE project. Sorry about this, but I am looking for people who are designers, highly critical of openSUSE's current layout design as well as their theming. Why? because the all-inclusive nature of Linux communities appeals to a great variety of people. All of them can give us an opinion, very valid too, but not all the time specific. A lot of times, all we get is rant, disagreement, but no solutions. Right now, with this project I am looking for people who know about development and design because the openSUSE/KDE desktop also needs creative solutions.
So here is a rundown of a simple idea expressed in plan form:
This plan is not perfect and if you have great input to share on it, please do. Let's be a team. We can do it.
PS: Please, do not even think that is idea is in some way, a tool to take over the world. I am not working independently of the opensuse-artwork team. All we would do is gather material to work on it for the future. No forks, no new teams. Just a community effort. The opensuse guys work really hard on the graphics and they do a great job. What we are doing is a revision and proposal of ideas, nothing more.
Because I will have less time to work on this, I need to focus my energy and think more practically. I need to make something happen and work it out.
This is the reason why I got in touch with Jos Portvliet from openSUSE. We have been talking recently about how to make some of my ideas become a reality. His input is pretty valuable to me. It is, I think, the first time someone from all the way up there in openSUSE has shown willingness to work through some of these ideas. Jos thinks that the Revolution ideas are good but they need to be focused; and I agree.
We came up with a plan to have some things changed. But here I am officially looking out for help from designers that work on the openSUSE project. Sorry about this, but I am looking for people who are designers, highly critical of openSUSE's current layout design as well as their theming. Why? because the all-inclusive nature of Linux communities appeals to a great variety of people. All of them can give us an opinion, very valid too, but not all the time specific. A lot of times, all we get is rant, disagreement, but no solutions. Right now, with this project I am looking for people who know about development and design because the openSUSE/KDE desktop also needs creative solutions.
So here is a rundown of a simple idea expressed in plan form:
Objective.
To make openSUSE a Linux distribution more friendly to novice users and adopters by creating a customized graphical user interface based on KDE but with different graphical elements than any other Linux distribution. This will make openSUSE visualy recognizable and branded to a higher level than it currently is.
Analysis
Form a designers team. We will:
- Revise openSUSE graphical stance.
- Point out design improvement areas.
- Create Strategy for New Look.
- Propose strategy to openSUSE community.
Design Decisions
- Work on reduction, simplicity, automatization and layout design.
- Gather the most relevant design complaints from designers team.
- Work on the top 3 design changes for the next release of openSUSE.
- Gather programmers and propose new design ideas.
- Implement other 7 suggestions for upcoming releases.
What we will do:
- New KDE plasma style and arrangement (plasma style, desktop widgets, wallpapers, etc)
- Kickoff's redesign
This plan is not perfect and if you have great input to share on it, please do. Let's be a team. We can do it.
PS: Please, do not even think that is idea is in some way, a tool to take over the world. I am not working independently of the opensuse-artwork team. All we would do is gather material to work on it for the future. No forks, no new teams. Just a community effort. The opensuse guys work really hard on the graphics and they do a great job. What we are doing is a revision and proposal of ideas, nothing more.
Written by Anditosan
9 comments:
One question: why haven't you sindicated your blog to planetsuse or planetkde? You should get more feedback and attract designers and developers. Make sure to attract plasma developers.
I like some of your ideas. I especially like the BeOS launcher mockup. I like how it saves spaces in your desktop (btw, the BeOS launcher in your mockup still wastes too much space for my taste).
I'd like to help you but I'm not a designer, nor a developer but I can always porvide feedback.
cheers,
jrdls
we need more readers, this is a good blog
Thanks guys for the support. Yes, I did submit my blog to planetSUSE, but not to KDE planet. I will do that tonight.
Yes, we need more readers. I have submitted my blog to a few blog sites but it looks like it is still not enough. If you know more ways to do it, shoot me an email.
anditosan1000@gmail.com
New plasma theme and kick-off redesign sounds just like my wishlist for openSUSE!
What about getting in touch with the *actual* openSUSE art team ?
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Art_team
I did a long time ago. Good as they are, sometimes they don't have time really. This is why I am calling out to more people interested.
Andy: one note. I general, if you want something to happen in Free Software, you must do it yourself. This goes especially for design and artwork. Don't count on any help until you have some results - which mean you're gonna have to start making something other than blogposts ;-)
As I said in our mail conversation, you could for example implement some of your ideas and create a package on build.opensuse.org and let ppl testdrive it. Once that works and you get valuable feedback, you can create a merge request. There is good documentation on the process on build.opensuse.org and if you get stuck, let me know!
Excellent article, and kudos to your efforts :)
I'm an openSuSE user myself (11.3, Gnome) and there are two things that would be worth adding onto that list.
1. Gnome. The Gnome side of OpenSuSE is quite excellent actually, but certain elements could be improved (ie: Menu icons)
2. Yast package manager. Egads I cannot stress this enough. After getting over my 'kill it with fire' phase and finally growing to understand how powerful the manager can be, it was switched on us users in 11.3. The new interface is dreadful, and the layout is not entirely appealing.
I know this might have little to do with 'art'- but if you are going for looks, this is one fundamental area that could really use some polishing. A layout that a designer helps establish would go a really long way for OpenSuSE and its users.
I agree, and those are actually ideas that I have contemplated for the future as well.
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