New Plasma Theme

Hello everyone

I have been working on a plasma theme for some weeks now and I think I am at a point where the plasma theme idea is understood and I would like to get some feedback. Obviously this theme is still considered in early stages, but I think it works well enough for testing.

I hope you like it.
If you would like to help me with it, find me at #opensuse-artwork

Thank you

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zd661zz69x389f7/Pure.zip

As we work on the next release of openSUSE. We would like to invite
our community to participate with ideas to guide our design team in
choosing artwork for openSUSE 12.3.

Right now, there are some ideas coming through. As designers, it is
important to find ideas, words, or concepts that can help guide our
thoughts into choosing artwork for 12.3. Please provide us with a max
of 3 design "thoughts," for example

1. Simplicity
2. Clarity
3. Light

Choose any 3 of these that can help describe our thought process.

If in doubt of what's appropriate to suggest, and not deviate too much
from our current styling guidelines, refer to

http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Artwork_guidelines


Thank you

Andy (anditosan)

PS: In case you have not seen yet, please swing by our flickr page.
Our contributors have been hard at work taking pictures and making
images that can do for a good wallpaper.

openSUSE Summit Talk

I received some feedback yesterday about the talk I gave at the openSUSE Summit. Unfortunately there is no recording of the talk. I thought that it was being recorded, but it was not. That is why I am posting the full talk here as I wrote it before the presentation. Hopefully it makes sense and gives an idea of what direction we have for welcoming new contributors.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The Rest of Us, Open Source Communities and Non-technical Users

It seems like yesterday when I was finally able to hold a computer. I was fascinated by the shape of this instrument, the keyboard, the mouse and screen. In my mind there was simply too much genius into this machine that I could never be capable to invent something quite like this.
Back then, having an Internet connection was a dream. Playing with the regular default games like Solitaire were the most entertaining activities in my day sitting in front of the computer.

Although I always believed that computers were going to be part of my future my life took a different route later on. I became very interested in the arts and I became a sketcher, drawer, and painter. I also enjoy history and learning languages. In fact, I graduated with a history degree from college. I enjoy good design and clever organization.

However, my old Windows 95, wasn’t what I needed. I wanted to place the arts into the computer so I embarked in the search for an operating system that would give me the flexibility of working with my art and interests, as well as providing good design and powerful tools for the desktop.

I found a page on alternative operating systems and tried some free alternatives of the time; QNX, BeOS, a few others that failed and eventually I ended up in Linux. I started  buying Linux magazines. They featured burned CDs with a Linux copy of whatever system was issued then. Dial-up connections took longer to get the ISO than the magazine shipped to my town, so I chose the magazines over the Internet. I tried installing Best Linux, Mandrake, Slackware, Suse, PC Linux OS, Ubuntu, Vector Linux, PC-BSD, and a few others. In spite of the hardware compatibility problems of back then, eventually Linux became more robust and it was able to work with all of my hardware was the one I would choose to use.

In this search Suse fit right in. I was able to work with all of its tools and the good ol’ KDE 3. I loved the KDE interface and the font system. I am sorry if there are any Gnome lovers in the audience and if this offends you. I loved the power configurations that you could do on KDE as well as some window style themes like Domino window style and others. I was able to use GIMP, Krita, Kaffeine and a few others.

Working with Linux filled my spirit with great enthusiasm. I realized that Linux was present in many places already and that the industry would eventually embrace Linux by porting applications to it. This time was when I started asking for support on IRC. I saw the good amount of people who loved Linux and how willing many of them were to help new users like me. IRC showed me that there are people in this world still who will donate their genius to the world. People who will use their free and busy time to code for an open source project. I decided to give back to the community. But the question was not about willingness, but about ability? Did I have what was needed to enter an open source community?

This is what brings me here today. Stories like mine are countless and yet it seems so refreshing to share them. Coming from the non-technical world, working with the community was a challenge. How can you, who only “uses” a computer, contribute in any meaningful way to the project that “codes” for computers?

As I mentioned, I used IRC to connect to some of the members. First asking some questions and then giving suggestions. But many things that “I” wanted were not so easy to do, therefore my suggestions went nowhere. A typical response from the community was, if you want to change it, do it yourself. While that sounds like a very good response that empowers individual users to work with open source code, there was little I could do to help or change what I wanted to contribute with. I tried long and hard for a while to convince some people to put into code some of my ideas but with little success.
I decided to reduce the scope of my requests. Little by little I realized that, instead of asking for changes, I needed to contribute. I could not make others contribute for me.

I decided then to create a blog. Just a simple tool to show others about my ideas on GUI design. The blog still brings some people to it. I am not the next Facebook but I do feel like my ideas posted there get some traction. I published ideas on how KDE could look on openSUSE. I focused my comments particularly on working with KDE 4 and openSUSE. I have always wanted a radical GUI change for openSUSE, and I still do.
I do not think that my comments got too far. The biggest thing achieved by my blog was when Aaron Seigo from the KDE project read one of the entries on my blog and decided to show a quick programing example using a desktop switcher idea that I wrote about. I didn’t even ask him to do it and it happened. My blog had reached further that I could ever do it on IRC.
I realized that I needed to speak the language of those who change the current in the Linux world, and that was by doing it yourself. But I needed to focus my contribution. I could not ask anyone to code for me but I could sway opinions about artwork. Overtime I have participated in creating some simple artwork for the distribution. Recently, we had a Novell conference in the town where I live. I was invited to it and met some of the people I mingled with on IRC.

My involvement with the openSUSE community could represent the involvement that many other non-technical contributors go through as they approach working with open source communities. I happen to be a historian and my training has made me take a more critical look at the events that lead up to my participation and the participation of non-technical contributors to the projects we love. When I mean non-technical, I mostly mean that I cannot program code.

Being part of an open source project is in its very nature a “public” event. Just like I had to become “public” with my blog, open source communities are not only open source but also public source. Meaning that the very nature of your contributions to an open source project are made publicly available. It is a meeting where the whole world is invited. Open source projects are perused thoroughly. Interestingly enough, in many instances when the solitary confinement of a home basement gives birth to wonderful open source projects that attract much attention to programmers who might not expect to be in the forefront of their project.

Take, for example, Linus Torvalds. By sending a simple invitation to write code for his newly developed kernel, Linus became a star ever since. However, Linus remains away from the spotlight, as much as he can, by avoiding large audiences and venues that place too much attention on him. Although Linus remains a fiery commentator, he has never liked the attention that his kernel brought upon him. This could be true of many other programmers who may be confronted with the publicity that their open source work generates.

The project created attracts people of all places and languages. Even people who who may not understand the complexities of the creation of such project. People who only see the end result, the non-technical user. However, the expectations vary from audience to audience as the open source project is made available. In the case of non-technical users, they may demand that the functions of the software be perfect. Many new users assume that the developer is completely in charge of the open source project when in most cases there may be many contributors to the project who do not have specific functions. This situation makes support harder to achieve on the end user’s point of view. Many of them will feel left out when trying to understand why a certain program does not run on their Linux computer.

Non-technical users who want to contribute will also assume many things when coming in contact with a technical open source community.

Recognition
Collaboration
Availability

Technical users on the other hand expect
Recognition
Collaboration
Availability

I categorized these priorities as the same on purpose. However, the interpretation of these terms is rather different depending of what end of the spectrum you are.

On the non-technical collaborator side, recognition means that non-technical user contributions do have weight and are understood by the rest of the community members. We may incur into thinking that our contributions are truly ground-shaking, earth-shaping, world-saviors. Non technical users will think that their simple ideas put them ahead of the thinking done by technical users. We have a better answer.

However, for technical users who can program, recognition starts when others understand the trouble, time and effort that they took into creating a piece of software for the world to use. Recognition that their work has class and it is relevant for others. Overstepping these ideas on both worlds could lead both type of community members to disagree in their views about a specific project. While technical users are contempt, for example, with the powerful features of Yast in openSUSE, some like me might be unhappy with the GUI design of it. We are speaking about the same project yet, I could miss the recognition solely based in my assumptions about Yast not being good-looking and missing the fact that it is a powerful graphical tool.

Similarly, technical users may focus on the programming strengths of their software and miss the graphical elegance that you could integrate into the program upon suggestions from a non-technical community member.

In these interactions both type of members may also misunderstand the collaboration that each of them can integrate into a particular project. While there is always assumptions about newcomers and over-stayers in an open source project, there is also a good amount of misunderstanding about one’s capabilities. If you are a newcomer to the open source world, being non-technical may brand you as someone who “does not understand everything” meaning that overall there are many things for you to learn before entering a project. On the opposite end there is also assumptions made by non-technical users about the technical users’ collaboration. Non-technical users assume that technical users operate much like a customer service department. They are part of a project only to help and fix problems. While some of this hints at the reality, it is only a partial picture of reality.

Non-technical users miss the opportunity of collaborating with the tech savvy because they only intend to drive the development of an app and rarely intend to do it themselves. Both parties then withdraw and little advancement and integration is made.

Availability is another convergence point for open source project members. They have, as experienced, expectations about the availability of each party. While technical users always seems to be ready to take on order on IRC, nontechnical users should join a project only if they are able to put in the time to work on it, or for it. Neglecting people’s availability is a major cause of project coding delay. Not understanding the work and part that each person takes in a project could result in a release that is half-way done. Often times new users in a project may assume that people are online 24/7 thinking that emailing will not take long, IRC chats and comments will be instantaneous, and that adding a line of code will be done telepathically. In reality, most of us do not work for the project. The project is a side note, unless you are apart of a corporation such as Canonical, or Novell, and people have been assigned to work for open source projects. This does not mean in any way that people who have been hired for a specific community project have a little less desire or time to work on it. The point is that the majority of us contribute with free time or do something on a whim. It happens to me personally, I get inspired to create artwork at random and suddenly this could be interpreted as me signing a life of devotion toward a project, when in reality I would only like to have my work be used and forget about it later.

This could also account for a high turnover of contributors to open source projects. Likely new users, technical and non-technical join a project with the fire of their desire to contribute with an idea. Suddenly they are confronted with the three misconceptions outlines before and realize that open source project completely depend on the voluntary contributions of its members. I highlight “voluntary” because this word shows elasticity in time frames, consistency and desire to strive with a particular project. Then, newcomers slow down, their fire goes out and eventually they could become a passive or completely inactive contributor.

Some may think that the project or the community will be magnetic enough on its own that people will join the community by its sheer weight, however this may not be the case all the time. Non-technical users get to feel the weight of the disparaging differences between how little they know about the community and what a tough relationship this could be when trying to make contributions to a community that is far more experienced in coding and other venues.

Eventually, a miscommunication between the technical community and the non-technical contributor could lead into the break between potentially great contributions and a project that could actually use the contributions. After all, the life of a community comes from its members, there is nothing done in a community project until a member contribution is made. Meaning eventually that not having any use of the new non-technical contributors makes the project slow down, and miss opportunities for change and advancement.

Willingness of new users to learn the ways of the community is also fundamental for the healthy relationship between the two. New users are to be much like a sponge when coming into contact with the community. There might be many instances when there were new members unwilling to learn the ways of the community. Unwilling to understand and follow established procedures as well as traditions. In this case it does not matter how brilliant a new community member might be, there is an element of personal appreciation in the community, the additions will not be taken into consideration. The technical community member will disregard your contributions as important.

Obviously, these are very general statements from personal observation throughout my time with the openSUSE community. Can or is this situation any different? of course. Is the community to do anything to keep or invite new members? Yes, definitely. There might be some programs, such as the ambassador program in openSUSE that empowers community members to participate in the community by adding what they can. But introducing people to the local community might not be as challenging as introducing a new community member to a global community. Then there is less to manage, less faces to see, and eventually, less work to be done.
The goal of this analysis is not to point fingers at community members for not understanding the non-technical population of their teams, but rather to understand the tremendous potential that their work can accomplish. Making ourselves cognizant of the tremendous reach that we can achieve with our communities by embracing non-technical users could be the biggest accomplishment of an open source community.

Some could wonder, how is it possible that a community that advocates the creation of code is capable of being so welcoming that even the least technical person can be part of it? This realization by the rest of the users and open source enthusiasts can eventually gather a swarm of strong collaborators to a project. Injecting the needed speed and expertise into a particular project.

Our aim however is the reach of harmony. While we all may be different species, we live in the same jungle harmoniously. What does it take for non-technical users to join the pack of technical users? A simple reminder of what we can do and the water we are trying to swim on. What does it take for technical users to understand non-technical users? It is to understand that we all need water to survive. Whether we like it or not, we will come to the river for sustenance. Some of us will likely stay next to the river for the rest of our lives.

Thank you

openSUSE Summit - 2nd Day

Today is the second day that the openSUSE Summit goes on in Orlando, Florida. Attendance is great. There are lots of people here, more than we initially expected, attending and making great assertions to each of the sessions going on. If some of you are in the area and would like to attend, please go into this website and look up the appropriate information.

Yesterday I was able to see some of our team's contributors, Sebatian (tian2992), Eugene, (it-s), and Richard (Ilmehtar). We decided to get together today, at some point, and work on some guidelines for our team. We will be making a few proposals to the team, because of this, later. The idea is to streamline our work. We understand that there are many ways in which the artwork team can fulfill its functions, but in the end, it really needs to comply with release dates more strongly. Right now, we are planning to create steps for our artwork to be done before release, we are also planning to work with people to come up with new design ideas for the distributions and, in the future, change our UI a little more.

The main idea is that we can do a good brainstorming here and then make proposals, mockups, and so on. Eventually, we will present these ideas at the openSUSE Conference and to the rest of the team later at the mailing list. We don't want to post something that is just ideas and half-way done. So stay tuned.

Today is a great day for a couple of our contributors. Richard Brown (Ilmehtar) will be presenting today and also me, Andy (anditosan). My presentation will feature a live stream. If you want to see and listen, please go here.

https://new.livestream.com/accounts/1483845/events/1544568

Broadcast will start at 2 PM Eastern Time, USA.

I hope you enjoy!

openSUSE Summit Web Badges

Here are a couple of web badges made for people who like our project and are going to the Summit in Florida next week. I decided to use a real badge image that I found on this excellent free stock photography website SXC.HU

I decided that it was a good idea to use very bright and contrasted colors. The summit logo works with a deep blue and deep-dark greens. I placed these on a yellow background to give the idea of a sunny place. In case you didn't know, Florida is sunny most of the times.

If you like them, please feel free to download and use.

I just finished creating a new Twitter bacgkground for the release of openSUSE 12.2. Join us in this promoting effort by placing this image as the background on your Twitter account.

Happy release!

Andy (anditosan)

openSUSE 12.2!!!!

Hey friends!

Here is a quick way to promote openSUSE's release at your own website. This is taken from Yaloki's website.

If you have a website/blog, here is the HTML markup to add in order to include the openSUSE release countdown image:  The markup above will add a 256x256 pixel image. If you prefer to have the smaller (130x130) one:  And in case you prefer the huge one (400x400px) for maximum visibility: 

Enjoy :D

openSUSE Release and openSUSE Summit

Once again our team meets for another release of our distribution of choice, openSUSE 12.2. As part of the artwork team, we focused on this release on going back to the strong greens that identify our distribution. We also added a few wallpapers with images of chameleons so that our mascot would be part of our distribution again.
On the subject of chameleons, I have been pondering recently about the variety of designs that can come from this reptile. It is one that changes colors to adapt to its environment, it also has a tongue that extends sometimes longer than its own body and it lives in trees eating insects. I own a chameleon myself and as I have lived with it, I have realized that it is a great design inspiration. Recently also, I found these images from Igor Siwanowics

These images are beautiful. Igor really knows how to get people closer to these chameleons, which are so small. I think they go along very well with our mascot and as part of a collection of wallpapers for openSUSE. That is why I contacted Igor to see if he would donate a chameleon image to our project. We are still working on something for us, but I am positive that he will be happy to contribute to our project. Stay tuned.

12.2 is now ad portas and we are working hard to finish working with the marketing materials.

openSUSE Summit 2012 is also coming up soon. We are all very excited in the US to have a mini openSUSE conference. I have now confirmed my participation to the gathering and also my presentation on openSUSE's contributions. I intend to gather more possible contributors to our artwork team. We are still lacking good coders that can make some of our ideas transpire from within the distribution. We want to have a stronger influence than simply selecting wallpapers. Stronger branding and stronger image for our users and new users. We have asked some of our community members to share their ideas about social apps on the desktop and also how they use their desktop environment. If you know someone who can code C++, please let us know. We will be eager to talk to him/her.

Thank you for reading.

Anditosan

openSUSE and Identity

Ever since the conception of graphical environments for the computer, designers have had to make specific decisions about the way we interact with elements on a screen. However, to say that "designers" made all the decisions on how we interact with the computer is somewhat far fetched. 

There are many other factors that make up our computer interactions. In a sense, the word "designers" also involves people who are not directly related to the graphical world. Those could be - a sales manager who also decides what elements we see on the computer screen; a contracted hardware company that would like you to have a certain software on by default; and many others may also have a part in the user interface designing process. The computer GUI has a varied influence in its identity.


The multi-influence, or “multi-graphical input” for devicces’ GUI has come under particular focus in recent years. Mass adoption of mobile devices has spread the graphical competition to all new heights. It has become much harder for companies and their products to stand out on the current market, or to make a difference. Differentiation is the call for each of them. Making their devices different graphically has called for stronger branding, and each of the market players now steeres in different direction. The objective being - attracting new client and retaining the existing ones. The drive for graphical differentiation makes it clear that stringer branding will help them sing a different song.

This changes have also made it into many of our Linux environments. KDE, for example, decided to make a radical jump with KDE 4. While recently Gnome released their 3rd series other environments, prefer to keep the same idea of what a GUI should look like. 


Currently Linux, as a worldwide community, faces strong fragmentation. Not all of us use KDE, or Gnome, or a graphical interface at all. At the end of the day these communities are the ones creating new software, new widgets, and new graphics. Eventually these fragmentation or macro-collaboration environment is unable to achieve "collective individuality." This means that because of the different influences that happen in a Linux environment, collectively we cannot achieve a strong branding and differentiation. We cannot stand out because all of us want to stand out. Our software or contributions speak the language and mind of its creator, except in a Linux environment, anyone can be a creator.


These changes raise a question from our own group of contributors. Is openSUSE at the height of this weave of stylistic changes? This question is not about code or software integration, but exclusively about the end user experience. Reasoning carefully, the answer would be "partially." openSUSE has not taken full advantage of the branding capabilities provided by both KDE 4 and Gnome 3. This trend is more so surprising considering that openSUSE is the first to integrate and use many new Linux technologies through its unique OBS service, yet brand-wise we remain stagnant. Early adoption and fast integration in our distribution makes it harder to work on and maintain distribution specific styling.









In the recent years we have become quite passive in developing our own identity, other than using green as a base color openSUSE. Subtle color changes however do little with styling KDE or Gnome for the releases.


In earlier years this was a much stronger effort. Back then both KDE and Gnome had their own distribution specific themes within openSUSE. But recent changes in both environments have made it harder to keep up with distribution styling, and we have fallen behind. Even now openSUSE’s artwork team has not diminished in its efforts to work on styling, however the technical aspects of styling KDE and Gnome has become much harder to keep up with.


There are no simple way of creating interfaces for  KDE to create a window style without knowing C++, for example. We have to rely on the technical knowledge of developers with strong knowledge and understanding of C++and GTK/Qt core technologies. In gnome changes with GTK 3 have been taxing on developers since they now need to migrate their themes to work with the new widget styles present in GTK 3. For openSUSE, this all means that is has become harder to create our own styling therefore we adopt KDE and Gnome’s default styling.


Adopting the defaults provided by KDE and Gnome will eventually move openSUSE to a state of visual stagnation. Not because these integrated window environments will stop moving forward with GUI developments on their own, but simply because we will have traded our visual identity to their definition of a default. While the rest of the technology world moves ahead with change, openSUSE will remain unnoticed for its outdated visuals.


Styling matters more than what we give it credit for. Styling is the first impression any users gets as they install our distribution. Styling can be provocative and generate interest, contribution and a larger reach with users. openSUSE will collectively speak to a wider audience given its “new suit.” openSUSE’s identity will speak for the project as people download the ISO. The unknown new user that is willing to try Linux for the first time will be impressed with the power of openSUSE and the cleanness of its desktop, the boldness of our green geecko will secure another happy user and a possible contributor. Even our current users will see how their distribution of choice changes to fit their daily work routine.


Recent work on styling from openSUSE’s artwork team has yielded great results for the distribution. With the help of a few contributors to the artwork team, we have been able to include new wallpapers, splash screens, boot screens, marketing materials and a few other things to the distribution. However, this is no different than it has been for a few years. We style the same elements with every release. To have a bigger effect and support with the community, we launched image contests, updated wiki pages, pushed sources to git, created new scripts for the automated wallpaper sizing, and have integrated more contributors than in previous years. Our channel user base is looking to expand.


As a result of this push for work there has been great integration in the team. We have been able to identify each other's strengths and have used them smartly as we integrate artwork into the distribution. Good attitude, willingness and enthusiasm to participate has been our idea since we reorganized ourselves. A sense of belonging and an akin interest in making opensuse a sleek distribution graphically is our intention. Getting help and comments from our team is easier than ever.

Through our team's interaction, we have determined a desire to make our distribution a stronger player in the linux graphical environment. We must jump into the wagon where the trend is going. We cannot be passive about our identity anymore. This is not to say that we want to be graphically similar to others and borrow their styles, but rather our aim to have openSUSE be recognized beyond the color green and the geecko. We imagine a time where icons, window styles, colors, wallpapers, desktop organization, specific desktop widgets are all integrated with a strong presence in the Linux world.


If we stay the same we will remain there as well for prospective users. We need to make a strong impressions to those people who are deciding between Windows, Mac and Linux. Those who hear of the power that Linux has and through the power of each community. We have the resources, now we need to move the mountains in order to achieve these goals.


We would also be much more ahead in styling than most. Take for example Ubuntu. They have created a style of their own with their human and name coded releases. They have persisted and perfected their styling beyond even what most would think or like. We do not mean to have this type of interface for openSUSE but definitively make a stronger impression much like Ubuntu has. 

Additionally, we would provide a much less attacked interface by staying within the regular styling standards that the majority of users have on their desktop. We don’t mean to be radical with changes, but include our community in speaking about what they think should be allowed as a stylistic change in the distribution. We understand that the behind-the-doors changes are not particularly supported and also having the input of our community will add for great thinking and clever organization on the desktop. We could well be the most cooperative distribution when it comes to style.

openSUSE Summit

it is now official, the USA is going to have an openSUSE party all of its own. It is the first time that there is a conference of this type in the U.S. and I am happy to report that I have already asked my boss to give me some time off around the dates of this conference.

So far, the openSUSE Facebook page reports only a handful of attendants. Hopefully as the time nears, more and more people sign up for this summit.

There is always a good thing to note about online communities and software efforts like the ones we are part of. Most of the times we are far apart from each other and our only methods of communication are email and IRC. Our gatherings are on the net and rarely do we get to see everyone that is a participant in this project in person. Surely a lot of misunderstanding would be done away with if somehow we were to see each other face to face. There is always a sense of empathy that rises above the online encounters that we have as we try to work on a new release of openSUSE.

A new sense of friendship and collaboration is something we always strive for. This is something that makes me think that it is always a great idea to get together and work on the projects we love. Also, the location is wonderful. Orlando is a very fun city with a lot of things to do. Surely our weekend there will not be wasted. I am actually planning to have my vacation time while I am there!

The idea is simple, tell your friends about this meeting. Even if they are not part of the community, they can still come and see what this is all about. After all, it is the first time that people from these latitudes get to be together. Most of the times, the community has to travel far into Europe to gather as a team. Now we are promoting a time for people who can't travel overseas and can make it to Florida.

Good luck, and the best wishes for an awesome conference.

New Contest

Here is the new contest put out by the openSUSE artwork team. Please read carfully and ready your best skills for it. Good luck!

Hello artists and enthusiasts. We have been hard at working with our artwork for 12.2 and now it is the time to style the distribution a little more. Since the most of artwork that we have now is a derivative of the official wallpaper created by Richard Brown and Marcus Moeller there is a big portion of our styling done for the distribution. However, there are a few other elements that need your creative collaboration. Splash screens for a few programs that we use can be greatly enhanced by your artistic inspiration.

Libre Office
GIMP
Scribus
Amarok
Calligra
Krita
Blender

The idea of this contest is that we can integrate the new chosen wallpaper into these splash screens for the release of 12.2.

Guidelines
1. Use the default wallpaper as part of the image.  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32600284/test3.xcf.zip
2. Refer to the official artwork guidelines in how to use logos for these different applications.
3. Restrict your creation to the sizes specified.
4. Provide the sources of your work if chosen.
5. Present/submit your artwork to http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Splashscreen

Sizes (please use a standard resolution of 75 dpi)
LibreOffice
    440x480
    http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design
GIMP
    320x480
    http://www.gimp.org/
Scribus
    391x295
    http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Promotion_material
Amarok
    550x412
    http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/File:Amarok_logo.svg
Calligra
    440x286
    http://community.kde.org/Calligra/Logos
Krita
    440x286
    http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Krita_Application_Logo.svg
Blender
    501x282

https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/blender/release/datafiles/splash.png

    Only work the area at the bottom. Leave top as is.

Please click “Upload” to the left of the wiki page and then select your files. As you finish the upload, please copy the “File:image-title.png” since this is the name of the file to be entered as you showcase your pictures in the wiki.

Submission Dealine
Thursday, 26 April 2012: openSUSE 12.2 Milestone 4

For more information about the current release roadmap, please visit:
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Roadmap

Two More Banners for the Website

Here are two last minute banners that I had to make for the summit website.

Enjoy!

One Click Install Icon

Hello, I know I am posting a lot today but I was thinking the other day about how openSUSE has this really cool utility called "One Click Install." I love it. Although it is not just "one" click per se, it is a lot simpler than hunting for dependencies for RPM packages. They currently have an icon that has been used for a while

Recently I have seen this other one

Overall they do come up with the idea of one-click-install. Surely people's eyes are drawn to this icon. However, I do think that there is some visual complexity the deviates from the main purpose of the icon. Probably text can be done away with and create something more like a logo for one-click-install. I have been trying to come up with something good as a replacement and I came up with these two ideas

This was my first try. But the problem with this one is that it was too long (don't worry about the colors yet). It lacked strength and presence so I looked around looking for good inspiration and remembered these BeOS icons

They look more blocky. So here is my rendition of what came next

I am still working on this guy. Surely there is more to do with it. But as of right now, I like it!

Anditosan :D