Do we like green?

Uityyy · Yesterday 23:25:21

As you may know, the next version of Devuan is codenamed Freia, which is the name of a 100+ mile-wide main-belt asteroid that in turn takes its name from a Norse fertility goddess. On last week's Jitsi call, golinux mentioned that given this latter association, it could be nice to have some green in Devuan Freia's branding.

Now, I have no idea what sort of green golinux had in mind, but this got me thinking: As a matter of purely personal taste I have never really enjoyed the green themes that folks like the MATE Desktop and Linux Mint have put out, and that's made me pay less attention to green as a UI option overall, but I do actually really like green and even ran Windows with custom green titlebars years ago. Can Devuan look good in green?

I played around with some colors, and I think the answer is yes. Enough yes that I now want to build a Clearlooks-Phenix-Emerald theme even just for my own collection of alternate looks.

Here's a rough cut of *generally* what this could look like and some important caveats:

Rough Emerald Mockup

1. These are not the correct Devuan icons. Proper Devuan themes recolor the gnome-icon-theme. To get a rough sense of what could be, I simply grabbed the existing gnome-wise-icon-theme for this screenshot. That's part of the gnome-colors project, which is a set of color-changing icons that are between GNOME and Tango in appearance.

2. These are not the correct Devuan titlebars. Proper Devuan themes use static image assets with finely-tweaked gradient colors. Since I'm still at the stage of thinking *generally* what colors look right, I just used a standard Xfwm4 theme that follows the GTK3 theme's colors.

3. None of these colors are precisely right. That takes fine tuning, and before I work on finer details I need to get the bigger picture right. Do I actually want light-green windows? Or would contrasting the green with a more neutral grey look better? Or perhaps pairing it with something complementary? I've enjoyed green with warm-brown in other UIs.

4. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not at all in charge of Devuan's future theming; I simply heard there was an interest in green, and am happy to provide a green UI option or two to anyone interested.

Mainly I'm just posting this as a quick-and-dirty mockup to see if such a theme is something anyone else here would want to use when polished.

Last edited by Uityyy (Yesterday 23:25:48)

golinux · Today 00:41:30

Well, this is a surprise! You went dark on the subject after I pointed you to Devuan's official "THEMING A DEVUAN RELEASE" that I put together after I retired from that task a few years ago. No one has taken a crack at it since. It is a GIGANTIC undertaking so be prepared.

https://git.devuan.org/devuan/documenta … -devuan.md

Current color is too dark and nowhere near a biologically accurate green. I hopped outside and picked some leaves, did a rough twirl of my trusty gcolor2 and it registered around #A8D543?

FWIW, it always took me a month or two to finally get the colors into the most harmonious balance for just the desktop background. Then that color palette has to be applied to so many other parts of Devuan that need to be visually integrated for the release.

Would be great if you could pull it off!

greenjeans · Today 01:09:22

I love everything about this, they don't call me "greenjeans" for nothing! Uityyy you rock!

For intense work with color palettes, perhaps liquibytes color picker app could be of use : https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=64856#p64856

This is a superb color-picker app for hardcore tuning of color in themes, could be very useful IMO.

Last edited by greenjeans (Today 01:21:34)

Uityyy · Today 01:29:22

I got the current darker background shade by smudging a bunch of colors together from the clover.png tile that appears in Fedora's desktop-backgrounds-basic package because this was a background I remembered enjoying years ago on KDE 2 or 3. It's definitely on the bluer end, especially compared to the gnome-wise-icons. I think having some more blue-green and some more yellow-green hues helps prevent everything from blurring together, but there are a lot of different ways to do that. I'll play around when I get time.

I experimented with having the titlebars about midway between the current background and temporary-icon colors, but several family members thought darker was better, so I jumped to the dark green from the Emerald City variant of the Win3x Enhanced GTK theme as a darker starting place.

Uityyy · Today 01:41:26

they don't call me "greenjeans" for nothing!

I figured if anyone would like this, you would. I'll have to study your garden photos in the off-topic section for more inspiring greens.

Calamity · Today 08:29:48

Leafy green is one of my favorite colors. I would certainly love to see Devuan Freia dressed in these tones.

I got these old colortables with literal color names, perhaps they will be of some help:

From bblean (Blackbox for Windows) project
These are the standardized HTML color names, I believe.

Page 1 Page 2
These are just from an old game guide on how to color-code your nickname. Probably not belonging to any standard but the names are fairly descriptive.

This is a green theme I use often personally: https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1467179

Last edited by Calamity (Today 09:47:10)

Babarosa · Today 10:34:14

Hi there!
I like green very much too. I usually recolour the blackbird theme with the obsidian palette to get choices to my taste and for the people I install Devuan for.

liquibyte · Today 13:57:15

I love everything about this, they don't call me "greenjeans" for nothing! Uityyy you rock!
For intense work with color palettes, perhaps liquibytes color picker app could be of use : https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=64856#p64856
This is a superb color-picker app for hardcore tuning of color in themes, could be very useful IMO.

You just made my day. That's exactly the sort of thing I had in mind for Gamut. Behold a gradient with #A8D543 as the primary on the hue wheel 15 degree separation between 6 pairs and an angle of 5 degrees for each pair.

Stops: #43d5a1 0%, #43d595 6.25%, #43d57c 18.75%, #43d570 25%, #43d558 37.5%, #43d54c 43.75%, #53d543 56.25%, #5fd543 62.5%, #77d543 75%, #84d543 81.25%, #9cd543 93.75%, #a8d543 100%

Last edited by liquibyte (Today 14:07:35)

greenjeans · Today 14:11:20

Do I actually want light-green windows? Or would contrasting the green with a more neutral grey look better? Or perhaps pairing it with something complementary?

In the small shot here on the forum, you can definitely pickup the light-green interior, but opening the image in another tab for full-size view it's much more subtle, and I like that a lot, Just my taste mind you but I always like interiors to be a muted off-white with just a hint of the border/theme main color, and I think you already nailed that. But a hint of grey might look nice too. I also like various shades of olive-green and think a theme based on that would look good too.

Mainly I'm just posting this as a quick-and-dirty mockup to see if such a theme is something anyone else here would want to use when polished.

Absolutely, i'd add it in the next versions of every iso I make too.

@liquibyte that #589552 in the main pane is lovely, kind of what I think of when envisioning an olive palette. So, any chance of a .deb package for those of us who are compiling-challenged?

Last edited by greenjeans (Today 14:13:57)

golinux · Today 14:16:29

That's really cool! And yes, #A8D543 is a green that would accompany the celebration of the end of winter and the arrival spring with dancing around the Maypole!

@greenjeans . . . an "olive" palette is not a color with which to celebrate the arrival of spring in Freia's part of the world. Just sayin' . . .

greenjeans · Today 14:59:24

@greenjeans . . . an "olive" palette is not a color with which to celebrate the arrival of spring in Freia's part of the world. Just sayin' . . .

Oh I know, wasn't suggesting it for freia, just a personal hankerin', I have a bunch of old clothing in woodland camo that I bought for cheap at surplus stores that I wear when i'm working around the house and garden, always did like the color palette on 'em.

liquibyte · Today 15:55:17

@liquibyte that #589552 in the main pane is lovely, kind of what I think of when envisioning an olive palette. So, any chance of a .deb package for those of us who are compiling-challenged? big_smile

I think I did this right but let me know if there are any issues.
https://git.devuan.org/liquibyte/Gamut/releases

Direct install .deb file gamut_1.0.0~rc1-1_amd64.deb.

Last edited by liquibyte (Today 16:00:29)

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#1 Yesterday 23:25:21

Do we like green?

#2 Today 00:41:30

Re: Do we like green?

#3 Today 01:09:22

Re: Do we like green?

#4 Today 01:29:22

Re: Do we like green?

#5 Today 01:41:26

Re: Do we like green?

#6 Today 08:29:48

Re: Do we like green?

#7 Today 10:34:14

Re: Do we like green?

#8 Today 13:57:15

Re: Do we like green?

#9 Today 14:11:20

Re: Do we like green?

#10 Today 14:16:29

Re: Do we like green?

#11 Today 14:59:24

Re: Do we like green?

#12 Today 15:55:17

Re: Do we like green?

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