First Impressions Count - Default window sizes and colors

[ecomoney]

Puppy will be extremely friendly for Linux newbies

Puppy will breathe new life into old PCs

VS



Ive been having a think about how puppy starts up and how it appears to the linux newbie....

I believe that most people turn to linux because they have heard about its magical immunity to malware that plagues their daily lives. Through years of conditioning, when they see a 640x480 screen they immedietly think "Broken...Ive got to spend hours hunting down my video driver, visiting websites that could infect my computer and stop it working...OH NO ".

I think all usable hardware (even by puppy's definition) is capable of at least 800x600 resolution. Can we make this the startup default. This will greatly enhance peoples first expectations.

Also all doze operating systems since 2000 have not been grey. Grey means "old" (i.e. windows 95/98/2000). People do "judge books by their cover" (as is the saying in England). Please, change the default colour scheme to anything but gray!



Personally, I think this was the prettiest puppy ever produced (was it 1.06?). I remember people going "Awwwww, that looks nice, Im gonna try this" as soon as it loaded which theyve stopped doing now.

PLEASE, dont take this personally anyone, I am tech enough to understand the huge advantages even a cutdown distro like puppy has over Vista. I only want the outside to give the right impression of whats underneath!

p.s. I know that sometimes XVESA cant handle intel 8xx chipsets at more that 16k colours. To me even 16k is more than enough!

[Lobster]

I looked at your Vista screenshot and thought that is not a very good example of Puppy customisation - it looks awkward and difficult to use.
Only when I looked a little closer did I realise this is the latest Redmond scam (leased operating system)

I do believe the look and feel of XP and Vista is very good and I agree with your grey comments. In fact I think Puppy should use the blue and GTK XP themes (in-built JWM configuration) as default. One day I am sure this will happen. I think Barrys default on 2.12 is exactly right and MU's excellent background setter and slide show and editor is wonderful.

I also prefer xfce as a window manager - sometimes I add it [shrug].

I think your comments are very important because (with all respect to Barry) presentation is not his strength. BUT Puppy is getting ever more gorgeous.

About the resolution:
Improved handling of LCD screens for laptops and improved video wizard is being incorporated into Puppy Star (2.13)
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy213

I installed Ubuntu Mint and Xubuntu and PCLinuxOS recently. I think PCLinuxOS is gorgeous. It sets an excellent example.

Linux desktop is getting simpler, usable and luvvly.

Perhaps we can have a gorgeous add on as a pack / .sfs / dotpup.
Maybe Rhino with his PuppyPro (Brian is busy) will be more to your taste, when it is out

Maybe we need more up to date screenshots?

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PedigreePuppyP2
http://puppylinux.org/user/photogallery.php?album=4
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 5140#25140

[ecomoney]

Puppy can be made to look extremely gorgeous I agree! It is the default theme that matters though to get them in the door. I had never thought of doing theme customisations as a .sfs, but this would still not address that "first Impression".

I cant seem to find an up to date screenshot of 2.12 (Im afraid because of my clients I cant be "bleeding edge", Im posting this from 1.09ce!)., Would someone post one?

Glad to hear this problem is being worked on

[Pizzasgood]

Err... is that the normal "splash popup" for Vista? If so, that's just playing dirty.

The return of the Peach Theme would definately alienate most normal teenage males in the USA. Now, if I were the type to go, "Ohhhh, it's sooo cute!" I'd be all for it.

I do agree about first impressions though. Check out Pizzapup 1.0.5. It had a fancy cursor, nice wallpaper, nice GTK theme, nicer ROX, IceWM, and cleaner icons. Also, if you look at the GTK theme it uses, you'll see why I have to disagree about your gray argument. It all hinges on how you use the gray. It's actually a better color because it's neutral, both in terms of hue and luminance. It's just that Windows made poor use of it, whereas Pizzapup 1.0.5 has gradients and a smoother appearance (thanks to whoever came up with the smooth-peachy-clean theme!)

You can expect more of the same, plus a truckload of different in Pizzapup A.T.E. whenever I finish (before Christmas or pizza isn't good).

As for the standard Puppy, it has indeed improved. After several months of nagging Barry, the MUT icon on the desktop improved. You should dig out a copy of 0.9.1 sometime. By 2.12's standards, it was horrendous.

[ecomoney]

Did I say I liked the peach theme? Noo! It could have been better, but at least it didnt look "old". Gradients are good, it seems that rounded shapes and smooth curves are what is "in" now.

[Dougal]

I can't say having Shakira playing is something to be proud of…

More seriously, I agree that Puppy needs a facelift, have commented about it in the past, but you need to be practical -- will get into it later.

But first: you are being completely unfair towards Puppy: what you will see a minute after putting a Vista cd in your computer (it's probably even DVDs, not cds…20GB!) is one of the first stages of an installation wizard. Much less attractive than the Puppy snapshots.
To make a borderly fair comparison you should have taken images from the "my Puppy is more gorgeous than yours" thread, as those are examples of what can be done with Puppy once it is "installed".

As for Puppy starting at a low resolution (only in Xvesa!), that's for people with old machines, so that it will always start X, letting users have the graphical wizard to change the resolution with.

Besides that, I thought that Vista shot was just someone using Enlightenment 16. It has the transparency, iconboxes, pagers, the lot. Has been available as a dotpup for a long time. Enlightenment usually has dark and dreary themes, but you can search the forum for a post I made a long time ago showing how it can be made "brighter".

(speaking of Enlightenment, I compiled Enlightenment 17 this morning! It looks amazing (you might have seen it in Austrumi) but unfortunately is much more "conservative" which makes it less good, as far as I'm concerned. The iconbox is now a "panel applet" like in XFCE! Awful.)

If you raised the minimum RAM requirement of Puppy to 256MB, I could make you a Pup that looks better than Vista could dream of! But that's the problem: Puppy aims to "bring new life into old computers".

Have I mentioned already that Vista is 20GB? If Puppy were 20GB you'd be able to say "beam me up, Puppy" and a second later find yourself on the moon!


Now, being practical. As Pizzaboy mentioned, you can use GTK-themes to make Puppy look good. I posted about it about a month ago.
However, as Nathan mentioned in that thread, GTK-themes can slow things down.
The themes Pizzasgood mentioned (Smooth-Peachy-Clean) uses the "smooth" gtk-engines which are big and slow -- a problem with Puppy.

Since I made that post, I've been "secretly" working on something I intended to surprise Barry with for 2.13: I've collected gtk-engines and -themes and have been creating a collection of small themes (i.e. no icons to add bulk) using small, fast gtk engines -- all of which I intend to present Barry with so that he can choose what he wants to add to the next Pup.

Most themes nowadays use the clearlooks, smooth or pixmap engines -- all big and slow (and clearlooks not having a GTK1 engine, as far as I know).
So I've spent a lot of time porting themes to use faster engines. For example, changing clearlooks themes to use the Lighthouseblue engine.
The results of this are not as nice as the originals (smooth and clearlooks have nice gradients, which lighthouseblue doesn't have), but still make Puppy look much better -- without the slowing down of the slow engines.

(speaking of gradients: there's a nice GTK1 engine named Engradient, but I haven't found a GTK2 engine to go with it, so I can't use it!)

So, anyway, my main point here is that there's no point in waiting for things to happen! It's up to us to improve some of the things in Puppy.
A long time ago Barry said that the future of Puppy is the CE, that he wants to concentrate on the "under the hood" parts.
I consider that enough to allow me to think up silly things and present them to Barry, asking him to add them to the next release!

[pakt]

...I've been "secretly" working on something I intended to surprise Barry with for 2.13: I've collected gtk-engines and -themes and have been creating a collection of small themes (i.e. no icons to add bulk) using small, fast gtk engines -- all of which I intend to present Barry with so that he can choose what he wants to add to the next Pup.

Sounds great, Dougal - that's taking the bull by the horns

[ecomoney]

Hi Pakt

Im glad your working on this Pakt, I look forward to seeing your gtk themes, just what puppy needs.

Puppy & Linux is of course great for its themability, something that Windows users dont know is even possible. They believe that what they see on first bootup is what they get and what they are stuck with. I introduce a lot of new people to puppy in my work in the local area, and see peoples reactions first hand. Mostly their first cautious look at anything other than windows is a via preconfigured and beautified setup that I take around on my pendrive. Sometimes though I set it up from scatch, and I experience an entirely different reaction.

Like I said, I could never deride the underlying workings and possibilities of puppy. I am just saying that people have very low expectations of pc's from their windows experiences. Puppy needs to give a more snappy *first* impression or people wont want to delve into its customizability and features, and might never realised what theyve missed!!!

As I said, something other than pink/grey and 640x480 would be great!!! Please put it to Barry when you talk to him next.

P.S. Sorry about the Shikira, I quite agree, it was due to a lack of choice....there seems to be more screenshots of puppy on the web than of Vista!!!!

[wmwragg]

This is great, just what I've been hankering for. I quite understand the keep it small and nimble direction - this is one of the reasons I use puppy. But it would be nice to have a nicer desktop to look at straight out of the box.

[john biles]

Hello Everyone,
To me there isn't any other Linux Distro better than Puppy Linux.
Each month I receive my Linux Magazine and DVD with Mandriva, SuSe, Fedora etc on it and install them on a Partition I have set aside for testing new distro's.
I play with them for a few hours and they do some things better than Puppy. (Example auto detection of some USB cameras Puppy doesn't see)
Generally I copy their Icons into a folder in Puppy and wait for the next Magazine to arrive.
Now while all us Puppy users know how good Puppy is, Users of Windows and Linux don't. Sadly when looking around the net at news on Linux in general, a few times I've seen Puppy refered to as a Live only Mini Linux Distro. The reader is given the inpression that Puppy isn't a full real version of Linux and the reader should be downloading Ubuntu, SuSe, Mepis etc instead.

For example the other day I sent an email to my Brother who was the person who originally put me on to Linux with a pic showing my current Puppy Desktop.
He is an Kubuntu user and normally wants nothing to do with Puppy as he says it looks old and out of date. I have explained what Puppy can do and while in the past he said it sounded good, he just couldn't get over the looks of Puppy.
As he is an computer animator and he expects alot from his Desktop and has made changes in Kubuntu to get it looking the way he likes.

Normally he doesn't reply to alot of my emails as he is always busy with work, but I got a reply within minutes after he saw the changes I'd made to the background and desktop Icons.
He said he was going to download Puppy and try it.

My point is Puppy was still the same underneath, but now it looked to him better so he'd try it.
Sadly Windows Vista will be the benchmark Windows user will use when looking at Linux in general. To them Linux must be better than Windows for them to change.
Look at the Apple ipod it was at the time to the average mp3 user better than what was available elsewhere and it sold millions. I've heard the iriver player was as good if not better but it was Apple's marketing that won the day.
I know the Apple iphone will do the same for Apple as it looks next generation.
So sadly looks are important to alot of PC users, they will buy Vista because they will be told it's "Next Generation" and a must have.
Linux needs a bit of the "Next Generation" to bring in new users.

I want Puppy to grow and be used by more PC Users so I hope it's looks begin to match the magic that is underneath.

I will continue to improve Puppy's looks for myself and show my graphically improved Puppy to friends and family to show what Puppy can do. I've found they show more interest when it looks better.

[ecomoney]

Thanks for sharing that John, I know exactly where your coming from. There are some very talented designers on this forum (one thing about having the desktop as it is, we all know how to modify it!). This is just one pic that I hope makes it to the default wallpaper from here)



I would really love to able to distribute the CD's as is in my travels but until the basic look of it improves Im afraid I will put people off linux by doing that. Puppy has made great strides recently improving the look of the startup and the setup wizards (its because of the look of the startup Im seriously considering upgrading the cybercafe to 2.13). In terms of the uptake of puppy, I cant think of not better way of spending a few killobytes it than through its looks, rather than any extra libraries or apps.

Other mainstream Linuxes (which Puppy has become despite looking how it does) have specialist design teams of deliberately non-technical people working on the look and the feel. While under the hood puppy is just about perfect for this windoze world, it really needs a team with design flair to push it back up the lists at distrowatch!!!

[marksouth2000]

Sorry to be a dissenting voice, but a disembodied dog's head on a platter may not be in the best of taste right at this point in the sad history of the world, especially with at least 2 decapitation stories visible on BBC news right now....

Cute puppies, yes. But visibly INTACT cute puppies, please.

[Dougal]

Sorry to be a dissenting voice, but a disembodied dog's head on a platter may not be in the best of taste right at this point in the sad history of the world, especially with at least 2 decapitation stories visible on BBC news right now....

Cute puppies, yes. But visibly INTACT cute puppies, please.

I don't know about the news, but I agree that a complete puppy would be better... Maybe something like the original photo of that puppy (as posted a few days ago) with the background changed -- something like the famous 1.0.7 background!

[sintot]

The dog has both body and head, it's not decapited. Look the image carefully.

[Everitt]

I've just spent the last few hours playing with window managers. I'm new to puppy and so I'm looking to find which one suits me (and my machine) best.

I've been playing with Vista RC1, and I'll admit that I loved the way it looked out of the box, I still do, and out-the-box puppy is NOTHING in comparison. Then I installed enlightenment. WOW. I seriously reckon that with a little very simple tweaking enlightenment looks every bit as attractive as Vista, and here's the thing: Vista is running reasonably (with typical driver issues and random crashes) on my AMD Athlon 64 3500+ with 1GB . Puppy + enlightenment is running sweetly on my PIII 500Mhz with 192MB of ram.

I'm not suggesting that Barry switch to enlightenment, I'm just saying that you'd be amazed by what's possible. I agree that changing the default theme is a good idea, and agree that it would be nice to do something about the resolution. Would it be possible to add a menu before X starts, like the one in XOrg?

Does anyone have a collection of screen shots showing some different themes that could be used without changing the GTK engine or WM? I'm thinking it would be a good idea to start a poll on the subject, try and find which 'the people' would like to see. I wouldn't have thought changing the theme a little could impact performance that much?

We know Puppy is capable of a lot more than it currently manages out-of-the-box, why not let it shine for new users as well?

[Lobster]

Enlightenment is pretty amazing. In Puppy Barbie (Feb 2007 release if Barry takes his Acer laptop on his travels in Oz) the new XDG menu will mean Puppy is consistent across Window Managers.

My favourite is Xfce
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/XfcePuppy

It is plain, simple and elegant, just like me (apart from the elegant bit)

Here are some different screenshots of Puppy
http://puppylinux.org/user/photogallery.php?album=3

page 2 has some quite old screenshots - mine with the
giant penguin is just odd - that was about v 1.03
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PedigreePuppy

and here . . .
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 5140#25140

[rarsa]

Surprisingly I have an Opinion.

Here is what I think:

- Puppy definetivelly needs a facelift for the default theme.
- The most appropriate person to design a new look is not a tech person or casual usar but a professional graphic designer.
- Whatever new look is proposed to Barry should be very small.

I've made a point before saying that no matter what the default is, some people will love it some will hate it.

I think that people miss the point when they refer to colours or specific images when refering to the interface. I think that the difference is between something professionally done and something amateurish.

It seems to be the consensus that Puppy's look is not a professional.

So: Is there a professional grahic designer that would lile to give it a shot? and create a professionally and modern looking background and clean up the icons while keeping a minimal size?

In the past when approached with the right visual contributions, Barry has been open to include them. (new icons, for example).

But let's keep in mind that this is mostly Barry's project and he will put whatever he likes in the Live CD. After all, people can customize or even create pupplets.

On Puppy's mission statement I don't remember reading "take over all the desktops" so I don't know why we worry that much about people that don't like it.

It's different on the "look" related to usability. I have some ideas in mind that I will be publishing soon. Those ideas will require support from visual artists.

[Everitt]

Here are some different screenshots of Puppy

Thanks. I've bookmarked them for now, we'll see where this thread leads

Surprisingly I have an Opinion.

Here is what I think:

- Puppy definetivelly needs a facelift for the default theme.
- The most appropriate person to design a new look is not a tech person or casual usar but a professional graphic designer.
- Whatever new look is proposed to Barry should be very small.

Quote for emphasis.

But let's keep in mind that this is mostly Barry's project and he will put whatever he likes in the Live CD. After all, people can customize or even create pupplets.

On Puppy's mission statement I don't remember reading "take over all the desktops" so I don't know why we worry that much about people that don't like it.

I totally agree that the final decision is Barry's, but why shouldn't we see what we have to offer him? If we can come up with something that makes Puppy look better without impacting performance then what's too lose?

To me the purpose of this isn't to get more people to use puppy, but rather to get more people to give it a fair trial. I don't care if people like puppy or not, I know that I do, but I do believe that if people really give it a go then they might like it as much as I do. I agree that an old fashioned unprofessional interface is going put people off, and to me that's a great pity. I honestly believe that puppy is amongst the best solution in a number of situations (example), and if people find solutions that work with they're old hardware then that's great. We only get one environment (Blah blah blah etc )
Seriously, if the initial look is putting people off using puppy then I think that it's in the general interest to do something about it. Don't people deserve to learn to love puppies ?

@Barry: If you've been reading this would you mind quickly posting your opinion in the matter. Thanks

[tometo]

Hi friends,

I'll try to make a new suggestion for all the Puppy look, with a small size wallpaper and new set of icons, specially designed for Puppy... If you have some nice ideas please don't hesitate to contact me here... This time I'll try not to use animals

Greetings from Sofia.

[Nathan F]

- The most appropriate person to design a new look is not a tech person or casual usar but a professional graphic designer.

Not to rub it in, guys, but that's exactly what I'm now able to achieve in Grafpup, because I happen to have a very talented graphic artist as a friend and user (David May, some of you will remember him as having created some very good logos for Puppy a while back). I'm only mentioning it as support of what Rarsa is saying.

What bothers me about Puppy's default look is really just the fact that things aren't visually unified. I mean, some icons came from fvwm95, some from Crystalsvg, some from Gnome, a couple are now coming from Tango. The applications are a wierd mix of gtk1, gtk2, tcl/tk, and (ghasp) xlib. The wizards are an even worse mishmash. A lot of this has to do with the small size of course, we use whatever gets the job done most efficiently.

Part of what I'm trying to accomplish with my next release of Grafpup, is unifying as much of the desktop as possible under gtk2 based apps, converting a lot of wizards along the way. In Grafpup 104 I unified the icons all with Tango (which is going to be more complete soon). I've picked a very lightweight WM that can be themed with gradients in a lot of cool ways, which is something jwm just can't do, and matched the WM theme to the gtk2 theme. Basically I'm trying to create a consistent look and feel across the entire desktop, without installing something like Gnome to get it done.

This is the sort of thing that I think would make a big difference for Puppy.

Nathan