One of the thing I love of Gentoo is that we have a very loosely based identity (which is reflected in being called a meta-distribution). While it might sound bad when it comes to actually fixing stuff that only bothers one of the developers’ interests, it generally is good for one thing: it makes it possible to integrate techniques and ideas that come from all the other distributions.
A very little example in this regard is what I’ve been doing myself now for a while: packaging the Fedora backgrounds packages to be used with Gentoo. While we have our share of artists, and Ben’s Gentoo 10.0 backgrounds are gorgeous, we never shone for eyecandy in our main tree. The Fedora background packages, a new one of each for each release, are quite lovely, and I found myself missing them when I moved off the one Fedora installation I had on the laptop (I like the distribution, but it just doesn’t suit me).
After preparing ebuilds for both the latest Fedora 15 Alpha (Lovelock) and the old Fedora 10 (Solar) which was missing from my list, I also noted that we don’t currently have an easy way to install the Gentoo 10.0 backgrounds at all! Easy as pie, thanks to having looked at the Fedora ones for so long, I now have an ebuild in my overlay, so emerge gentoo10-backgrounds will do the right thing, and let you choose the background right away, both in GNOME (which I use) and KDE (that Alex tested).
I’m probably going to add all the backgrounds ebuilds from my overlay to main tree soonish; I’m also wondering if we should actually increase the amount of themes available directly from our main tree. If you know of other distributions with cool background packages, let me know… I’m of the idea that the coolness of an operating system is too often tied to its appearance, unfortunately, so having Gentoo lack behind other distributions is not such a good thing.
This is pretty much just a waste of space for me. Perhaps even for most KDE users. I’ve always installed backgrounds by using the “Get more” button in the desktop settings and only grab the ones I actually like. From that point of view, it makes more sense to upload the Gentoo wallpapers there.
I guess that’s subjective; for me the waste of space is installing backgrounds for just my user since that means that I’m going to spend space on the backed-up, mirrored @/home@.I’d rather spend 30MB in @/@ than 3MB in @/home@.
I really love to see the fedora wallpapers in the main tree. I’m using F12-80-dual.png which really looks great. No longer having to put it into my /home would be awesome.I used a wallpaper from ubuntu before (I think it was from 8.10). I’m not sure about newer versions, but many people seem to like ubuntus artwork.
Well thanks for that. It is true that our main tree lacks good themes and other stylish components. I always liked the various Fedora wallpapers and ubuntu human-like themes as well
Hey great work!, Gentoo needs some graphic work and this wallpapers looks good 🙂
bq. It is true that our main tree lacks good themes and other stylish components.+1I think it’s time to clean out the old “Various Gnome backgrounds” that all look like their from the late 90’s. Oh wait, they are! :)A lot of the gtk-themes also feel extremely aged, and they haven’t aged that well. Even though it’s easy to install your own themes, I think it’s definitely nice to be able to just run_emerge nice-theme nice-wallpaper_and it’s done.I also agree that Ben’s stuff is really nice!
I’m with RealNC here. Not that the waste of space bothers me so much, I just think it is unnecessary.On the other hand… some people might like this way better (multi user systems e.g.), so good job!
Great..I think it would be good to have all the artwork (kde/grub splashes, …) from the latest liveDVD available in the tree too.It would enable users to easily gentoo-ize the look of their gentoo-box..
Really a good idea.I was looking forward to having stuff like this since many years.Flameeyes’s posts are always very appreciated.
Grand idea! Though for Gnome it’s easy to grab a background. Having alternatives is a good thing. Linux Mint looks nice too. But it’s not 64 bit ;)As for where it should be stored well let the user choose perhaps?Let’s take the case of ssd/hdd combo. I’ve a lot more space perhaps in /home or /opt than I might want to write to in /. In that particular case might want to build and install rather than even compile on the drive and then nothing but /, /bin, /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbinNot that I have one…yet.As for me I have /home mounted on a separate drive altogether. I did not make it my fastest one 😉
That’s just great! Thank you very much,
I have a problem:!!! Previously fetched file: ‘/usr/portage/distfiles/leonidas-backgrounds-11.0.0-2.fc12.src.rpm’!!! Reason: Failed on RMD160 verification!!! Got: 34203fd82a4b4688444624dd2581432d325be01b!!! Expected: be635cf12a0bb2886bfc82a5ce2657ce0cb96bf4I tried many mirrors but checksum is always incorrect