Don’t get me wrong, the average X-interface looks great. Some are absolutely stunning. But, in my opinion usability has gone down the toilet. Almost everything that should be a clear distinction is displayed in shades of the same color, including icons.
I’m now running an XP-inspired theme on cinnamon so I at least have some functionality (e.g. title bar in a different color, buttons with clear borders, etc). I wish I wouldn’t need to, to have a productive interface. I wish for something beautiful and productive.
Seeing screenshots of someones Aero-inspired Steam-mockup inspired me to make this post. I found it attractive while I hated Aero when it came out and never used it (it was around the time I switched to Linux). Is there any theme/window manager/setup I should be looking at that I obviously haven’t?
Use KDE for that. You can customise it how you want, including all the crazy colours you crave. There are a huge ton of exactly those themes and color schemes available, like this one for example, which took me a few seconds to find.
That does look kind of like my current setup. KDE has changed more than I was aware, will have to look deeper…
Edit: I totally forgot XP had the colorful theme by default, I guess my setup is 2000-inspired…
