I’m posting about the artwork again to follow-up on the contest and the desktop backgrounds for Linux Mint 9.

Wallpapers included by default:

The following wallpapers will be included by default in Linux Mint 9 (click on the pictures to see them in full size).

From “29A”:

From “Talento Design”:

From “At your service”:

From “96works”:

From the Linux Mint community, (from left to right: “Emotion” from distro hopper, “AirMint” from dkreations and “LM9” from Zwopper):

Note: “LM9” from Zwopper will come without the label shown on the above picture.

Note: If space doesn’t allow it, some backgrounds could be removed. The pictures which are sure to be included by default are marked with a thick border.

The default background:

At the moment, the default background is the one from “Talento Design” (first one below). Alternative choices include a design from “96works” and “AirMint” from dlkreations. See below:

Poll: I can’t promise I’ll follow the majority vote, as always I’ll do what I think is best but I’m interested to know your thoughts on this.

[poll:12]

Other backgrounds:

A number of packages will appear in Linux Mint 9:

“mint-wallpapers-extra” will contain many wallpapers made for Linux Mint 9 which weren’t installed by default, unbranded versions of 96works’ artwork, variations from Talento Design and At your service, and a few others.

“mint-wallpapers-previous-releases” will contain the wallpapers used by past releases, such as the very popular “Dew” used in Linux Mint 7 Gloria, and the black wallpapers used in Linux Mint 3, 4, 5, 6..

“mint-wallpapers-source” will contain the .PSD, .XCF, .SVG sources of the wallpapers and also the Linux Mint logos. We bought the copyrights on the artwork from 29A, At your service, Talento Design and 96works and we’re freeing it all for everyone to use. This package will give artists in our community great resources to start from, to modify and to reuse for their own creations.

We’ll also probably include a community package which will grow bigger as the community adds to it, but this is likely to happen after the release of Linux Mint 9.

Blue, green, black:

Many of the backgrounds shown above are also available in blue and will be featured in the KDE edition of Linux Mint 9.

The plan to design a metal-looking theme was postponed to Linux Mint 10. Black backgrounds are likely to come back into fashion at that stage. At the moment, we’re using a black panel and so we’re happy to stick to green for the background (as you can see there’s a lot of green in the pictures shown above).

Focus and efforts:

We’re working really hard on the upcoming release. We’ve looked at a lot of things, we’ve made many improvements and there’s been a huge amount of coding done for Linux Mint 9. I’ve no doubt people will be pleased with the release as we’ve significantly made things better. I know some people are upset when we talk about artwork, either they don’t see the importance of it when it comes to users’ first impression, or they think that the time we put into this is time taken away from more important things. This is the icing on the cake, something that comes very late in the release cycle… something which priority was low but which is extremely important to us as we’re getting ready to release. Attention to details is something we can’t oversee. When it comes to look & feel, things are so subjective and trends change so fast that it’s easy for us to make a mistake, but we’ll spend a few days at the end of each release cycle, like we’re doing right now, and whether we get it right or not, we’ll try our best to relax and to put efforts in making Linux Mint look the best we can.