The prettiest of the *buntu’s is coming

Ubuntu’s brownish/orangy theme has been the target of much criticism. What is often forgotten is that one of its derivatives has been looking very good for quite a while now: Xubuntu. A complete visual overhaul for the upcoming version 9.04 is all set to continue this trend.

Pasi Lallinaho, picking up the baton from Jozsef Mak, leverages Xfce’s extensive theming capabilities to provide a coherent look and feel with wonderful new themes.

Update: This article previously contained a paragraph about a new GTK theme, but unfortunately, that didn’t make it in in time, meaning the visual overhaul is now “just” a new wallpaper, login window theme and icon theme, so scrap the part about extensive theming capabilities 😉

The theme for the login screen pictures a misty forest set next to a lake, in Xubuntu’s characteristic colour scheme.







Then there is the gorgeous new wallpaper, bearing a watermark of the Xubuntu logo on a canvas of the same defining shades of blue.







To complement it all, the GNOME-Colors icon theme is included. GNOME-Colors is a very complete theme, including a wide range of good-looking icons that very well match the rest of Xubuntu’s artwork.

Of course, a release this pretty deserves some buzz – if not for the great looks, then at least for the host of new features, such as the new version of Xfce – and you can help! If you own a website or blog, you can include a countdown banner with the following HTML code:

<a href="http://xubuntu.org/" title="Learn more about Xubuntu..."><img src="http://xubuntu.org/xubuntu-static/jaunty-countdown/" alt="Countdown to Xubuntu (xubuntu.org) 9.04, by Pasi Lallinaho"></a>

Alternatively, if you are a member of a forum or other online community, you can include it in your signature, forum posts or other places you’d like to promote Xubuntu, with the following BBCode:

[url=http://xubuntu.org/][img]http://xubuntu.org/xubuntu-static/jaunty-countdown/[/img][/url]

Of course, the countdown banner, too, was created by Pasi in the style of the new Xubuntu desktop.