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GNU Wallpapers

gnu.org

102 pointschauhankiran51 comments

They're naive, non-professional, obviously from a different time, not too distracting and there's a strange proportion of people who can't help but point out that they don't like it. What else could you want?

To go off on a parallel topic for a bit, I haven't used a desktop or a wallpaper for some years now and it's great. Both are a bad idea. The desktop is a magnet for sloppy organization. You'd be surprised just how much more organized and productive file system and shortcut usage gets if you turn off desktop icons. And a wallpaper is just distracting. I've never found a wallpaper that I didn't want to change after a while. I even tried minimal gradients. What ended up working perfect, as in I'll likely never change it, is a solid black wallpaper.

Concerning not using a wallpaper, functional benefits aside, someone might think that this would take away the bling of an expensive laptop, but that's exactly what I find appealing about it. This way you're treating the device, not as a status or fashion statement, but as a functional tool.

I personally like desktop icons because it’s a tool. It’s my working directory, where I put files and order and stack them. Disks are shown there, as they too are temporary things that I currently do things with. Like a real desktop!

Maybe I should just mount the desktop folder in RAM.

I do agree with the solid colour as background. The working files are my markup. I’d suggest maybe using #808080 instead, or a colour like I do. Just a bit more pleasant in my experience.

I rarely ever see my desktop, because apps are usually maximized. Doesn't everybody do that? What kind of apps did people use back in the day when desktops weren't hidden all the time?

Maybe the idea was to occasionally quit apps and open other ones, not to keep them all open at the same time?

> What kind of apps did people use back in the day when desktops weren't hidden all the time?

Emacs to the left and one xterm window in the bottom right corner.

... with xclock top center.

Well with your live stats and feed plugin running transparently over the desktop and Winamp taking up non-rectangular space, it was critical to consider a desktop peeking through.

Zoomed, not maximized. Windows are sized only as large as they need to be. You can drag and drop between windows/apps, for example dragging to the trash can on the desktop. I think full screen is excellent for a few consumer apps like presentation/slide show, watching shows/movies and playing games. It's definitely a preference as I don't like tabs/MDI, snapping windows, and windows that consume screen space.

Not sure about back in the day, but what I use is one or more terminal windows at 80 chars width, so that's rarely more than 50% of the screen. I regularly use only one large app, the browser, but I don't keep it maximized if I don't need it, because then it's just visual noise.

Sometimes I'll find myself feeling cluttered and confused while working, and I'll minimize or close everything, and reopen only the stuff I need at that time, and a feeling of ease will wash over, a bit like exhaling after holding your breath.

I'm coming off peculiarly sensitive to distraction, because it's true. I wouldn't say I'm ADD, but I'd definitely say that as far as I can tell the casual stimuli bombardmant affects me more than most people I encounter. At the same time, I think that these days everyone is susceptible to sensory overexcitation.

> Both are a bad idea

AKA, "I don't like it."

> You'd be surprised just how much more organized and productive file system and shortcut usage gets if you turn off desktop icons.

The hundreds of files in my ~ strongly disagree.

Yikes! I can't imagine ever saving something directly to ~.

How about the 30 or so applications I have that save to ~/.something?

Actually I put a lot of statically linked apps on ~/Applications. This way if I need to move machines most of what I need is in ~ along with my data and config.

Well, I meant anything not starting with a dot. ;) Things I am saving I generally want to be able to see. But I wish all that crap would keep itself to .config where it belongs too, and I do what I can to keep those who can't play nicely in the sandbox off my system.

For me, a pure black background is the enemy; because macOS doesn't have window borders, only shadows, it's necessary to have some contrast to differentiate between the edges of windows with dark content or dark-themed windows and the background.

In that case, a good wallpaper is just as functional as a plain background, if not more; I usually pick my wallpapers based on contrast with my typically-displayed windows and the usual colours of their content.

Besides which, functionality and aesthetics aren't mutually exclusive.

I usually only ever see a sliver of my wallpaper in between the gaps of my i3-gaps windows. I think at this point it's less of a wallpaper and more of a texture for my window borders.

I had desktop icons off for a while too. And I found myself a lot more productive with organized folders on my desktop. It's much nicer to lay things out spatially than in a flat list in your home folder.

Looks like a collection of random contributions that were not evaluated for their aesthetic quality. For better examples of crowdsourced art see Fedora supplemental wallpapers: https://fedoramagazine.org/submissions-now-open-fedora-30-su....

Also, the GNU project appear to have capable designers: https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/

> Also, the GNU project appear to have capable designers: https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/

And still the images have little speckles and color bleed presumably left there from a poor quality scan/cleanup.

It doesn't communicate very well. All this website says is: you don't pay anything, so you're getting a sh__tty quality. Plus you have no right to want anything more.

There are tons of good free high quality wallpapers on deviantart.com, and for those that aren't "free as in freedom", I think it's up to negotiation with the author of a particular wallpaper. Some of them will probably be delighted to be selected by gnu.org to be the producer of GNU-approved art.

> Some of them will probably be delighted to be selected by gnu.org to be the producer of GNU-approved art.

They would have to select themselves. TFA is essentially fan art that happens to have the right size for a wallpaper, nothing more. I'm pretty sure the FSF doesn't have a marketing budget that'd allow commissioning artists for any significant number of "official" wallpapers.

> Plus you have no right to want anything more.

Some of the linked wallpapers do not have their source files linked. As far as I know the GPL requires that the preferred version of the source is also made available and neither png nor jpeg qualify for most image manipulation tools. At least a few have the xcf also linked.

Why do you think they're GPL-licenced? Did I miss the license on the page?

Also, if you read about the FSF they don't advocate for all non-software to be free. Some documentation from the FSF is not included in Debian because the Debian developers deemed it not free enough, because some parts are marked as non-modifiable.

At least this one is https://www.gnu.org/graphics/this-is-freedom-wallpaper.html , stated below the image. However that brings up annother issue, which license applies to the images that do not have an explicit license stated? Is it the creative commons stated for the website itself and would this also apply to the externally hosted images?

I guess the CC license is just for the page, as the image are hosted someplace else and are not explicitly included in the license footer (which is the standard footer throughout the FSF/GNU website.)

The design of the website and of these wallpapers communicates this: we're better because we're free, who cares about the looks.

I do appreciate the GNU tools and whatnot, but it is hard to "convert" everyday users with the moral argument.

the fact that it's free software is in fact the core of the message, so I think the design correctly conveys it succesfully

Are bad and inconsistent design also core of the message? Because every single linked wallpaper page on that list has a different layout when they don't go directly to a wallpaper of unspecified size. Others have their sized versions listed directly inline and then we have the wallpapers hosted on an external server vs. hosted on gnu itself. It leaves a bad impression when they don't go the last 10% of the effort to present a clean site instead of an unorganized dump.

The message content is fine, even laudable. It's the tone that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

I've been choosing gnu tools over non-free ones whenever I could for over ten years now, and I deeply believe in the GPL, but the condenscending attitude that a part of that community displays is annoying and counter-productive.

I am not sure the messaging is enough these days. Most software is "free" for the average user. There is a difference between free and "free" these days, and it's a message worth spreading.

They all seem to be incredibly ugly. The 90ies called and want their bad designs back?

It looks just like never changed for 20 years. I've visited this page long time before, and still seems no serious effort for these except [this one](https://www.gnu.org/graphics/meditate.html), which according to copyright notice have been there for 18 years.

Am I missing something with the onion wallpaper? https://www.gnu.org/graphics/plant-onion.html

It seems to be more about actual onions than a tor thing?!

Edit: Doh, reread the description "Gardeners and tor users..." Thanks for the replies though.

Planting onions is easy, running Tor relays is easy too. The onions in the picture use the same palette as Tor's https://www.torproject.org/images/tor-logo.png

The color scheme seems pretty similar to that of the tor logo so I think this is a "call to arms" and is a pro - host your own tor nodes - message.

It would be better if they just linked to Unsplash.

Some of them are quite nice but unfortunately none of them are higher res than 1080p.

What thinkpad that runs libreboot has a higher resolution?

this one look like a windows 95 program installer splash screen: https://www.gnu.org/graphics/meditate.png

I mean, Libreboot hasn't been updated since 2016, so it might as well be...

related: https://www.gnu.org/music/

On one hand I respect the right to free speech and people doing whatever they want... but man, this is awful. They’re doing more harm to their brand by publishing this.

They are cute in a way, but that doesn't mean you are wrong: https://www.gnu.org/music/free-birthday-song.ogg

OpenBSD used to release a song along with every OS release, seems to have stopped last year with 6.2 though.

https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html

Nooo, they stopped? The release songs were really great, and I always looked forward to a new release song.

Yeah, I didn't know what to expect.

Nowadays my "wallpaper" is the terminal or browser app, maximized

Gonna start using this one (https://www.gnu.org/graphics/I_run_GNU_by_GNUlancer.png) on my Windows PC at work

It feels like early 2000s.

Well, that's embarrassing.

Holy cow, these are hideous. Then again, the website itself isn't exactly a Renoir.

It's a little known fact that Renoir did web design on the side.

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