Show HN: Linux Mint Redesign Proposal
github.com
After several months of work together with other designers, want to announce a Linux Mint redesign proposal.
First time posting, hope you like it!
github.com
First time posting, hope you like it!
I like the general style you're aiming for. Though I'm worried that the green could be a little bit too intense for UI elements. Current accent color options on Mint are softer colors.
I don't like the logo. The lower square containing the L has waaay too much empty space in it, and the empty space is all concentrated on the superior-right side of the square, making it look very unbalanced. On the other hand, the square containing the M has little padding. These two things combined make the logo look unbalanced at two levels: one square with a lot of empty space vs one square with barely any empty space; the left square has all the empty space on one side of it.
Icons look great. However, what's going to happen when some application has an icon that doesn't adjust to your expectations of style and shape? Will it look good, or will it look very out of place? Mint's current answer to this is "we'll just make our own icons for every app", which I don't think is the right way to do it, for many reasons.
Regarding the UI colours and icons - we wanted to show overall how the brand creates a visual foundation for the rest of the syste. This is something that is a standard in other fields ofc, but due to the lack of designers (and especially non-technical ones) in oss, this step is often gets missed. Therefore, the whole concept basically tries to show why current visual brand limits the whole system. This being said, both UI and icons are non-final and are mainly for presentation purposes.
For the icon matter the best thing would be to: - introduce some basic guides that can be easily followed by community and app developers - create an icon basis (like first 100 icons for the default icon pack) - introduce some automatic icon switch. For some icons these guides can be applied automatically with adjusted padding and sizing.
Regarding the logo we always need to think of: - how dynamic we want it to be - context defined
I noticed that frequent criticism so far was about logo either feeling imbalanced or being too simple. First of all it is not imbalanced technically, but it is indeed built this way that creates stronger visual dynamic than something more standard like git logo. Coming back to logo simplicity - we need this for a higher brand versatility, at the same time keeping it efficient. The more complicated the logo, the more time it would take to adapt it to various contexts (and sometimes the higher skill it requires). For community-maintained system having a complicated logo would make no sense cause it would just create hours and hours of extra work and design blockers in the future.
When installing a new OS, I want the OS to be up and running as soon as possible, so I can then install everything else I'll need, connect all my accounts, perhaps restore an old backup or sync with some source of settings.
As such, installation should never include unnecessary steps like this. There's a good chance that the image I want is in some remote drive that I first need to connect/login to. Making me choose some arbitrary image before I can get to the actual running OS is very unlikely to be helpful.
Selecting a background image is not an extra step in installation, but the layout choice is. My idea was that Linux Mint is one of the top choices for the new Linux users who migrate from Mac or Wn, that's why I wanted them to have a possibility of adding a familoar layout. See this step here: https://github.com/klad-design/linuxmint-brand/blob/main/OS%...
The idea with a blank background is that the system can look without a background image overall and with just filled screen. You can see more "first load after installation" examples here: https://github.com/klad-design/linuxmint-brand/tree/main/OS%...
If you buy a new car you might want to get the model and the color you like, or do you say "I don't give a damn just give me the keys so I can get going!"
Those funky looking people in the stock photos (looksmaxxers).
The new logo. The letter weights is way off. The L looks anemic.
The logo can be saved with few tweaks. Those people in the photos need to go back to the Abercrombie website. (what should you use instead? Tux, obviously.)
I like most of the styling, though.
Not wanting to be too harsh, there are aspects that I like, but it doesn't "wow" me in any way. OSS design continuing the tradition of mimicking commercial software years after the fact.
Could be a lot worse, could be gnome 3 on release for example, but the floating menu at the top and the installation selection are silly. At least get rid of the latter, just pick a default.
The stock people photos are a bit odd, I never saw anyone have photos open on their desktop/laptop ever.
That being said, very nice and clean design.
Also, I would say ignore all the naysayers here, the fetishising of the complex sharp and dense UI is a nostalgic reaction common among hardcore tech people who would love to live in the terminal, but alienates the other 99% population of the globe would prefer a clean ui and access to their applications with nice icons. There is a reason why all OSS suffer from extremely bad UI/UX, because what ordinary people like(simple and clean UI with nice icons and descriptive texts) is immensely different from what tech people like(mostly 200+ magic keyboard shortcuts and arcane ways of starting apps from mysterious console).
The reason why it looks sort of like Mac is:
- Sans fonts. But we wanted to keep fonts open-source, simple and versatile, so it can be easily used in different context and wouldn't require overcomplicated guidelines. Therefore, primary + secondary font structure is less efficient in this case due to a more complicated hierarchy maintenance in the future
- Simple logo. Same reason as the fonts - the more complicated it is, the harder it will be in maintenance and the more design resource it would require. I mean even current LM materials has 12 variations of the logo and it's a mess.
Stock people - I mean there are just two, if I don't count the login screen. The first one (with a logo on the back of a long sleeve) is there to show that logo can be used for the physical items as well. The second one in the interface is there to mainly show a profile UI but I think we should have went with a default icon (if the user keeps it blank) instead.
And you are totally right about how hard it is to push for the design solutions in OSS. We started this initiative in June LAST YEAR but soon found out that many people don't understand the whole reason for a brand redesign and don't see how brand creates a visual foundation. So then after some time, we decided that we need to create a brand concept to show specifically how brand creates a visual system, so it would be clear for the community and the devs why you can't start just with the website updates or UI/UX detached from the rest.
And indeed most of the negative feedback right now can be grouped into unwilling to change or tech people preferences.
When we think of Linux Mint though, in it's core it is about being more user-centric and friendly than other Linux distros. This also means that you need to be very beginner friendly - that's why Cinnamon is so Window-like in the first place. Both of these things mean that from a visual standpoint it can't allow itself to be technical and shouldn't follow aesthetics preferred by most of the tech crowd (and I mean why if we have Arch, Manjaro, Debian, etc. for really advanced users who don't care about the GUI). It also means that it needs to be willing to change cause users preferences grow, interface assumptions slowly change with our devices and products we use. And it should be simple for the easy maintenance (but I talked about this one already).
> Why is the icon dock so popular with designers?
Maybe because they don’t actually use computers on daily basis to get the job done but just design how they look?
I thought the redesign was to do with the STRUCTURE of Linux Mint, not a piddly logo change.
And the central menu isn't as worker-friendly when you have a screen-full of stuff already on there.
And what's with the predilection for the panel at the BOTTOM of the screen. We are always working downwards on the screen. Therefore it's more useful to put the panel at the TOP of the screen and out of your way. Just because MSFT and Apple put their panels at the bottom of the screen is no reason not to think carefully about panel placement.
Was used to the Mac menu up there, and never accepted having to go to the bottom where nothing else is.
Edit: before anybody freaks out, pardon me for harsh words, it looks super pretty, but we need less of this impractical “futuristic-looking flat design without borders and too much padding everywhere”.
I'm not very invested in my installation. I would probably use something else if this was the design instead of having to install a better looking UI.
For example, under "Fresh OS interface", the start menu has lots of extra whitespace around the dividing bar - I think this is a central issue I see repeated everywhere. It looks aesthetically pleasing at first but that space is always dead (is it clickable? I have no idea!). I would encourage you to make it more obvious what the "touch" zones are in the menu, and to maximize them as much as possible. For example on the right side of the menu there shouldn't be any space that isn't clickable.
Also, for power users (i.e. Mint) the search bar should be bigger. Even on Windows where it's barely usable because of random Bing and index stuff the search bar is full width on the menu.
The "Type here to search" text is too low contrast. My parents would not be able to read that. Similarly, in your screenshots, you should use a boldface font for the terminal text. On my QHD monitor it is difficult to read.
There is a desire in Linux desktop enviroments to wrap individual apps in a colored box associated with the app (e.g. Obsidian in light purple, Firefox in dark purple, etc.). I think this is ok but you should consider just using a single block of color like in the Windows taskbar.
I'll never know if XFCE is any good because it looks like shit.
I don't think that Linux users generally have a fondness for 1990s UI.
Also, I'm confused by your assertions about the logo: You're saying that the intention of the new logo is "simplify the design to increase versatility, improve readability of the initials, refine the colors [and] give a more modern look".
The last two ones are obviously subjective: I'm not a Mint user, so I don't really have a stake in their existing design, but looking at their existing website side-by-side with your proposal artwork, I don't think any of these strongly reads as "more modern" than the other.
Regarding the other two more objective goals, it would be nice to see examples of situations where the old logo is less versatile or less readable.
> It almost looks as though they're leaving room for another L to make an LLM logo.
How fitting considering that the text reads like it was randomly generated.
but I don’t think it’d ever be implemented. Old projects like Linux Mint are not very comfortable with the idea of looking more modern and sleek.
You’d have a better chance with a new design for ZorinOS but I don’t know if that’s needed since it’s already so modern.
But don't those aesthetics belong to the desktop environment as opposed to the distro? I must misunderstand something somewhere.
For a distribution that is known to be Windows-like this is a huge step away from that identity and frankly makes LM feel like KDE Plasma.
Color is not bad.
I use mint because cinnamon.