Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Ubuntu's New Look, a Pale Imitation of Mac OS X?

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 02:10 AM PST

The moment Ubuntu enthusiasts have been waiting for has arrived. Canonical has announced the rebranding of Ubuntu and showed us the new logo, color schemes, desktop themes, and more. According to them, the new style of Ubuntu is driven by the theme called "Light", which will be used in version 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" and will define the look and feel of Ubuntu for several years. But are there really a lot to be excited about with this redesign?

First of all, I would like to give credit to the Ubuntu team for all their efforts in trying to give this already excellent Linux distro a more polish and simple appeal. Personally, I love the new set of logos (see below):

...except for this one:

Now let's take a deep look at the brand new "Light" theme (click to enlarge):

Compare it to the Mac OS X desktop:

Can you see the similarity? I guess I was right in saying that Ubuntu is trying to imitate the Mac OS X look (read Ubuntu Goin' Gray...) .

First, look at the top menu. Does it not closely resemble that of Mac OS X? --The light-gray menu bar (although the Ubuntu menu has a little shades of brown), the all black menu items, and the WiFi signal strength meter among others are telling us that they are Mac-inspired.

The new Ubuntu window area (Gtk theme) is also quite similar to that of Mac OS X. It looks like they slightly copied the circle buttons and even place them on the left side like that of (you guessed it) the Mac OS X.

The wallpaper completes the pale imitation. As most of you may know, the purple aurora wallpaper is the default wallpaper of OS X "Leopard" and "Snow Leopard".

I think Ubuntu is having an identity crisis right now and should seriously consider changing several things in terms of look and feel to avoid being branded as a Mac OS X rip-off, or worse, get sued by Apple.

I believe the fans are divided right now. Some have learned to love the brown color scheme since it uniquely represents Ubuntu, while others wanted change. Now that the change has come, are you willing to accept it? What are your thoughts regarding the new design?