You are using an obsolete web browser, or you have the page styles (CSS) disabled. You'll be able to access this site, but only a visually simplified version.
Sep 5 2010

Stripes – KDE be free, freeBSD

I bet nobody expected this (I didn’t) – the next distro-branded version of stripes is for freeBSD. The freeBSD logo is quite pretty, but distorting it ruins it beyound recognition. For this reason, the wallpaper has much less depth than the previous ones.

One is the obligatory blue (not to say vanilla version) and the other one is redish)

KDE be free…

And here’s the first attempt of making a KDE-branded one… I’m not yet satisfied with it, this is only a preview.

Category: KDE, Comments (18)

18 Comments

  1. Thank for these. A breath of fresh air in a world of Fedora/SuSE wallpapers! :-)

    Comment by David — 5 September 2010 @ 19:18 Reply to this comment

  2. Nice! If there isn’t one already, would it be possible to do either a userbase or techbase article explaining how you did this? That way people could do their own, and it might be helpful for people wanting to make their own easily-brandable wallpapers.

    Comment by TheBlackCat — 5 September 2010 @ 19:27 Reply to this comment

  3. great job ivan, thank you!

    Comment by Alberto Villa — 5 September 2010 @ 19:28 Reply to this comment

  4. Hey Ivan,

    Thanks for those FreeBSD wallpapers, they look awesome.

    The link to the red one seems to be broken.

    Comment by rakuco — 5 September 2010 @ 19:28 Reply to this comment

  5. @rakuco

    “The link to the red one seems to be broken.”

    rename ..stripes-freebsd.-redjpg to ..stripes-freebsd-red.jpg

    Nice walls, Ivan! Thank You!

    Comment by mayhem — 5 September 2010 @ 21:23 Reply to this comment

  6. By some reason I feel the logo is “projected” wrong way when compared to stripes.

    If the logo is projected to wallpaper, then the parts what are “behind” should be bigger than what are in front.

    But if the logo is more like “lighted” (behind the wallpaper), then it is correct. But even then the stripes shadows are on wrong side.

    The problem is that if watcher is just next to the projector, then he does not notice any differences between different depth bars. But if user is looking from different direction (like 20 degree from projection) then he can notice that bars what are closer “projecter” are smaller than parts what are on bars what are more far away from the projector

    Comment by Fri13 — 5 September 2010 @ 22:00 Reply to this comment

  7. @All Thank you good people :)

    @rakuco: Fixed the link. Thanks for reporting.

    @Fri13: What if the projector is behind :)

    These are special crystals* (rarer than Kryptonite) and the refraction and transparency depends on the level of the crystal :)

    * special in the sense they don’t conform to the physics as much as the aesthetics :)

    @TheBlackCat: I don’t like art tutorials – when you see something you like, it is better to try and achieve the same/similar result on your own than to follow some guide step-by-step. It is the only way to learn :)

    And I really hate writing manuals ;)

    Comment by Ivan Čukić — 5 September 2010 @ 22:33 Reply to this comment

  8. oh, i forgot to say one thing about…
    “I bet nobody expected this (I didn’t)”
    well, we keep rocking just like every other linux distro! :)

    @Fri13
    what if the logo is just painted on the wallpaper?

    Comment by Alberto Villa — 5 September 2010 @ 22:36 Reply to this comment

  9. @Alberto Villa: I don’t personally use freeBSD, but it definitely is one of the most important projects in the FLOSS world.

    I can’t wait for Debian GNU/kFreeBSD to become as mature as the Linux version :)

    Comment by Ivan Čukić — 5 September 2010 @ 22:48 Reply to this comment

  10. @Ivan: Looks good! Thanks for working on the KDE-branded wallpaper. One suggestion for that: I think the slogan doesn’t really work when projected onto the stripes; what about writing it vertically on the stripe, like the distro name? Maybe change it to a prominent vertical “KDE”, followed by the slogan in a slightly smaller font.

    Comment by Ffejery — 6 September 2010 @ 04:21 Reply to this comment

  11. *Part* of the problem with the KDE one, is that the basic black and white K+gear KDE logo itself is old and clunky looking, especially the font. The Oxygen peeps did a great job of making it look sexy by putting it on a shiny, blue, rounded crystal thing, but the basic KDE logo itself really needs updating to 2010 (and beyond!). This may be beyond the scope of your wallpaper though ;)

    Comment by Kubuntiac — 6 September 2010 @ 06:31 Reply to this comment

  12. @Ffejery: Heh, for me, the only thing that works is the slogan :) (it looks like it says be freeeeeee :) )

    The problem with vertical text here (I tried it) is that it misalignes with the vertical bar of K and it looks bad.

    @Kubuntiac: Yes, the logo is quite old-looking. Even *cough* Gnome *cough* changed their logo to something more modern… but the things are the way they are and we mustn’t complain :)

    Comment by Ivan Čukić — 6 September 2010 @ 10:02 Reply to this comment

  13. @Ivan Čukić:
    And I suppose moving the ‘K’ would just wreck the rest, right? :S Ah, well.
    However, since the horizontal text breaks with the theme anyway, how about putting the slogan to the left of the logo, where the stripes are more well-behaved?

    Comment by Ffejery — 6 September 2010 @ 12:00 Reply to this comment

  14. @ Ivan

    Your explenation is good enough ;-)
    I tought that there is two options, a projector or a background lighting. But I did not even think about that those would be more like a crystals and not objects. But if the “bars” are not too tight, the background light would reflect from them and shide to the next ones, casting a shadow as it looks now and then the logo would look like now.

    Is there change to get the OS name and version for as well? Like “Linux 2.6″ wallpaper? With OS logo Tux next to it?
    The FreeBSD version is great as well and I have started to use FreeBSD as the other OS next to Linux. But does KDE SC work on NetBSD and OpenBSD? How about Dragon Fly BSD? As it and NetBSD are forks from the FreeBSD OS or have they really got so far away from it that KDE SC does not work on them?

    And I have been planning to start testing HURD operating system. So HURD with it own logo and version would be great as well. Even that KDE SC might not work on it, but at least I could use your great wallpaper when demoing HURD OS.

    And maybe someone would be happy as well from the GNU/Linux development platform. You just should place Tux+Linux as the OS and GNU as the development tools top of the Tux. Maybe it just takes too much space so better just stick on the OS and distro branding than taking development platforms as well. Otherwise you should start making other combinations, like one for LAMP, one with Qt and so on ;)

    Comment by Fri13 — 6 September 2010 @ 14:11 Reply to this comment

  15. @Fri13: FreeBSD one came to life because I got a request from one of the freeBSD dudes. IMO, NetBSD and OpenBSD users are not that much into wallpapers (or desktops for that matter)

    As for HURD, I’ll wait for it to 1) become usable 2) get a prettier logo :)

    Anyhow, after making all version I want to make, I’ll release the SVG file(s) so that you can make it with any text you want :)

    Comment by Ivan Čukić — 6 September 2010 @ 16:48 Reply to this comment

  16. Never thought to create a filter/effect for the gimp?

    Comment by gcala — 8 September 2010 @ 19:33 Reply to this comment

  17. @gcala: No, not really. For two reasons 1) this was done in inkscape 2) I have no clue how gimp effects are being made :)

    Comment by Ivan Čukić — 9 September 2010 @ 00:47 Reply to this comment

  18. [...] Stripes – KDE be free, freeBSD [...]

    Pingback by Links 6/9/2010: AUSTRUMI Reviewed, Linux Mint 9 Fluxbox Released | Techrights — 6 September 2010 @ 18:28 Reply to this comment

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.