Bluecurve is a desktop theme for

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

and KDE created by the

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become a ...

Artwork project. The main aim of Bluecurve was to create a consistent look throughout the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

environment, and provide support for various Freedesktop.org desktop standards. It was used in

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta releas ...

in version 8 and 9, and in its successor OS,

Fedora Linux Fedora Linux is a Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project. Fedora contains software distributed under various free and open-source licenses and aims to be on the leading edge of open-source technologies. Fedora is the upstream source ...

through version 4. Fedora-yarrow-bluecurve

The Bluecurve

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent mat ...

borders and

GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and propriet ...

theme were replaced by those from Clearlooks (the former in Fedora Core 4, and the latter in Fedora Core 5). However, the old Bluecurve themes ( windowing and widget) are still installed by default and can be selected in the theme manager. The Bluecurve

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The mos ...

set remains installed in Fedora 7, but has been replaced as the default b
Echo
There has been controversy surrounding the theme, especially the alterations to KDE, which were sufficient to cause developer Bernhard Rosenkraenzer to quit

, "mostly in mutual agreement — I don't want to work on crippling KDE, and they don't want an employee who admits RHL 8.0's KDE is

crippleware Crippleware has been defined in realms of both computer software and hardware. In software, crippleware means that "vital features of the program such as printing or the ability to save files are disabled until the user purchases a registration ke ...

." Others simply criticize it for giving the same look to both desktops, even though they are obviously different in many ways. This approach was subsequently emulated by Mandrake Linux with their "Galaxy" theme, which was also available for GNOME and KDE, and in

Kubuntu Kubuntu ( ) is an official flavor of the Ubuntu operating system that uses the KDE Plasma Desktop instead of the GNOME desktop environment. As part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu uses the same underlying systems. Kubuntu shares the same reposito ...

6.06 with the

GTK-Qt The GTK-Qt Theme Engine is a project allowing GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser Gene ...

theme engine (enabled by default). Enterprising

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

artists have created themes that emulate the Bluecurve theme on other operating systems, including

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

. Users can also replace their default Windows icons with icons that emulate Bluecurve, using the IconPackager application. One such set can be downloaded at

WinCustomize WinCustomize is a website that provides content for users to customize Microsoft Windows. The site hosts thousands of skins, themes, icons, wallpapers, and other graphical content to modify the Windows graphical user interface. There is some ...

References

{{Reflist

External links

Fedora ArtworkWaikato Linux Users Group wiki articleBluecurve icon pack for IconPackager (Windows)
Computer icons Free software projects GNOME KDE Red Hat software

See also

References

External links