[lubuntu-devel] Suggestion - do a user interface refresh for the 23.10 cycle?

[Nio Wiklund]

Den 2023-03-09 kl. 20:58, skrev Aaron Rainbolt:
> This is a possibly silly idea I just wanted to bounce off y'all and see 
> what you think.
> 
> Lubuntu's theme has remained more-or-less unchanged since the switch to 
> LXQt. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but there are several things 
> I'm noticing that make me think that it may be a good idea for us to 
> change Lubuntu's look and feel next cycle.
> 
> For one, an integral part of our UI is the Breeze theme. Breeze is not 
> designed for LXQt. It is designed for KDE. The two are rather different, 
> and this has occasionally shown up in technical problems. One 
> particularly good example is 
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kconfigwidgets/+bug/1992196, 
> which bit us right near the end of the Kinetic cycle. A change in a part 
> of KDE that wasn't even the Breeze code itself caused Breeze to break in 
> LXQt, but not in KDE. Rik Mills was able to bail us out of that 
> thankfully, but we very nearly changed theme to Clearlooks (I believe) 
> when that happened.
> 
> Another example of this problem has recently showed up as a problem with 
> LXQt and Wayland. A matter of hours ago, a discussion around a new 
> Wayfire plugin for LXQt happened on the LXQt Wayland bug report. This 
> appears to be the closest LXQt has ever gotten to having a decent 
> Wayland solution. However, according to Marcus Britanicus (the developer 
> of the new LXQt Desktop Shell Wayfire plugin), there is a bug where can 
> accidentally drag the entire desktop background in certain instances. 
> This bug only occurs with Breeze enabled, and it appears that the bug is 
> Breeze's fault. (See 
> https://gitlab.com/wayfireplugins/lxqt-desktop-shell/-/issues/1 for more 
> info, particularly the now-crossed-out "Breeze and pcmanfm-qt --desktop" 
> part.)
> 
> Given that Breeze can sometimes break or exhibit broken behavior like 
> this, I don't think continuing to use it in Lubuntu is going to be in 
> our best interest in the future. There are other themes that work. If 
> Breeze is for KDE, perhaps it's time for us to use a theme that is for 
> LXQt. It may reduce our workload and panic level (imagine if the bug 
> with kconfigwidgets had hit closer to the release day!), and may also 
> improve our ability to work toward eventual goals like Wayland.
> 
> If we're going to change theme anyway (which is part of my suggestion), 
> it might look nice to do a whole UI refresh, changing the overall 
> look-and-feel of the OS in ways we feel work well with the new theme. 
> Ubuntu Desktop appears to be constantly having small UI refreshes, and 
> to some degree Kubuntu does this too. Lubuntu has stayed with the same 
> basic UI for years.
> 
> This is just a thought, and it's not something we probably want to or 
> even can do until next cycle. But I thought I should mention it since.
> 
> Thanks for taking a look at this, and let me know what you think!
> 
> 

Hi Aaron,

I think it is a good idea :-)

Best regards
Nio