Theme colors cause accessibility (migrane) issues

Asked by JT

Before Moving to 11.04/11.10 Ubuntu (Gnome) you could choose various aspects of your UI but also change the color. I.e. you could choose Ambiance but then make the whole UI dark. This was necessary to thwart headaches and Migraines as IMO white/bright UI is idiotic as all you're doing is blasting your eyes with light until they burst into flames.

Now with the shift to gnome3/shell and Unity you can't change shit. You're stuck using a very limited set up themes that are disgusting and headache educing. I've tried utilities like gnome-color-chooser but it doesn't work. Aside from the fact before you could redo your whole UI with 8 color selections gnome-color-chooser has an ungodly number of elements to change yet it only works on a few parts of the UI. Open Nautilus, welcome headache and white background blaring at my eyes.

Thanks to all the changes I don't even know what I'm fighting anymore, what is adhering to unity stuff, gnome3/shell or GTK3. I hate to sound ignorant but I'm too busy in life to sift through source and read for hours (though I've been trying so as to not vomit or go back to 10.10/10.04 because of kernel driver issues. Though that's ironic since there is a backlight glitch in kernel 3 but the wireless N works now.

While myself and everyone I know despises Unity and the Gnome shell the gripe isn't so much all the change but the regression of user power. The options that gave people with visual problems or needs has been removed, obscured, destroyed and now it's like using Mac or Windows. Here is the shit theme we think you will like, use it and shut up. Just like 9.04 iirc allowed you to changed your GDM themes, then they took that away next release and you had to resort to lame things like sym linking the preferences to auto launch for the GDM profile to change it.

Leaving users at the mercy of theme creation is insanity. Apples solution is to invert, because you know people with light issues or Irlens syndrome want to see everything wrong in order to not have their eyes burnt out. Sadly Microsoft has the only albeit ugly solution allowing you to drop to "classic" and have control over the UI though there are a lot of programs that hard code font or check box colors once again assuming the fucking world loves white backgrounds and black fonts.

Point being is a simple and sweeping control over UI colors is a MUST, I can not stress this enough and so hopefully someone can give me some answers on how to unify things to get a solid dark UI in gnome fall back. To be clear making title bars dark is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about backgrounds of ALL windows around #464646 and text of #B4B4B4. In the old settings you set the window colors (I just mentioned) then the selected tool tips and so on. Nice, easy, changes took places across everything. How the F#$% can we get this back in the current and future versions of Ubuntu?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#1

I suggest you install XFCE, KDE or LXDE and you can theme as you wish

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JT (death-shed) said :
#2

This is a side step, my one machine I moved to LUbuntu, I'm working on a friends machine as XUbuntu because of some feature trade offs. However you might as well have said move to Windows, Fedora, Mac OS. This is an Ubuntu issue. XFCE you need to get dirty and change some RC's to change colors correctly. I typically switch to Dusk right off then attack it's files. Point is Ubuntu had a wonderful preference with color picker and all, took 10 seconds and you were back in the game. Now they've decided to yank one of the huge reasons that made Ubuntu accessibility friendly over the commercial alternatives. The other *buntu derivatives are much less flexible and you end up with applications behaving like Ubuntu is now. Case and point Libre Office in XFCE unless installed a certain way ignores your theme and leaves you with a brutal glaring white UI. I actually tested Kubuntu and while it still has the control to do this it ran like a Yugo towing a elephant. Not that Ubuntu is much better on the speed front but it is.

Though I can rant about all sorts of crap for hours the base of my question is not answered, I asked how to regain (if at all) this control and have a uniform UI. Sadly changing DE does not fix this either and injects similar issues/questions (as stated with XFCE and Libre though I solved that one)

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#3

Windows and Mac are completely different OSes. The desktop is changable in Linux. It is not in Mac and Windows. You don't have to use Gnome, you can change you desktop as you wish.

I am not conversant with Gnome3 as yet. It is still young but Ubuntu and other distros whos users choose Gnome will have issues unti it becomes established and such. Natty is still fully supported so if you will not change desktop (easy solution) then you can easily reinstall Natty and have the optional changability

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JT (death-shed) said :
#4

I'm very aware of what Windows and Mac OS is and that was my point, if Ubuntu can't provide things it once did then I guess I'm done. Once again though it seems there is a trend growing everyone just says ditch to a differing DE. I feel like I've been time warped back 10 years when you'd have to have KDE and Gnome installed side by side to run certain things. And there was no launching a K app while in a Gnome session, you fucking logged out and ran that ONE program until you were done. It sucked...Fast forward 10 - 12 years and I feel like I'm faced with the same BS. Hmm to uniformly decorate what is going on? Is this a Meta City issue? GTk? Gnome? Compiz? All these F'ing cooks in the kitchen and everyone is telling me to add LXDE or XFCE to the mix. Yes lets make shit crazier?

Just to be clear to Andrew Mac OS is bastardized BSD with a shit ton of proprietary UI top end. I'm very aware of what OS's are. I'm an old BSD and BeOS/Qnx guy. I've ran pretty much every OS you can imagine which is why I'm asking what I'm asking. Ubuntu was making headway, gaining visibility to the unwashed masses etc. Now they are seemingly forcing users old and new into a shitty situation where I might as well be running Mac OS or Windows, both stick you with one shit theme based on white back grounds and black text...like ubuntu now YAY! Of course I could retort everything by simply saying I'll go Linux from scratch or run one of the hundreds of other Linux or BSD distro's/OS's, but my question is about Ubuntu, no Kbuntu, Lbuntu, Xbuntu ot their respective DE's but UBUNTU.

So I'm gonna go out on a limb after two responses and say no one is going to try to answer this, they will just tell me to switch DE/Distro and ignore there is a huge issue in the base Ubuntu UI now under the guise of simplifying or something...

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#5

If you change desktop the OS doesn't change. It's still Ubuntu. the Kubuntu and such are just releases with different DEFAULT apps and desktops. They all use the same repositories and you can add extra desktops. It is still Ubuntu. That doesn't change.

As stated, you can still use Natty and it is still just as supported and developed for as Oneiric. If you were logging in and out of DEs to use different apps then you are not using your OS right. The deps are met and the apps will run just fine. Many users prefer K3b and install it in Gnome, there are a lot of Qt libs which are installed as deps but the apps will run in Gnome without issue.

Others may advise the same or different but just remember that Gnome is not the only desktop and you are not forced to use Gnome just because you install the Gnome based Ubuntu release. If Gnome3 isn't working for you then change it. It's really that simple. I personally hate a LOT of the default stuff in ubuntu (Firefox for one) and it is quickly removed and I install what I desire. Same difference.

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JT (death-shed) said :
#6

I know my posts are lengthy but it seems no one is reading. I do not need to have Ubuntu + Kde or XFCE is still Ubuntu, I'm well versed in all of this. I also did not ask what I can switch to for result X. I have also stated going back to Natty or earlier has kernel/module issues that cripple the wifi on the main machine this problem concerns, and yes I have tried building Kernel 3 under 10.04. Once again just because I install KDE on Ubuntu I know it's still Ubuntu, guess what...Ubuntu is Debian shall we spit irrelevant hairs more? Linux isn't an OS, it's a kernel...yada bla...none of this was my question.

I think there is a conceptual issue here aside from the fact everyone is answering a question I didn't ask. The reason Ubuntu is different from the derived distros not just because of default software choices but resource issues. The idea is LXDE is light and fast because it forgoes certain luxuries. Ubuntu is supposed to be (along with Kbuntu because KDE is a bloated pig too) the all bells and whistles edition. However they are removing some very important tools and combined with all the new additions leaving a lot of frustration and questions behind. However this isn't a debate about how Canonical is trying to fuck us over like Apple does their users, this is about how the fuck -if at all- can we get this control back?

So again the question is CAN you get full color control over the Unity/Gnome3/Classic environments. One would think the gnome-color-chooser could do the trick but again, it doesn't. Nautilus being the most obvious ignoring the color changes...

What is dictating Nautilus's look, how can it be changed as I THOUGHT Nautilus was using the gnome/gtk settings etc so forth, a consistent UI should not be a "write your own configs" issue with the flagship OS. However if I do have to re-compile, write my own configs etc then ya, I'll just go back to Windows. Half the reason I moved to Ubuntu was after a while I could finally use the OS without writing configs and waiting hours if not days for shit to compile, it got tiring. If I have to go back to that to have a consistent UI color, well Canonical is just walking us back into the fucking stone age. But again since I've stated I can build my own kernel, years of experience in *nix OS's and the software alike, feel free to not answer the question as to why the Ubuntu Desktop can not be user defined nor controlled in a uniform manner. Also include tid bits of pseudo technical things like Adding XFCE to Ubuntu is still Ubuntu, or do you mean DEBIAN :P

Maybe the answer is this is part of the growing pains, or maybe it's just more fragmenting from the in-fighting between developers, i.e. fuck gnome we're making unity...either way, at this point I dare someone to actually answer the question rather than side step it no matter how lack luster the answer may be.

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Sam_ (and-sam) said :
#7

Several bug reports are triaged regarding former missing functions of gnome-appearance-properties.
Rants can be viewed all over in prominent blogs.
12.04 will incl. changes regarding customization.

In the meantime one can try gnome-tweak-tool, unfortunately sometimes after the change g-t-t or dconf don't recognize it and a logout is needed.
Installing dconf-tools enables to start dconf-editor where settings can be adjusted under .org/gnome/desktop/interface.
Alternatively editing theme files may satisfy, e.g. gtk.css, .gtkrc, settings.ini.

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JT (death-shed) said :
#8

Well this is my problem though, I know this is a lot of read through already but I've already tried gnome-color-chooser and gnome tweak and a few other things. Everything falls short which is why I'm asking WTF!? Some things work fine, then you open something and it's got it's own Freaking color scheme where it would adhear to the OS theme/UI in all previous offerings. This isn't a bug report, it's a question of is there any way to get the uniformity back. I've stated I'm sick of butchering configs. It was a deep breath and a few adivan to compile the v3 kernel for 10.04 to see if I could fix the modules and retain the old correct gnome 2 functionality but it didn't work and again I'm just too tired of fixing shit all the time to dig, so I asked here if anyone knew why the UI consistency is so broke and can it be fixed? On some level of course it can, but aside from me say building gnome 2 for 11.10 is there a fix that isn't along the lines of "build the damned OS from the ground up?"

I fear 12.04 (which I tested the daily yesterday it was worse) will only have "customization" additions for Unity, i.e. worthless. That said I logged out and rebooted several times between changes with the utils I tried in hopes of restoring the old functionality. gnome-color-chooser really -should- be all a user needs but as I said, some things adhere, others don't.

This is all frustrating, much like the last few revisions of the software center. It used to conform to the UI colors but when typing in the search as it did partial matches the screen (with the UI dark) would flash white and BLAM give my GF a migraine. Now it doesn't adhere to UI changes done with gnome-color-chooser at all...how very Mac...

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marcus aurelius (adbiz) said :
#9

you're obviously unhappy with ubuntu. you might want to switch to fedora or opensus or use linux mint. mint is a branch of ubuntu and has not gone the route of unity.

AND if you a bit of googling, you'll find that there are different themes out to replace the default themes for unity.

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JT (death-shed) said :
#10

I've checked the current Fedora, sadly Gnome 3, a lot of the same issues, Mint is about the same as dropping back to 10.04 which ends up with some module issues. If I was to "replace" I'd just go Xubuntu and go back to fighting Xorg.conf and theme.rc's. This is more a "What the hell happened?" combined with a "Can this be fixed/worked around without ditching?" with a tinge of does anyone know where the problem lies?

I mean each Ubuntu is basically know for it's DE. Now I don't know what the hell is doing what in Ubuntu and Ubuntu was my choice because of the key UI functionality. Any distro that's moved past gnome 2 is now carrying a lot of the same issues. Which in a sense creates a possible ongoing problem. It basically drops Ubuntu (or pretty much any other major "gnome" based distro) into an area like the more resource focused XFCE distros but without the speed advantages.

Sadly I'm regurgitating similar points about Ubuntu being the kitchen sink distro some how become feeling like the junk drawer. It's a mess between Unity, Gnome, Metacity, Compiz, GTK, which is doing what to fix this or the other and no one seems to have an answer other than dig into css and rc's so I'll just leave it be and move all the machines back to Windows.

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Augustine Souza (aesouza2008) said :
#11

I'm on Ubuntu 11.10 (Unity 3D mode).

I have similar requirements for a "dark" view. White anywhere on the screen hurts my eyes.

With a little help, I've been able to weak Ambiance so that there's not a trace of white anywhere.

As Sam indicated earlier, I had to edit (using a text editor), gtk.css and settings.ini (in the gtk-3.0 folder), and gtkrc (in the gtk-2.0 folder). I also tweaked gtk-widgets.css.

I also installed "Advanced Settings" from the Ubuntu Software Center to help me change themes because that seems to be an easy way to make changes take effect.

I'm not on my Ubuntu computer right now but I should be able to give specifics, if required, once the internet guy comes and fixes something.

Editing css is not difficult. I could do it without any formal education in this aspect.

I understand that things will be more easy to tweak once 12.04 is done.

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JT (death-shed) said :
#12

I know css heh I can tweak said files till the cows come home, it's more why do we have to return to this in the flagship Ubuntu to not go blind? If I was to manually butcher themes I'll go back to XFCE, it's at least faster and as much work. However it looks like the answer is No, there is no way other than to get your hands dirty, pray for a themer to do something other than the 120000 themes called "dark" when all it is is a dark title bar and maybe menu section or just leave the whole DE and maybe whole "OS" to die. I've already redone a few of the machines with Windows, gonna keep going since I'm sick of recompiling and editing shit. I'd still be programming if I wanted to do this shit. Hell if I had that kinda energy still I'd have just dug in myself and wrote a damned GUI to replace the old functionality, but I'm old, tired and sad when installing Windows is the best option out of it all.

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