[HN Gopher] Mondrian - KDE Plasma desktop inspired by Piet Mondr...
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       Mondrian - KDE Plasma desktop inspired by Piet Mondrian's paintings
        
       Author : leonry
       Score  : 132 points
       Date   : 2023-11-05 08:37 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (store.kde.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (store.kde.org)
        
       | thanatos519 wrote:
       | I kind of expected it to include tiled window management :)
        
         | rpastuszak wrote:
         | Hehe, same here :)
         | 
         | I mean we can have perfectly rendered floating cubes with
         | wobbly windows that get a Viking funeral when you close them.
         | Surely, a Mondrian TWM is a possibility!
        
         | v3ss0n wrote:
         | Use while as kwin replacement, it is so good and written in
         | python, works well with plasma
        
           | boomskats wrote:
           | Do you have a link?
        
         | hnlmorg wrote:
         | kwin does support tiled window management. I've never tried it
         | personally so cannot vouch for how good it is but if you're a
         | tiling WM fan, it's probably safe to assume that you'd favour
         | something that doesn't include a full blown desktop
         | environment.
        
         | indymike wrote:
         | Turn on Krohnkite under Kwin scripts and you have exactly that.
        
       | voxadam wrote:
       | Now do cubism.[0]
       | 
       | I'd ask for something in the vein of Escher's Relativity[1] but
       | I'm not entirely sure how useful the result would be.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism
       | 
       | [1] https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.54256.html
        
       | senectus1 wrote:
       | would a dark theme ruin this look?
        
         | sherry-sherry wrote:
         | It comes with a dark theme. https://www.pling.com/p/1404056/
        
         | tmtvl wrote:
         | A dark theme ruins any look.
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | That's really fun. I'm not sure if form and function meet,
       | though. It's almost like desktop dazzle camo.
        
       | szszrk wrote:
       | How, on Earth, can this still have icons with more readable
       | meaning than Google app icons that were refactored a few years
       | ago...
        
         | gumballindie wrote:
         | Because linux is made by engineers, google products are made by
         | product managers.
        
       | jadbox wrote:
       | KDE is now my daily desktop driver. It's great now that it also
       | has basic window tiling support built in.
        
       | littlecranky67 wrote:
       | Nitpicking, but why is font rendering still broken on modern
       | Linux? In the screenshot, there are clearly issues with letter-
       | spacing in the words "Salir" and "Equipo" in the lower left
       | corner.
        
         | whalesalad wrote:
         | I see it too. I daily drive KDE with the Inter font set
         | globally and everything looks great for me. It will depend on
         | certain UI widgets and the fonts you choose. Some of the open
         | source stuff is not perfect because it was created by someone
         | merely scratching an itch for fun and not a professional
         | designer.
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | Thanks I'll try that font set. KDE has been overly converting
           | stuff to ligatures in the last update 5.27.8 I think.
           | 
           | So "fi" now becomes a character with the two letters together
           | and it's really annoying.
        
           | kylebenzle wrote:
           | Its amazing how so many of us have converged on KDE. It feels
           | like a real google-like moment where all the tech people I
           | knew started using google for a year or two before everyone
           | else caught on.
           | 
           | If I could buy stock in KDE Id have 1/2 my net worth in it,
           | KDE to the moon :)
        
             | tapia wrote:
             | I don't have that impression. But maybe I'm just in my
             | Sway-bubble :)
        
         | MegaDeKay wrote:
         | To be fair, those screenshots are three years old so there may
         | have been rendering improvements since then. Quality can often
         | depend on the selected font as well. A comment in another post
         | from yesterday stated that Noto Sans is currently used by
         | default in KDE and while it might have some issues, the breadth
         | of the font solves other problems.
        
         | michaelmrose wrote:
         | The most obvious answer is that it isn't broken on developers
         | systems or indeed on most systems.
        
       | euroderf wrote:
       | Oh please let there be something similar for macos!
        
       | speed_spread wrote:
       | Does it include a Piet interpreter so that you can actually _run
       | your desktop_?
       | 
       | https://esolangs.org/wiki/Piet
        
       | agent327 wrote:
       | The painter is named "Mondriaan", with two a's.
        
         | Tao3300 wrote:
         | No. It's one A. He changed it.
        
           | agent327 wrote:
           | I never heard that story before, but you are indeed correct.
           | I stand corrected.
        
       | MegaDeKay wrote:
       | Does this work well with the latest Plasma desktop? It was last
       | updated three years ago and there is a comment from two years ago
       | asking "With all the visual changes in the Plasma iterations will
       | you update the theme a bit to incorporate those changes?"
       | 
       | At the very least, I'm thinking that general improvements in
       | Plasma and KDE in general would improve some of the font
       | rendering, consistency, and other nitpicks some other comments
       | here are bringing up.
        
       | thih9 wrote:
       | Could we add (2020) to the title?
       | 
       | > Last changelog: 1.0, 3 years ago
        
       | wkat4242 wrote:
       | Hmm not a fan. But great that KDE is so themeable.
       | 
       | I'm more of a fan of eliverlara's colourful desktops, though mine
       | is more vanilla.
        
       | 9point6 wrote:
       | Flashbacks to the .NET 1.x/2.x default winform icons
        
       | thebigspacefuck wrote:
       | I think Mondrian is cliche at this point. Building developers
       | think it's culture and it's easy to pull off since everything is
       | squares so I see them theming apartment building and schools like
       | this. It's like the Cool S of architecture to me. I understand
       | why someone made this theme, because it's easy and seems
       | cultured, and if you're genuinely into Mondrian's art, then go
       | for it, but I always cringe a little when I see it now.
        
         | NoboruWataya wrote:
         | It's a cool minimalist aesthetic, regardless of how "cultured"
         | it is or isn't. To say that it's cliche is really just to say
         | that it's popular and recognisable, which seems to me like a
         | good reason to incorporate it into a desktop theme.
        
       | Tams80 wrote:
       | All these years and different flavours, and there's still
       | something 'not right' with all Linux UIs.
       | 
       | Font rendering is one issue, but there's something else that I
       | can't quite put my finger on.
        
         | Tainnor wrote:
         | It's entirely subjective. For me, most Linux UIs have a charm
         | that I'm not seeing in Apple or Microsoft UIs. Those are often
         | "too clean" or "too polished" for me. I'm not saying that font
         | issues shouldn't be fixed, but it doesn't bother me that much.
         | For what's it worth, I also really liked the aesthetic of macOS
         | pre-X.
        
         | hamburglar wrote:
         | There are lots of things. One that comes immediately to mind is
         | the fact that if you apply any Linux desktop "themes" you are
         | actually pretty likely to end up in situations where certain
         | software is hard to use because they have components or cursors
         | or some weird stuff that was never tested with a variety of
         | desktop themes, so parts of them end up with black text on a
         | #020202 background or buttons drawn with a hardcoded background
         | color or whatever. Since there is no actual _cohesive_ theming
         | environment, the splintered miasma of theming environments
         | means there is effectively none that's useful. This is,
         | unfortunately, the nature of guerilla software development, and
         | the reason why, as awesome as it is, it's never taking over the
         | desktop.
        
         | conceptme wrote:
         | Did you ever try windows? There are loads of weird ui things
         | going on there. Mac also has it's quircks but fonts usually do
         | look decent.
        
           | lannisterstark wrote:
           | >Did you ever try windows? There are loads of weird ui things
           | going on there
           | 
           | I mean, "Windows does it badly too" isn't exactly a very pro-
           | Linux point.
        
         | michaelmrose wrote:
         | Linux is perfectly capable of good font rendering. A lot of
         | people dont care/cant tell and show off screenshots in which
         | they are intending to show off their theme/backgrounds/colors
         | and are only unintentionally show off the fact that their
         | choice of fonts and settings they tweaked for no reason is
         | subjectively or objectively worse than default.
        
         | Klonoar wrote:
         | Padding and spacing is 90% of the issue for me. KDE is worse
         | than Gnome in this regard.
        
       | bee_rider wrote:
       | There is also a Mondriaan tools for partitioning and reordering
       | sparse matrices.
       | 
       | I wonder if he knew his style would be so soothing to
       | technologists.
       | 
       | The theme should sneak a couple flowers in, though.
        
       | evanjrowley wrote:
       | I appreciate the Mondrian aesthetic.
       | 
       | Has anyone noticed that the High Contrast theme for Google Chrome
       | uses the same colors?
       | 
       | GMK Mondrian is my most-used keycaps set for my custom keyboards:
       | https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=86616.0
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-05 23:02 UTC)