The GTK themes seem terrible to me. Not only did they move the top buttons to the left (good luck explaining to mom why she won't find the X where she's used to) but also it looks very inconsistent. Also the colours... It looks like one of those old themes why your friends still make fun of your Linux.

The web theme looks like a generic hosting company' website. Or like a hardware manufacturer.

I love the mission though, "Light" is a very good selling point for Linux. You might not agree about that for Ubuntu but more Ubuntu = more Linux = yay.

I am lukewarm on this specific design, but am totally happy and excited by how ambitious this all is (not just the theme, but the logos, collateral, etc.)

I want Canonical and Ubuntu to kick butt. Mark seems like he's really making an effort to be a "product" person, which open source could use more of. Bravo! (And this has always been reflected in Ubuntu, which I really appreciate.)

Some nits: The new font is a step backward. The softness of the old font was both distinct, unique, AND comfortable. The new one is not as unique. And I don't think will age so well. (Plus, fonts and logos are not something that need an overhaul as often as themes and campaigns. I just think it was maybe too soon to overhaul the font. It was a strong brand.)

I LOVE the new colors. Yeah, there's an Apple overlap, but I don't think "APPLE!" as soon as I see it.

Window controls on the left: I don't like it. I have desktops on all three major OS's, so it's not because I'm trained for one way or the other. There's just something that feels better about them being on the right.

Overall: I'm giving it all a chance, and will jump in with both feet when it's released, without undoing the major changes. The main point here is: They really care and have a vision. Whenever somebody makes a tool/OS/webapp/meal with a really specific vision, i always give it the benefit of the doubt, and try it THEIR way, not bending to my preferences or instinct to add salt/take off the tomato/go to my favorite theme/etc. When I don't try stuff with that trust, i often miss out. I hope Linux users give it a fair shot, even if stuff feels funny at first.

They need to seriously reconsider this GTK theme. I feel like maybe they're trying too hard to look different. Does anyone actually like it? Besides bad color selection it's inconsistent. The menubar doesn't even match the rest of the UI which seems like the most obvious bit of consistency you'd expect. Even between the two variants it's lacking consistently. The dark version has menus that match the menubar color, the light variant does not. At least the old Taco Bell bathroom theme was consistent. I may not have liked the colors but you could ignore that easily enough. This theme just screams at my eyes and not in a good way.

This is a gigantic step... sideways.

Big clunky fonts and an excessive amount of blank space. It's like the American car of UIs.

I really do hope this pans out so long as ubuntu stays free and for the most part[1] open I'll support what they are doing for linux and operating systems.

[1]: So long as the base for ubuntu is free and open I'm happy and if they create software that costs money but it is not required to have a non-hindered user experience I'll consider them open

edit: I really hope that the orange starts getting toned down

The thing that immediately sticks out to me is that the bottom gnome panel is no longer there. Up until now, default ubuntu (and gnome) setups have had one panel at the top and another at the bottom, and the first thing I'd do on a system is to get rid of one of the two.

This made more sense with 4x3 screens but now with many laptops at 16x9, it seems silly to waste that much screen real estate. The mac has a menu bar up top and a dock, but they also move application menu commands to the top, saving some space there.

I like this a lot. I am not one to care much about looks (I use xmonad at home and Windows XP with the blue background at work), but I think this is a really appealing theme that doesn't get in the way; very much like OS X's plastic theme. (Aqua got in the way, which is why Apple phased it out.) They describe it as light, and I think that's exactly right -- it's simple, not bulky, and colorful enough to be visually pleasing. I think people trying Linux for the first time with this theme will enjoy it. (GNOME itself has a nice MacOS 7 feeling that I also like. I think new users will also like it.)

I am just speculating, because I just do everything in Emacs. I'm only have GNOME around for evince.

Does this mean that suspend and hibernation will work reliably out of the box? Because that means way more to me than a desktop theme I always end up changing anyway.

I'm not particularly fond of the GTK-themes. It's always hard to accept new and all, but they lack that unique touch of the earlier interface. The web site mockups feel like a mix of apple.com and a cheap hosting solution. Now, I get that they're merely mockups, but it tells a little about the team behind the redesign. The logo is not bad (better in the smaller variants). I like the use of purple. It's pretty unique (if you do not contrast their wallpaper to certain polar aurora wallpapers) and they can totally work that color.

I would have expected something more unique -- something much more refined -- of an Ubuntu redesign than this.

Dear God, it's an unholy union of Windows and OS X.

I love it.. change with the times, dare to be modern and move along. All companies could learn from this.

Feels a bit too "precise" for me. Ubuntu is supposed to stand for togetherness -- this feels a little colder than I'm used to.

Ok, the logo's definitely quite a deviation from the super-"friendly" previous version. It feels a lot more "corporate" to me. I really liked the friendly feel of the previous logo, but it does tell me something interesting...

The fact that it looks more "corporate"/"professional", may indicate that Canonical is going to pursue corporate deploys more aggressively than before. They're still not making a profit as a company. If we want Ubuntu to continue its prosper for a long time, it's good to keep having Canonical as its backer.

Of course you can argue whether making a logo more "corporate" will help in selling it as a "serious" product, but that's not the point here. If Canonical feels this will help them, it will.

It takes a bit of time to get used to a change like this.

It has been haphazard up till now version to version. And the themes never feel totally cohesive.

Why have different logos for xubuntu and edubuntu etc, why the different names? Why not have Ubuntu education edition. Or Ubuntu light instead?

Perhaps they should have poured money into gnome instead. And concentrated on the logo.

Instead it looks, as other people have commented, like a bastard child of OSX and windows.

Just pay a good designer. And keep it simple.

I rather dislike pretty much all of it, but I'll wait and see if it grows on me.

In particular the GTK Themes seem really ugly. I don't like Dark themes at all, and the light one looks too much like Plastik from KDE.

Personally I'm a big fan of the old "Human Clearlooks" theme, which I'll probably be sticking to for some time - but I'll definitely give the new one a go and see if it grows on me.

the older gtk-theme was better, more well rounded. Too much different colors here. Dirty - not clean. But, hey, I hope it's not final. Also too much spacings everywhere. The fonts are still okay, even though fedora has a more unique appearance. And why change the current font face? It's good!

A month or so ago I linked to a Ubuntu "fix 100 trivial bugs" project, pointing to a bug which was open for several years.

I just checked it again, it hasn't progressed. But at least there's a new theme out.

Themes. The worst idea in computing since license keys.

Site down and google doesn't have a cache link up. Can someone post a summary?

I love the new look. At first sight, they just achieved what they wanted to express: lightness, reliability, precision.

I am somehow reminded of those cars from the nineties with the now outlawed purple ground effects lights.

Are they ever going to get away from the brown color?

Wonder how much Asus paid to be the computer pictured for "10.04 has arrived" (which I assume will be the homepage for awhile after launch?)

I don't like it. They should just try to mimic OSX...