Bluecurve

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Bluecurve theme on Red Hat Linux.

Bluecurve is a desktop theme for GNOME and KDE created by the Red Hat Artwork project. The main aim of Bluecurve was to create a unified look throughout the Linux environment. It has been used in Red Hat Linux since version 8.0, and Fedora Core.

The Bluecurve window borders and GTK+ (widget) theme have been replaced by those from Clearlooks (the first in Fedora Core 4, the second in FC5). However, the old Bluecurve themes (windowing and widgets) are still installed by default and can be selected in the theme manager. The Bluecurve icon set remains the default in Fedora Core, though it is slated to be succeeded by another Red Hat theme, Echo, in Fedora 7.^[1]

There has been controversy surrounding the theme, especially the alterations to KDE, which were sufficiently severe as to cause developer Bernhard Rosenkraenzer to quit Red Hat "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." ^[2] ^[3] Others simply criticize it for giving the same look to both desktops, even though they are obviously different in many ways. Note that this approach was subsequently emulated by Mandrake Linux with their "Galaxy" theme, which was also available for GNOME and KDE, and in Kubuntu 6.06 with the GTK-Qt theme engine (enabled by default).

The Bluecurve theme installed on Ubuntu.

Enterprising GUI artists have created themes that emulate the Bluecurve theme on other operating systems, including Windows. 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.