I'm not sure if this belongs in this forum but can't where else to put it.

Has anyone noticed how many distribution have an overall blue theme or apearrance to them? Over the last 3 years I've tried SuSE, Mandriva, Yoper, Xandros, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Blag, Zenwalk, Slackware and some others. Overall, the majority tend to go for blue for log in screens, desktop backgrounds etc. Ubuntu made a refreshing exception.

Why can designers not be a little more inventive? Or are there design resigns why blue is prefered?

Don

But I like blue.

I guess you need a psychologist to answer, but I've always thought it like this: quite a many people consider blue as somewhat 'relaxing' colour, a chill colour that doesn't make you do anything crazy. The sky is blue, so is the ocean (in some cases), and so on. Nature stuff -- some people rest when they see things like that. In the nature you don't actually see blue things as much as other colours (this has also a little to do with physics), but you do see some, and mostly where you see blue you see something that is at least somewhat relaxed. And then there is this other reason: Windows has ruled for too long and has used blue stuff (including Blue Screen of Death) a lot, so maybe it's just fallen into the heads of everyone. Many tend to like blue-coloured pc screen more than red (it makes them feel something is wrong and they should run as fast as they can), green (trees, plants and computers don't fit together if you ask old people) or yellow ("who the heck put the Sun in my pc?!").

I think too that Ubuntu's choice of brownish theme was great. I'm not sure if it fits everything, but it does look good right out of the box. Maybe KDE should consider adding some extra colour to their current options of blue, violet, bluish violet and violetish blue..oh what the heck, le'mme switch my console colours to brown!

EDIT: of course I didn't mean that Sun (the software stuff) is bad. Just thought about the big fireball first..actually I like Sun's software, and I just might install some today. Anyway, have a nice day Sun-people

I don't undersand the problem you can always change it. In KDE as far as I remember you can do it even during first run so why worry

Avallach, surely you are right that everything that can be easily destroyed is no problem, but it can be interesting to understand something we can always destroy.

Personally I use purple background when everything is good, bright green when power goes medium low, and red when "measures must be taken now".

Dark blue variations (as well as brown, I guess) are somewhat neutral, as we have some learned reaction for green, yellow and red, black and white are for text background or foreground, so not so much choice for neutral colour.

The retina has fewer blue cones then red or green.

Depends what you have smoked before

I have to admit I don't actually like blue. It's my least favourite colour (wait though - that may be pink!). I currently run Ubuntu with a gold theme, Blag with a dark grey and Zenwalk with dark grey, and Slackware with silver. I used to run Mandriva with a metallic green (not as bad as it sounds), and have used brown themes in the past.

I know I can change things - although not everything is easy to change (ever tried changing the Grub boot screen background colour?) - but I'm just curious as to why so many developers stick with blue as default design colour. Surely, we can't all be mesmerised by Microsoft's use of blue?

Don