Do I have to use .PNG for Icons?
 

Stupid little question:

I have some really nice high color windows custom icons and would like to use them in Linux instead of the blah color rh9 icons... is there a way for me to do this, or to install nicer icon packs- i have seen other people's systems with VERY nice icons...

JIm

Are these for Kde or Gnome? Either way, try getting a downloadable icon pack and see how to edit it to point to other files in it's subdirectories. I doubt the image type is hardcoded, there's broad support for things like .jpg etc.

.ICO is a Windows format, you cant use it in Linux.

There is a Windows program called @icon Sushi though, its free,and it'll convert .ICOs to .PNG.

Try it out.

PNGs are higher quality than .ICO by the way.

Windows .ico are just .bmp files with a different extension, IIRC. Just about any program that can read .bmp will convert them. As for .png being higher quality... both png and bmp/ico can be true-color; I don't know if bmp/ico can be transparent or semitransparent in Gnome or whatnot, though. But it's not as if converting your bmp/ico images to png format is going to make them look better :)

Hey thanks, I'm going to go look for that png conversion proggie, but like isn't there a way of doing this IN linux, (spits at windows) ?

Sure there is:
convert file.ico file.png

convert is a tool from the ImageMagick utility. Greatest thing I've ever come across for a wide variety of image manipulation techniques.

Cool

as far as your first question goes, you do not have to use .png for linux icons (red hat anyway). there's another format with a .xpm extension that can also be used for icons. if you're using kde, there's a program called kiconedit that will convert .ico files to .png and .xpm files. i don't know the equivalent program on gnome though. of course as master c suggested, there's also image magik. also the gimp will convert a bunch of different image types to .png also (not .ico or .icns though). :)