Hi, I am new here, so firstly. Thanks for this forum! But onto the question.

I would like to know of any alternative, modern Linux Distributions that meet the following requirements:

• Window manager that supports smooth, rounded corners.
• Has a very easy-to-use user interface.
• Has a graphical installer.
• Has many themes available to it (or is manually customiseable).
• Supports AR8161 ethernet natively (I had to faff around and compile and install drivers with fedora, but I also had to manually track all of the dependencies down and install them individually. Not to mention the dependencies dependencies!).
• Has a windows-like layout (taskbar at the bottom)
• Sign in screen is customiseable, and modern (has list of users, not having to manually type username AND password, just username when logging in)
• Is a relatively fast distro.
• Window manager supports borders with alpha channel, so that it blends with the background behind the window nicely (I.E. A grey border looks awful on a desktop background with color).
• Uses DEB packaging system (prefereably apt-get).
• Windows resize as you drag the sides/corners.

I'd like to have all of this supported without lots of faffing around.

Now, i'd like to expand on a few points.

Alpha channel borders. As a web designer/developer, I like themes to be precise and to blend together completely. Now, I've only ever found ONE operating system that does this, and that's Mac OS, their default theme is beautifully made, and titlebars are easily modified in X Code.

I love Linux's freedom, flexibility and stability. So I'm I'm on the hunt for a distro that is clean and beautifully designed.

Now, I've found, bog standard Ubuntu is the closest so far. However, it's awful jagged "rounded" corners and lack of live window resizing that puts me off. I'm currently using Gnome, but it's missing that taskbar I've loved in Windows and Mac. You have to click a button and then move the mouse around a lot to focus on one window. That's not efficient or fast when I'm in the flow of things (like switching windows in quick succession when coding, it puts me off sometimes.

OpenSUSE (with KDE) comes close second. But the application menu in KDE is so awkward to use. If you move the mouse below the listings in that menu is scrolls down on it's own (very annoying) and it's just not very efficient. And there are no perfect themes available for KDE, or at least none that've i've discovered when looking (although I looked for hours). I always find small bugs that annoy me. Like for one, the menus where the left-most button has rounded corners on the left, and then the button in the middle has not rounded corners, and is directly in-between the left-mose and right-most button, then the last button (on the right) has rounded corners on the right. And example of which is a website I am currently in the midst of developing. If you go to this website http://www.ezi.me/ and look at the sign in part. You will see an example of the buttons I am describing (they say "yes" and "no", just nothing in the middle). Now the problem I have (this is on every linux distro I have ever tried, and that's not a small number), is that when you click on the button on the right, the border to the left of it will be a slightly lighter color than the background/shadow of the button to the right of it, now this to me (and probably a lot of other people) looks shabby, when it's easily fixed) and doesn't blend in well. However, on my website I showed you, you will see that this is not the case, and the button's borders blend seamlessly whether the left or right button is in the active state.



So, if there is an options available that fits this bill, please let me know immediately.

You may think i'm being picky. But the problems i'm describing here are not hard to fix. Alpha channel support is common (you have shadows). They are just common problems that i've spotted and dislike. I like perfection, and most of the time, I will accept nothing but perfection. And all linux distros I've tried just don't cut it.

What needs to be done really is a few modifications are made to the window managers to allow for borders -1px/+1px of the window height/width that also support the alpha channel.

And SMOOTH rounded corners be added to window managers (Gnome 3 has it, why can't unity).

And GTK+ CSS modifications be made to change the layer of each button to higher than the rest so that it's darker borders overlap the other button's borders. But you must also make the button -1px to the left of it's current position for it to work correctly.

As I said, these problems are not hard to solve and wouldn't take long (well, maybe rounded corners, i'm not sure). They just need someone with a keen eye to see them.

Thanks in advance,
Caelan.

1 members found this post helpful.

by " alternative" i take it you want
off the wall obscure unknown not well supported destros that almost NO ONE has heard of


a word of advice

stick with the main large destros

SUSE, RHEL,Debian,Slackware

2 members found this post helpful.

Maybe check into PearOS or elementaryOS. Not sure if they meet all these guidelines, but worth checking into.

http://pearlinux.fr/
http://elementaryos.org/

Depends on the theme used...both KDE and Gnome have rounded-corner themes.
...which is VERY subjective. Easy to use for one is horrible for another.
..which covers pretty much ANY distro, and really, how important is that? You install ONCE.
...which again, is pretty much ANY window manager, from Enlightenment to KDE
Don't know about this one, but why is that important to you?
...which can be KDE or Gnome, and probably many other GUI's. Add a panel/button as you want.
Again, KDE or Gnome both support this via KDM or GDM.
Again, vague. What one considers 'relatively fast' isn't good for another. And, you seem to be mixing ideas. The distribution is something like Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora...while the GUI's/window-managers are different, and run ON the distro.
Don't really know, but I certainly can adjust these things in KDE now.
..which limits you to Mint, Ubuntu, or Debian. With your choice of window-managers.
Again, configurable with pretty much any GUI I've used.
Good luck with that. If you want EVERYTHING just like you want it, without having to do ANY customization or spending much time on it, you're dreaming. Nothing will fit you right out of the box, without installing themes that YOU like, making things look/behave like you want, etc. If you want those decisions taken out of your hands, you really should just buy a Mac.
Since you want to use Linux, know that Linux has the tools available to you that enable you to fix these things, and demand 'perfection', then feel free to fix these things, and contribute them back to the community. You say they're not hard to fix, which implies that you know how to fix them already...it should then be a trivial matter for you to grab the source code and submit the fixes.
Because Unity isn't as mature as Gnome 3. And if you like Gnome 3, it can easily be installed/used on Ubuntu.
We look forward to seeing your contributions.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi, for a start, thanks everybody!

@snowpine. I have been considering that. I am going to give it a try.

@John VV, I do tend to stick with the larger ones already.

@JWJones. Some cool suggestions there, they are looking quite good. But i'm not looking for a Mac clone. I'd like something a bit different from Mac.

Thanks again.

AR8161, because that's my motherboard's ethernet adapter.

I do see your points. I know I can already get a lot of these things. But an OS with them all in one would be great. And I'm not wanting everything I want out of the box, i dont mind a bit of tweaking. I was just wondering if there is already a ready built system out there that has the things in i'd like.

And I know I can fix them. But again, I was just wondering if there is already a distro out there.

Thanks again, it seems I'm going to be coding a new theme for GNOME 3. I'll release it if it turns out good...

if you want an Apple clone

use KDE4 Desktopmanager
'
there is a mac theme
there is also a mac GTK theme for gnome
I do not know if there is a mac theme for e17
but you could make one

Well, you are being picky, but that's entirely up to you. However, you have to bear in mind that being very picky about any one thing reduces your options for being picky about anything else, given the finite number of things to choose from.

But, as I say, up to you.

BTW, I hate with probably unnecessary vehemence, heavily rounded corners, because it always looks 'my first computer' to me, so I hope that's not what you mean. But, up to a point, I don't really care, provided I don't have to see it...

For the application menu, its not a problem that I have, probably because my menus aren't long enough to cause the problem to arise. But, anyway, there are a handful of other options from the standard launcher which I would have thought might have given you what you want.

I'm surprised that you can't find a combination of themes and settings that works for you. On both the plus side and the minus side, I suspect that in only a few thousand hours of trials you cannot try everything...which window decorations do you use/have you tried and which widget style do you you use? there is a whole lot of stuff that you can get from kde-look (and while most of it seems ugly to me, I think that you can presume that every one of them seems attractive to someone, even if, in some cases, you might rather not meet them....).

In any case, it is not so much a matter of 'which distro?' but 'which GUI and which add-ons', although the distro does set the defaults.

Mostly, it depends on whether 'picky-ness' is accompanied by a willingness to put in what, to other people, would be an unreasonable level of effort to get what you want, so the defaults aren't really an issue.

Thanks. I haven't yet found a combination of themes that I've found that are as perfect as the mac theme yet.

And when I say smooth rounded corners. I mean rounded corners that are not jagged, like ubuntu.

Why are rounded corners important? Am I missing something?

They're not important. I just really like them. I think they add that "finishing touch" to a theme.

Ok. I'm usually CLI so I thought this was like a secret code or something.

While I appreciate that effort, even though I am not a GNOME user, be warned about that. The GNOME/GTK team does not care at all about compatibility of themes between different versions, so you might have to update your theme for new GNOME releases.

Haha, now you're talkin'!

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post5038889