Speakers
Description
By examining its past, its present restoration, and its potential future, this presentation contextualizes Oxygen, the flagship theme of the KDE 4 era, within the broader questions it raises for KDE as a project.
We argue two things about Oxygen: that it carries genuine historical and artistic value, and that KDE's continued stewardship of the theme reflects something important and positive about our community. Namely that KDE Plasma is a user's desktop, one that is willing to prioritize user choice over narrow cost-benefit development logic.
In recognition of both Oxygen’s value and in line with the values of KDE, Oxygen has been undergoing an active restoration effort. We present the state of that work: what has been accomplished, what obstacles were encountered, and what dilemmas arise when preserving a theme of this kind. Here we also take the very positive user feedback received as a signal that there is clear demand for designs rooted in the very principles Oxygen is rooted in.
The future certainly does not involve redesigning the Oxygen that was, but it does carry the potential of its evolution into the Oxygen that will be, new modern Oxygen's, built on the same principles, of pushing the boundaries of what we do in the design space in OSS. This work also opens a larger question about what KDE wants to offer in terms of theming infrastructure and available themes. Our position is that preserving the original Oxygen is worthwhile in its own right, and that working on its evolution can be beneficial for bettering the new theming infrastructure, as fostering the next generation of OSS designers.
Social Links
https://oxygen-design.org/
Description
We'd love to have a chance to present our work on Oxygen and have it serve as useful tool for broader discussions about what KDE is and how the future of theming might look like in it.
Biography
Nuno Pinheiro is a Portuguese graphic designer and illustrator. He specializes in iconography, themes and user interface design. He is known in Linux circles for his work in the Oxygen Project.
Filip Fila is a social scientist from Croatia with an interest in graphic design and open-source software. He has mainly contributed to visual changes in KDE, and has been working on the Oxygen restoration recently.
| Headshot Link | https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocJ4lKqx3fhm-zs0J2L_tJ_01lxRqTGSu-NlvdgQOKAyMaScgP9M=s480-c-no |
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