#293 Improve the quality of the desktop wallpapers & ensure they're maintained
Opened 2 years ago by aday. Modified 6 days ago

The subject of the desktop wallpapers has come up a few times recently, and it would be good for the WG to have a discussion about what it would like to see for the wallpapers, including both the defaults and the collection of optional wallpapers that we include.

We can also maybe talk about technical requirements, including:

  • display support (say which sizes to support)
  • dark mode
  • HDR

It would also be good to talk about package maintenance and ownership. There are currently wallpaper three packages:

We'll obviously want to have a conversation with Fedora Design about this, but a preliminary conversation on the WG side seems like a good first step.


(Historic wallpapers)

My primary request is to have one consistent visual theme between releases, as in GNOME or Ubuntu. I don't like how our wallpaper currently changes unpredictably between releases.

My secondary request would be for the style to be abstract (e.g. F18-F23 except F21, or F32, or F35) rather than artistic (e.g. F33, F34, F36), but this is a less important request because it's possible for the artistic style to look really good (I would be happy if every wallpaper used the watercolor style from F34). There is so much room for personal preference here that I doubt we'll ever come to a consensus on which style is best.

I think these packages are OK, but I'd like to move away from installing them by default. Instead, leave them around for users to install only if desired. Our default wallpaper should come from a new package that updates every release, so if you upgrade from F35 -> F36 and had previously selected the default wallpaper, you get the new default wallpaper automatically instead of keeping the F35 wallpaper after upgrade. Also, accumulating old release wallpapers based on the number of times you've previously upgraded is weird. (I can tell that my last reinstall was F32 because that's the oldest release wallpaper I have available....)

Not sure why we need this. GNOME provides extra backgrounds too, which we remove by subpackaging them into the gnome-backgrounds-extra subpackage that we don't install. Having a different set of extra backgrounds from upstream doesn't seem super useful since none of these have any relation to any GNOME or Fedora visual style. We could just contribute our extra backgrounds to upstream if desired?

Regardless, I don't see the extra backgrounds as particularly important compared to our default.

These are nice to have.

We discussed this ticket at today's WG meeting. Main takeaways so far:

  • There's some desire on the group for the default wallpaper to be more identifably "Fedora", perhaps by using a consistent style from release to release
  • We want to ensure that the wallpapers meet our technical requirements, in terms of appropriateness for different display sizes, good fit with standard desktop UI elements, etc
  • I think we do want the wallpaper selection to be actively maintained

I have some notes on technical wallpaper requirements, that I've promised to add to the WG docs.

Metadata Update from @aday:
- Issue untagged with: meeting-request
- Issue tagged with: pending-action

2 years ago

I've added some background creation guidelines to the GNOME HIG. So far they are mostly technical and practical, as opposed to artistic.

I'll share the new guidelines with the Fedora design team and see if they have any feedback.

There are two outstanding questions which it would be good to have help from the WG on:

  1. What should the maximum size of individual background images be? We have some interest in making the images bigger, in order to better support portrait displays, but there's a concern not to use too much GPU memory, but we're uncertain what the limit should be.
  2. What should the maximum disk size be for our wallpaper set? I think we might be interested in expanding the range of wallpapers that we make available, but we obviously don't want to inflate the size of the install media too much.

Seems like the backgrounds are around 80 MB in F35 and 54 MB in F36 (the size decrease is probably due to some of the wallpapers now being provided as SVGs).

Second question first: honestly, I think we shouldn't worry too much about disk size. I mean, no sense in going crazy, but I think it's reasonable for us to go beyond the current limit (for Workstation). We're still under 2GB, and I just checked and Ubuntu's desktop download is around 3GB.

We shouldn't be gratuitous, but the wallpaper set is removable for cases where disk space is important, so I think it shouldn't be our primary concern.

I have very different opinions about this for Cloud deliverables, but in this context.....

For the first question: I think GPU memory consumption is a valid concern (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1271 -- seems like texture compression would be nice but is complicated!). Can we use the different-aspect-ratio option to address monitors in portrait orientation? (A lot of the wallpapers could use a different layout or crop for those cases anyway.) That's more space on disk (and on the network), but at least that is compressed.

I think we shouldn't worry too much about disk size. I mean, no sense in going crazy, but I think it's reasonable for us to go beyond the current limit

The reason I'm asking about disk size is that we could decide that we want to dramatically expand the number of wallpapers. It's not hard to imagine a situation where we have, say, 60 wallpapers, comprised of three or four different sets.

I'm less concerned with the total image size than I am with the proportion of the image used by the wallpapers. I don't think people would be too impressed if 50% of their download was wallpapers. :smile:

Can we use the different-aspect-ratio option to address monitors in portrait orientation?

One question I have here - can that approach can be used when display orientation is dynamic? Like, is the wallpaper image only picked when the display is configured, or will it be selected on the fly when the orientation changes?

is the wallpaper image only picked when the display is configured, or will it be selected on the fly when the orientation changes?

According to @fmuellner , it should be updated on the fly. So having multiple wallpaper images for different aspect ratios does seem viable.

Some updates on this issue:

  • We're going to try using webp for the bitmap wallpaper files, both in GNOME and Fedora, in order to keep the file size down
  • We're also going to try and use 4096x4096 resolution for the wallpaper images. If this turns out to use too much memory, we'll generate a portrait and landscape version of each wallpaper, to use instead of the square one.
    • The anticipated challenge here is photographs, particularly of landscapes. Many of these won't be 4096 tall. We might have to just get as close as we can.
  • Mairin's putting a new initiative together to refresh the supplemental Fedora wallpapers. See: https://gitlab.com/fedora/design/extra-default-wallpapers
    • This will experiment with a combination of abstract images and photography, to see what can be achieved in terms of meeting our goals for image size as well as supporting dark mode. Only supporting dark mode with the abstract images is an option, depending on how the photos come out.

Metadata Update from @aday:
- Issue untagged with: pending-action
- Issue set to the milestone: Fedora 37

2 years ago

According to @fmuellner , it should be updated on the fly. So having multiple wallpaper images for different aspect ratios does seem viable.

That's based on glancing at gnome-desktop, gnome-shell and mutter code, not on actual testing.

That said, if it doesn't work I'd consider that a bug that needs fixing.

I'd like to propose not using the Fedora 37 default wallpaper in Fedora Workstation. It's inconsistent with our brand identity goals. Instead, either design something altogether different for Fedora Workstation, or, alternatively, just use the default wallpaper from GNOME 43.

I do not see us as having a separate brand identity goals from the rest of Fedora. Consequently, I firmly disagree on the idea of using a different wallpaper from the rest of the Fedora desktop deliverables.

Also, this is a tremendous amount of disrespect for the work that the Fedora Design Team does every release cycle to produce something that allows Fedora to stand out from the rest of the distributions. Especially given the incredible restrictions that GNOME gives us for branding, I think it's more than fair that we use the Fedora release wallpaper for our releases.

F37: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fedoradesign/backgrounds/main/default/f37-01-day.png

F36: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fedoradesign/backgrounds/f36-backgrounds/default/f36-01-day.png

Also, this is a tremendous amount of disrespect for the work that the Fedora Design Team does every release cycle to produce something that allows Fedora to stand out from the rest of the distributions.

It's pretty artwork, to be sure, but it's too far afield from what a professional computer operating system should be aiming for. You wouldn't see Ubuntu doing stuff like this.

F37: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fedoradesign/backgrounds/main/default/f37-01-day.png

F36: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fedoradesign/backgrounds/f36-backgrounds/default/f36-01-day.png

Also, this is a tremendous amount of disrespect for the work that the Fedora Design Team does every release cycle to produce something that allows Fedora to stand out from the rest of the distributions.

It's pretty artwork, to be sure, but it's too far afield from what a professional computer operating system should be aiming for. You wouldn't see Ubuntu doing stuff like this.

And yet, Fedora artwork regularly gets noticed while the Ubuntu one doesn't.

The design team uses an open, community process which includes a lot of room for feedback along the way. Please work with the design team if you feel like something isn't in line with the edition goals. Obviously, Workstation is a key stakeholder -- but that goes both ways!

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue tagged with: meeting-request

2 years ago

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: meeting-request
- Issue tagged with: meeting

a year ago

Action item: Allan to discuss establishment of a more consistent style/theme Fedora wallpapers with relevant community contributors

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: meeting
- Issue tagged with: pending-action

a year ago

Action item: Allan to discuss establishment of a more consistent style/theme Fedora wallpapers with relevant community contributors

Any updates?

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue tagged with: meeting-request

9 months ago

Metadata Update from @aday:
- Issue set to the milestone: None (was: Fedora 37)

9 months ago

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: meeting-request
- Issue tagged with: meeting

4 months ago

Discussed again today. Action item is the same: Allan to discuss establishment of a more consistent style/theme Fedora wallpapers with relevant community contributors

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: meeting
- Issue assigned to aday

4 months ago

I said that I'd provide a status update on this issue, so here's what I know:

  • Regarding the default wallpaper:
    • The WG has previously expressed a desire to have a thematic approach so the wallpapers have a common style from release to release. Talking that idea over with the design team is still outstanding (and is on my to do list once again).
    • In previous releases there was a community process around the default wallpaper. That didn't happen for F39 and we had a last-minute scramble to put a default wallpaper together. It would be good to find out what exactly happened in F39 and what the plan is for F40.
  • Regarding the additional optional wallpapers that we include:
    • For many years we included the same wallpaper set which wasn't updated, and had some quality issues associated with it. After talking to Mo about this there were some improvements for F37 with the introduction of some new wallpapers.
    • Since the F37 improvements there hasn't been any sign of further improvements and the previous extra-default-wallpapers initiative has seen activity in a year. I also notice that these wallpapers are still being shipped as .webp - something that GNOME stopped doing due to performance issues.

Metadata Update from @ngompa:
- Issue tagged with: experience

a month ago

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue tagged with: meeting

16 days ago

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: meeting

9 days ago

Any objections to getting rid of gnome-backgrounds-extras and moving those wallpapers into the main gnome-backgrounds package? Seems silly to put so much effort into designing the wallpapers and then not actually include them.

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