GNOME Art Awards

I appreciate all the efforts going into GNOME's art these days, honest, I really do. But...

<RANT>

...I am getting more than a little frustrated that I have to use it through a theming interface (or art packaging?) that is so broken it doesn't even work. Half these themes don't work for me. I use the Preferences > Theme item, but the Install mechanism doesn't seem to. Well, maybe 25% of the time it does if I restart Theme again and actually select the one I installed. Or restart GNOME. Or just restart altogether. Hello? This has been like this for quite a while.

THEN there's the speed issue. I usually work on an old 450Mhz and it is really surprising to see the slowness of some themes. Not all you'd expect to be slow are (like Bluecurve) but some other simpler ones are a good bit slower for some reason (Lila). Obviously I know I can upgrade hardware for a couple of hours labor these days, but as one getting long in the tooth, I expect the bells and whistles on my alternative desktop to be worth their price. Otherwise, why are they there? (By now, I am nearly of the opinion that theming is evil.)

Can we please get the theming stuff integrated and liquid smooth before we go around recognizing yet more bitmaps and svgs? Why should I have to always be apologetic for GNOME's speed when showing it to people at the office? Perhaps GNU/Linux/GNOME isn't really the best alternative for older hardware as is so often touted?

I'd rather have Windows95-boring than a half-stitched together cacophony of creeping bitmaps, even if they do look incredible once all those pieces finally catch up to each other the split second before the screenshot.

</RANT>

That is all. :)