First off, I want to say that I truly enjoy using Granular and am a big fan of the OS. I believe it's one of the best from the many other distributions I've tried before, as almost everything works 'out of the box'. I've been using it as my primary desktop OS for a little while now, and I wanted to offer a couple of insights that I believe would even make it even a better experience for possible future versions.
Now there's nothing wrong with 'keeping things simple', but when you've got a cool distribution like this one, there should've been some really special and colorful elements that complimented the program and make the user go "wow" the user the first time they boot it up.
To say the least, I was not very 'wowwed' about the choice of theming for the default bootsplash and splash screens or login screens that are included in the present distribution. I think the designs are just too plain and boxy. The defaulted basic "white wall" theme with the KDE elements being loaded with its matching login and password and splash screens and boot splash screens just really came across as not finished, or more as an afterthought. With all of the neat designs I've seen in other distributions, why was this particular one chosen I don't understand. Personally, I would've at least tried to shrink the 'wall' and and create a more rounded-style background for the KDE elements to appear to load and I would've tried to incorporate the Granular logo more into the design.
Now before someone writes back and tells me about how you can change graphics, I know that there are ways to replace and change elements such as visiting the KDE Look web site (
http://www.kde-look.org/), where they have tons of things to choose from to customize your desktop experience. I'm just writing from the perspective of what I think would make a better Granular distribution for the person that had I never used it before.
The other thing that I would like to see would be a different graphic for the installer program with the current 'wizard' cartoon embeded into it. Not to knock the artwork, but for future versions I would like to see is a different variation but similar to the one that was designed for PCLinuxOS's installer program. There's is kind of classy. Again, no slight to the artist for the wizard graphic.
If there is anyone out on the boards who has knowledge on creating things like bootsplashes or splash screens, I would be willing to colaborate on some artwork in order to have something to contribute. If you've visited the KDE Look Web site, you'll see that there aren't any add-ons for Granular, and it would be great to see some there. I'm just glad that there are some different wallpaper images to choose from.
Just on a side note, I tried using Granular's bootsplash creator, but I couldn't get my design to boot up correctly, and the system defaulted to the original bootsplash. I need to go back and try again until I get it right.
In closing, all of these observations don't detract from my using Granular which to me is easiest out-of-the-box, fully-loaded-as-a-distribution-can-be and it takes hardly any time to install. It's simple. It's useful. It's fun. Maybe that ought to be the motto along with the logo:
Granular Linux: simple, useful, and fun. My appreciation all around though to everyone that has had a hand in its creation.
Sincerely, Roger Nurick.
