I respectfully disagree. I do not think the default icon set and themes from GNOME and KDE upstream are adequate. I feel the advantages of a "very polished" and uniform look in the default Etch desktop is more important than screenshot consistency or consistency with other distributions.IMHO, even if there is 100% icon coverage and a light GTK theme, we should reconsider hard to switch away from the GNOME default (dunno about KDE). Personally, I think the GNOME icon and GTK engine defaults are reasonable and it does make sense to switch away from them at the expense of screenshot consistency with upstream documentation, other distributions, etc.
Before more deliberation, I must acknowledge that I'm just one opinion out of so many, and a newbie to participating in these discussions, at that. So instead of more blather, perhaps I should simply ask:
1. Is there room for debate? Is discussion constructive, or annoying? :-)2. How do these sort of decisions normally get made when there is a difference of opinion?
3. In the end, who has the final say?I understand that if there's no viable alternative to what we have (Gnome 100% coverage, debblue backgrounds), it's useless to banter about it.
But, I think that if someone *does* come up with a "100% coverage" icon set and a GTK/KDE/GDM/etc theme that is "better" or more "Debian flavored" than the upstream default, it should be not be ignored as a candidate for Debian's default desktop. I think what Ubuntu has done in this regard (orange-coloring some stock icons, Ubuntu logo in the panel) demonstrates the power of a "polished" feel. That their default setup "looks like Ubuntu" is viral advertising for their distribution.
The CC-licensed icons themselves aside, will Etch follow the freedesktop.org icon naming spec and icon theme spec?The only valid exception maybe would be Tango icons, but I think there are still legal issues with that which block such considerations.
Mike