Oxygen Project

Oxygen

KDE Plasma Desktop
Developer(s)	KDE
Initial release	11 January 2008; 3 years ago (2008-01-11)
Stable release	4.7.3  (2 November 2011; 20 days ago (2011-11-02))[1] [+/−]
Preview release	none  (n/a) [+/−]
Written in	SVG, C++ (Qt)
Operating system	Linux, Mac OS X, Unix-like, Windows
Available in	Multilingual
License	LGPL
Website	oxygen-icons.org

The Oxygen Project is a project created to give a visual refresh to KDE Plasma Workspaces.

It consists of a set of computer icons, a window decoration for KWin, widget toolkit themes for GTK and Qt, and two themes for KDE Plasma Workspaces.

The Oxygen theme set is used by default for Plasma Workspaces in most Linux distributions, like Fedora,^[2] Kubuntu,^[3] and openSUSE.^[4]

History

The original purpose was to create a new set of icons but expanded to include a new theme, which included a new cursor, widget and window theme, and sounds. It represents a break with the cartoonish look of previous K Desktop Environment 3 graphics and iconsets, adopting a more photo-realistic style. One of the overall goals of Oxygen was to provide a nice looking desktop that did not distract the user, so the icons and themes use a desaturated color palette. The name Oxygen came from a joke between the developers that they wanted to ”bring a breath of fresh air to the desktop”.

4.0

Oxygen 4.0

• Plasma theme is mostly black with white text.

4.1

• 

  Plasma Desktop 4.1 theme

• 

  KWin 4.1 theme

• Use of gradient lines in the Plasma theme.
• KWin decoration features an emboss look.

4.2

Plasma Desktop 4.2

• Vertical gradients and use of transparency in Plasma theme when using composite effects, blue tint without compositing.
• KWin decoration looks more 3-dimensional.

4.3

Plasma Desktop 4.3 with new Air theme

• A new bright Plasma theme, Air, becomes default.

4.4

Plasma Desktop 4.4

• Usability work, like animations for the widget theme.^[5]
• New and reworked icons – mostly for toolbars.^[6]
• Window decoration no longer embossed.

4.5

Plasma Desktop 4.5

• Monochrome icons for Air and Oxygen Plasma themes.

4.6

• The icon set gets reworked file type icons.^[7]

4.7

• Reworked folder icons.^[8]

Standardization

The Oxygen Project aims to offer standard icons, guidelines and a style guide. It builds on the freedesktop.org Standard Icon Naming Specification and Standard Icon Theme, allowing consistency across applications. There is an ongoing effort for supporting these specifications in different desktops, and by different iconsets and themes, such as the Tango Desktop Project.

People

• Nuno Pinheiro (current coordinator)
• David Vignoni (founder)
• Kenneth Wimer (founder)

See also

Free software portal

• Tango Desktop Project – developers of a public domain icon set

References

1. ^ "KDE’s November Updates Improve Kontact Performance". http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.7.3.php. 
2. ^ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KDE
3. ^ http://www.kubuntu.org/feature-tour
4. ^ http://en.opensuse.org/Screenshots
5. ^ http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2010/02/it-is-done.html
6. ^ http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2010/01/very-small-post.html
7. ^ http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2010/10/as-long-as-last-but-better.html
8. ^ http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2011/08/desktop-sumit-or-paper-planes.html