Bluecurve is a theme. Similar to XMMS/Winamp or Mozilla/Netscape skins, or Windows(9x/ME/XP) themes. It is unique (so far) in that it includes GNOME, KDE, Metacity, GTK+, and XMMS parts. It is also an icon theme, using Red Hat developed icons. It was developed by RedHat and introduced as the UI of RedHatLinux in versions 8.and higher.

Why is Bluecurve such a good thing?

In a way, this is the first step to removing the GnomeVsKde problem. There's two big choices out there and an application for one would look really really bad when being run on the other.

"It's an effort to unify the look and feel," said Erik Troan, Red Hat's director of product marketing. "Users shouldn't have to worry about which (interface) to choose," and programs should work the same on either Gnome or KDE. "We're not trying to create a 'third user interface,'" Troan says. Instead, the theme is aimed at "a consistent look and feel [which is? 'polished' and more '3D.'" "We didn't want to use just GNOME and get KDE users upset. We didn't want to use just KDE and get GNOME users upset. Instead, we combined the two, and got everyone upset," he quipped.

Red Hat has created a "KDE-like theme for GNOME, and a GNOME-like theme for KDE," said Brian Stevens, Red Hat's senior director of engineering. Users can install either GNOME, KDE, or both GUIs. With the KDE default configuration, customers will get "mainly KDE apps." With the GNOME default configuration, they'll get "mainly GNOME apps." Customers installing both KDE and GNOME, though, will be able to pick and choose from among all apps included in the package, Stevens said. "We've also worked on things like the menus and toolbars in GNOME and KDE, to make them more uniform," according to Stevens.

Screenshots

You can see some good screenshots:

• http://osnews.daemon.be/img/1842/redhat1.jpg
• http://osnews.daemon.be/img/1842/redhat3.jpg
• http://osnews.daemon.be/img/1842/redhat6.jpg
• http://osnews.daemon.be/img/1842/redhat8.jpg (running KDE)

If you use Gentoo, you can type

emerge redhat-artwork

and get the Bluecurve theme.

otherwise you can head over to Art.GNOME.org and get it.

Greencurve, orangecurve

Bluecurve's artist/author Garrett LeSage has updated the redhat-artwork RPMs with a whole pile of new BlueCurve colour schemes. Grab it from RawHide?.

Bluecurve for Windows XP

Why not? There's a site dedicated to it at http://www.bluecurve.tk/, else check DeviantArt. There's also a XimianDesktop theme here.

Trivia

BlueCurve was a company that made "Internet infrastructure planning software" that was bought by RedHat in 2000.