A newer, flatter GTK theme will ship as part of linux Mint 18 ‘Sarah.’
Showing off progress made on the theme in a new blog post, project lead Clement Lefebvre says thenew “Mint Y” theme iby recent design trends towards flatter UI elements and basedoff of the (incredibly) popularArc GTK theme.
Mint users content with the current design do not needto panic, though.
Although the newer, flatter theme is to shipas part ofthe next major release ofthe Ubuntu-based Linux distribution it won’t be the default system theme
Sarahwill usethe familiar ‘Mint X’ by default. ‘Mint Y’ isincluded as an option.
‘Scared of Changes’ Acknowledging that many are excited about the new design,Lefebvre explains the reasoning onholding back: “We talked about a new theme and we noticed […]that some of you were also scared of the changes this would introduce.”“We don’t want to change styles just because we think it might “look” better, we’ll provide both styles to you ,” he adds. ”Eventually if the day comes where a huge majority prefer the new theme, then we’ll follow that and start using it as the new default.”
Two Themes, Plenty of Choice
Both the ‘Mint X’ and ‘Mint Y’themes will comepre-installed on Linux Mint 18 ‘Sarah’, andthe latter will also beavailable in darker variant.
It’s a cautious decision andone that, Clem notes, gives Linux Mint 18 ‘the exact same default look at Linux Mint 17 (sic)’.
Work is tocontinue on both themes inthe lead up to the release of Linux Mint 18.
Mint fans eager totest the changes first-hand don’t have long to wait; the first Linux Mint 18 beta drops next month,based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
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