Bluecurve
| Company type | Desktop theme |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software, User interface design |
| Founder | Red Hat Artwork team |
| Products | Desktop theme for GNOME and KDE |
Bluecurve is a desktop theme created for both GNOME and KDE environments by the Red Hat Artwork team. Its main objective was to provide a unified visual style throughout the Linux desktop, adhering to multiple Freedesktop.org specifications. Bluecurve served as the standard theme for Red Hat Linux editions 8 and 9, as well as for Fedora Linux up to version 4.
In Fedora Core releases 4 and 5, the Bluecurve window decorations and GTK styling were replaced by Clearlooks, respectively. Although the Bluecurve icon collection persisted in Fedora 7, it was eventually replaced by the Echo icon theme as the default option.
The theme generated debate due to extensive modifications made to KDE, prompting Bernhard Rosenkraenzer, a key developer, to depart from Red Hat over dissatisfaction with KDE's integration in Red Hat Linux 8.0. Critics also contended that applying a single visual design to both GNOME and KDE failed to respect their unique user interface philosophies. This consistent theming strategy inspired other distributions, such as Mandrake Linux with its "Galaxy" theme and Kubuntu 6.06’s GTK-Qt theme engine.
Moreover, designers of graphical user interfaces have created Bluecurve-inspired themes tailored for other operating systems, including Microsoft Windows.