Graphical Theme for the Columbia Astrophysics Lab computer network

It would be nice to see a visual theme for the Configured Workstations on the CAL network.

Anyone interested in submitting a suggestion should e-mail dkg about it. In particular, i am interested in interesting graphical images that are a result of the astronomical work done at CAL. This could potentially include telescope images (or manipulations thereof) or other interesting visualizations. Working in the text "Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory" or "CAL" someplace would be neat too, but that can be easily added at a later date.

There would be two basic elements to any proposed CAL theme: a login screen theme, and a desktop background. It would also be nice to have a customized splash screen at startup and at login.

desktop background

Background wallpaper can be as simple as a 1024x768 or 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 jpeg or png. Even better would be something in vector graphics form (svg or eps) which we could scale cleanly to different sizes.

login splash screens

a splash screen shows up after a user logs in, while their session is starting up. a simple png or jpeg sized at 420x300 should be fine, as would a vector illustration of roughly comparable aspect ratio. Be aware that there will be little icons representing services that show up overlaid along the bottom of the image after login.

boot splash screen

this is the pretty picture that shows when a computer is first turned on, before the login screen comes up. It usually should include some form of progress indicator and room for textual information. The image must be a palettized 640x480 image with only 16 colors. Furthermore, some of these colors will be used for output text, progress bar, and other trimmings. more details on the format can be found ​here.

login screen theme

we're using gdm for the graphical login. Creating a gdm theme isn't terribly complicated, but it's a bit more complicated than just a single background image. A reference guide to creating gdm themes can be found ​here. Examples of gdm themes can be found ​here. Feel free to submit ideas as well, if you can't create a full theme for whatever reason.