Sorry, but themes sucks. They make it very hard to make excellent GUI applications, since you have no fixed foundation to build them on. To build a custom cont

Sorry, but themes sucks. They make it very hard to make excellent GUI applications, since you have no fixed foundation to build them on. To build a custom control you need to be able to integrate it in the surrounding context, i.e. the theme. If you do not know what that context is, you have to spend needless energy to make is fit anywhere. This is energy which could be spent improving the GUI instead. And whatever you do, don't go around changing the order of buttons and such in the theme. This makes it even harder to make an application which fits in its context. Not having a theme also allows you to communicate you vision about how the platform should look and work without having the message diluted. A platform needs this vision, and of course this vision needs to be good, for it to work as a breeding ground for excellent applications. I'm not saying that Ubuntu's new look is the right look, I'm just saying that the solution is not themes.