Show HN: Linux Mint Redesign Proposal

I like the general style you're aiming for. Though I'm worried that the green could be a little bit too intense for UI elements. Current accent color options on Mint are softer colors.

I don't like the logo. The lower square containing the L has waaay too much empty space in it, and the empty space is all concentrated on the superior-right side of the square, making it look very unbalanced. On the other hand, the square containing the M has little padding. These two things combined make the logo look unbalanced at two levels: one square with a lot of empty space vs one square with barely any empty space; the left square has all the empty space on one side of it.

Icons look great. However, what's going to happen when some application has an icon that doesn't adjust to your expectations of style and shape? Will it look good, or will it look very out of place? Mint's current answer to this is "we'll just make our own icons for every app", which I don't think is the right way to do it, for many reasons.

For example, under "Fresh OS interface", the start menu has lots of extra whitespace around the dividing bar - I think this is a central issue I see repeated everywhere. It looks aesthetically pleasing at first but that space is always dead (is it clickable? I have no idea!). I would encourage you to make it more obvious what the "touch" zones are in the menu, and to maximize them as much as possible. For example on the right side of the menu there shouldn't be any space that isn't clickable.

Also, for power users (i.e. Mint) the search bar should be bigger. Even on Windows where it's barely usable because of random Bing and index stuff the search bar is full width on the menu.

The "Type here to search" text is too low contrast. My parents would not be able to read that. Similarly, in your screenshots, you should use a boldface font for the terminal text. On my QHD monitor it is difficult to read.

There is a desire in Linux desktop enviroments to wrap individual apps in a colored box associated with the app (e.g. Obsidian in light purple, Firefox in dark purple, etc.). I think this is ok but you should consider just using a single block of color like in the Windows taskbar.

but I don’t think it’d ever be implemented. Old projects like Linux Mint are not very comfortable with the idea of looking more modern and sleek.

You’d have a better chance with a new design for ZorinOS but I don’t know if that’s needed since it’s already so modern.