Custom qubes colors

[ghost]

How to file a helpful issue

The problem you're addressing (if any)

The current Qubes color palette is limited, which could be a problem for people with lots of qubes.

The solution you'd like

We could embed an RGB or (HSV, CMYK) color picker into the Qubes manager, so that the user can pick their desired color.

The value to a user, and who that user might be

For example, a very paranoid user with something like twenty qubes, the default color palette is very limited, besides, this way, we let people choose the color based on their own threat model and rules.

I think that this is the best way, instead of including more hard-coded colors (like on #6752 and #2523)

[andrewdavidwong]

Note that this was already considered in the other issues you referenced, and reasons were given against it. (See those issues for details.)

[GWeck]

It would already be a good help if the current static list of colors were extended to the 11 colors proposed by @Ninaviz in #6752. Hopefully, this would not need an extensive amount of work, as this then still would be a static list, just a bit longer.

[kennethrrosen]

Much of this work (GUI included) has been done by @alimirjamali https://github.com/alimirjamali/personal-qubesos/tree/main/qubes-label-tt

[alimirjamali]

Much of this work (GUI included) has been done by @alimirjamali https://github.com/alimirjamali/personal-qubesos/tree/main/qubes-label-tt

The current (working & tested) prototype is written in bash. I need to finish rewriting it in Python and finalize the GTK GUI, also implement more of Qubes OS project management views on how it should work. Such as this one.

[alimirjamali]

@marmarta

In addition to work on #7738 (more color effects), I have been working on CLI & GUI tools for custom qube colors (labels). I personally find the additional effects much more useful & distinguishable than the colors. I have written the tools for both approaches (and even exploring other approaches). The GTK GUI tool for custom labels needs some fine-tuning. But it is also available (if needed). Here is some screenshots:

[marmarta]

@alimirjamali wow, this is very pretty :) I only kind of worry it might be confusing - this way, everyone can have a vastly different-looking icon set, or you can switch an icon-set and stop recognizing the system. Not sure if this is a good direction to put in official releases, but I think this could work through providing better API-support for custom iconography like this and putting extensive customization in contribution repos?

[alimirjamali]

but I think this could work through providing better API-support for custom iconography like this and putting extensive customization in contribution repos?

Fortunately the current existing API is adequate. Overall this tool is technically very simple. It runs in user space and does not need sudo (copies the custom label icons to ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor). It is a single PyGtk executable that could run from e.g. ~/bin. Even no Glade file at the moment.

I think it might be a good candidate for contribution repos. If there is enough demand, there might be room for further improvements and consideration for official releases far far in future.