a vote for the status quo. keep in mind, the pastel color palette and lack of unsubtle gradient have been chosen in rio/acme/sam/etc to keep the programmer's eyes comfortable throughout the day. i subconsciously change all other backgrounds and colours on my non-plan9 desktop and terminals to mimic the plan9 ones because i find that it's the only way i can spend a day in front of the computer and still enjoy life.
on the topic of bells and whistles: recently in my latest attempt to "make linux work", i had to switch from unity to xfce and from xfce to rio because i found the linux world to have moved (yet again) closer to windows than closer to macs in terms of distractions. sure, i can't use a few programs such as Synergy (which appears to desperately need a tray to attach itself to), but on the other hand i don't have to kill "pulseaudio" every time i want to listen to music. that's so 2003 it's not even funny :( if you want an advice from the old farts on this mailing list i bet it would be 'keep distractions to a minimum'. distracting colours too. cheers! ps: pastel color schemes are available now elsewhere, thankfully, and the light "solarized" guicolor theme for vim does wonders to make it palatable, but quite a few of those make text a pale grey. why?
