While clearing out the big pile of emails today, I came across this huge discussion on ubuntu-dev -discuss list about the colours of gnome-terminal. Honestly, I never thought this could be a point of discussion at all, but I was wrong.

Well, lets start with the first mail, complaining about the current gnome-terminal and xterm theme, black text on white background. The guy seemed right with his arguments that historically Linux terminals or command lines in general have always been white text on a black background, KDE still uses them then why not gnome-terminal. I totally agreed with him until I came to know about the term, Ergonomics.

Ergonomics actually concerns with the study of designing the job, equipment, and workplace to fit the worker(more info on wiki). I knew that gnome guys are crazy about usability but if Ergonomics is the reason for the default theme, then I never really thought that they would go this far to enhance user experience.

Now, our big question, what should be the colour?