We've long wanted a new default theme for Drupal. Our trusty workhorse theme Bluemarine has long outlived its usefulness: the markup still contains tables and the look is quite dated. Pretty much everyone in the Drupal community agrees with that.

For Drupal 5, some work has been done on a new default core theme. The Lullabot guys have built a valid, flexible XHTML/CSS template and ported an OSWD template to it with the help of others in the community. The theme has been reviewed and tweaked to death by a bunch of developers. Many people have said that this theme (called Delicously Zen) is our new default theme and that it should be added immediately.

Stefan Nagtegaal has also been designing a theme. He offers an alternative called Themetastic which is a better choice in my opinion.

There have been some mails back and forth about this in private, but I wanted to jot down my thoughts here for everyone to see as well, as my opinion is based on more than just taste. And, as a core committer and someone who has done plenty of theming work for Drupal, I do think I have a good perspective on the issue. Please read on.