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When I started doing this back in 1993 it was very hard to find fetching icons, never mind whole libraries of them. I drew VGA raster icons with the steadfast PC Tools icon editor, which I sometimes still miss, not that I'd be able to use it for anything now. These pages began as a download forum on Compuserve (yep, back in the day) under the name Seal Beach. My icons wound up on millions of computers worldwide and were featured in software published by clients ranging from individual programmers to Fortune 500 companies. This one got rather widely known because it was bundled with a popular icon and cursor editor. Meanwhile this is likely among the longest running set of icon pages on the Internet, having been on the web without stop since September 1997. I keep them up now only for historical purposes.
For several years, this site had downloadable archives with hundreds of free and fair use icons from many sources and operating systems. I took those down a few years ago after I couldn't think of any more need for them. Today it's no trick at all to find free, fit, wonderfully rendered icons. There are hundreds of websites offering them and thousands of graphic artists who understand enough about the technical and ergonomic aspects of application icons to draw them appealingly.
As ever, icons have lots of sway on the desktop. They're the first impression one gets from most any GUI or software product. The notion is to find a look and theme fit for the interface or application, with some sort of appeal for the intended users. Be wary of scattered opinions though. Focus groups can and will lead straight to UI flops. A developer's creative understanding about what an app is meant to do can be a helpful start.
For graphics these days I rather much live by the Gimp and Inkscape.
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