I prefer white backgrounds out of habit. So my terminal is white, text editor is white, browser is white, Linux desktop theme is brighter...

I must say that other users may well like it the other way, because when I used to browse for GTK themes on the http://gnome-look.org/ site, many of the new themes were cooler when they were darker...

BTW, I just found out the http://gnome-look.org/ itself is whiter and brighter. Oh the joy! Cheers.