I used to be like that, nowadays I just choose a distro that comes with a DE I like out of the box, switch to dark mode, set a wallpaper and call it a day.
I do the same but I also make sure the panel’s on the top edge of the screen
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I’ve already got browser tabs on the side most of the time
Why not both?
Auto-hiding on the seam between my two monitors for me.
You set a wallpaper?
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5 hours? … You have much to learn, padawan.
rookie number i know but I don’t wanna waste anymore time than I already did, gotta spend those time for DE/WM hopping :P
You guys set a different wallpaper?
Honestly, usually the only thing I HAVE to change. Idk why all the default distro wallpapers suck
What does ricing mean in this context?
RICE is a post-hoc acronym (backronym) meaning Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancement. Its from car communities.
It used to be a racist term referring to the modification of JDM vehicles, hence the post-hoc change to the definition. Its a word that came into common parlance without folks completely knowing it was racist.
It’s a racist term people used to refer to Japanese cars that have been “souped up”
Customizing the appearance of the desktop, for example with custom themes, widgets that show various stats etc etc
Ah, thank you! I was thinking like a potato ricer? Making it smooth?
I think its based off customizing cars in japan.
The term also confuses me. What does customising a desktop have to do with rice? Is it like beads to decorate stuff? Maybe “beading” would have a bad interpretation, but rice is just confusing.
It is an extension/evolution of the idea of ricing cars. Originally it was something like Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements. Basically stuff that makes your car look “racier”/faster, but does nothing for performance.
Edit to add - That is probably backronym to cover up for the mostly racist origination of that term. I can’t be sure.
I keep telling myself I’m gonna rice out my setup. That plasma is just a placeholder. But as months have become years I have started to question the value in it.
I spend 3 days ricing my desktop and I did not finish. I’ve now been sitting with the ugliest half riced desktop for 6 months. I decided to go with a light theme in beige and its… not good.
You made your bed, and have been laying in it. A man of virtue.
I grabbed like 3 apps to apply themes and icons on gnome and got confused trying to pick the best option
GNOME theming discussions are weird. A lot of people will peddle cargo culted bad (broken) approaches when asked about it, but honestly it’s not that complicated¹, just restrictive:
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Use
gsettings [get|set] org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme [new value]to set the theme that GTK3 apps will load. Libadwaita apps will ignore this setting. -
Use
gsettings [get|set] org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme [prefer-light|prefer-dark|default]to control whether Libadwaita apps (and GNOME shell) will display in dark mode. GTK3 apps will ignore this setting.prefer-lightmakes everything light mode.prefer-darkmakes everything dark mode.defaultmakes apps light mode but the panel will stay dark.
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If you insist on theming Libadwaita apps, put the theme in
~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css. You can also have add an@importdirective there to import a theme. Note that this file is only loaded at startup, so using this feature means that GTK4 apps can no longer respond to the dark mode toggle.²
All of the applications that promise to help in theming GTK/GNOME (regardless of whether you’re talking about Tweaks, Refine, the theming settings of other DEs, Gradience, etc.) just flip some combination of these settings, mostly the first two.³
¹ It might seem complicated based on the length of this comment, but trust me that Qt is worse.
² The newest GTK version has media selectors, so if all of your applications are already updated to use the new GTK and your theme is updated to use media selectors then dark mode toggles should actually work now. Mine unfortunately haven’t.
³ A handful (mostly random scripts from GitHub, but also more reputable stuff like
home-manager) will also try some wrong ways:-
Setting the
GTK_THEMEenvironment variable will prevent applications from loading the default Adwaita stylesheet completely, which will break all kinds of things. -
You can also put a theme at
~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css, but this does nothing you can’t do withgsettingsexcept preventing you from changing the theme without restarting all your apps.
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I’ve never bothered because less than 1% of my time I’m looking at the sys UI, let alone the desktop.
I remember picking nice desktop backgrounds and even downloading gigabytes thereof, sorting and categorizing them, only to notice that my windows were fullscreen all the time anyway. Now I just have a background to indicate that at least some things work because a black background would mean trouble (file missing etc.).
XFCE + Compiz was 100% worth the effort of doing it once and then being able to just copy to a new device.
Waiting for XFCE to complete their Wayland transition, and I’m gonna upgrade to Wayfire.
That being said, yeah I give KDE to basically everyone else new to Linux lol
Oh man, old school Compiz with the wobbly windows and a million other tricks absolutely blew my mind. Magic rainbow spark particles when I minimize a window? Yes please! Fire trail that follows the cursor? No problem!
wonder what eventually makes everyone ragequit on the ricing part lol
for me? it was the battery management and suspend/hibernate stuff. You need to do a lot of weird file configs to get them working.
I riced i3wm, dwm and even exwm and suspend/hibernate problem would pop up now and then.
On a full DE? Shit just works.
I do miss ricing though. Especially window managers, I can just git clone my dotfiles and have everything setup in seconds.
The first time you do a presentation and forget how to add an external display, that was what made me stick with a full DE.
A lot of it seems like removing the automated easy parts to customize it to be faster only to realize you don’t feel like spending time on that breaking or being so inflexible. Like I can switch to lxqt but now it doesn’t even feel like I have a complete desktop and are spending time making it work instead of just using it
I got out of customizing everything once I started flashing different ROMs on my first smartphone, which was the Verizon Thunderbolt
After having three or four different operating systems on in one week, it became so obvious how much time I was wasting on that stuff lol
CachyOS has been great if anyone is looking for an arch based distro that’s preconfigured for gaming out of the box.
Default Plasma is just good.
Some times it isn’t about the destination, but about the journey itself.
Why people do ricing
A plasma a icon pack works wonders for my eyes. A title bar change if I am feeling like going wild. Dark mode theme pefered.Only ‘ricing’ I always do is a few keybinds to not go insane, and then remove hot corners before I try to move a program between 2 screens. Standard has been pretty good since that single click files feature was changed.
