Ricing

The term ricing originates from the term RICE in cars (Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancement). Ricing in Linux represents the practice of customizing your desktop UI, usually with no performance benefit.

Display Manager (DM)¶

Provides a login screen and can automatically start the GUI on boot.

LightDM (lightdm)¶

Window Manager (WM)¶

Controls the placement and appearance of windows within a desktop.

Types: - stacking/floating - Windows-like behavior - tiling - tiles the windows so that none are overlapping; can rely heavily on keyboard bindings - dynamic - can switch between stacking and tiling

Openbox (openbox)¶

A WM with a customizable appearance and icons (limited to pixel icons).

GUI config - install ObConf (obconf)

Terminal Emulator¶

Some terminal emulators allow extensive customization.

Termite (termite)¶

This terminal emulator supports custom line heights and window padding.

Automatic Palettes¶

Install Wal (pywal). Generates color palettes based on a wallpaper that can be used in the terminal and various other apps.

Commonly used like:

wal -i <image>

Use the -n flag to prevent it from setting the wallpaper.

Different backends can be used to vary your results. List them with:

wal --backend

And set it when running like:

wall -i <image> --backend <backend>

Note that these backends must also be installed.

Fine-tuning color palettes¶

Install the wpgtk package to adjust the colors of a palette generated by wal. Install the gpick package for a screen color picker.

Wallpaper Manager¶

Manages custom wallpapers.

feh (feh)¶

Commonly used like:

feh --bg-fill <image>

or with multiple monitors:

feh --bg-fill <image 1> --bg-fill <image 2>

Wallpapers that span multiple monitors must be split up before being used as wallpapers for each monitor.

Compositors¶

Compositors can enhance the visuals of any desktop windows or panels.

Picom (ibhagwan fork)¶

Features: - transparency - blur - rounded corners

https://github.com/ibhagwan/picom

Must be installed from the AUR or built from source (follow the instructions at the page).

Relevant new options (found in ~/.config/picom.conf):

corner-radius = 10.0;
round-borders = 1;

blur: {
    method = "dual_kawase";
    strength = 5;
};

Status bars¶

Status bars are panels that can display: - the clock - any important system information (RAM, CPU, disk usage, etc.) - the list of open windows - shortcuts to common programs

This is similar to the taskbar in Windows.

Polybar (polybar)¶

Icon Themes¶

Papirus¶

$ yay -S papirus-icon-theme-git

Breeze¶

$ yay -S xcursor-breeze