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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
there's accent colors too now
I changed the font size in Linux Mint. Does that count?
Are you the hacker we keep reading about in the newspaper?
Yes. My name is 4chan.
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.
I grabbed like 3 apps to apply themes and icons on gnome and got confused trying to pick the best option
I used to skin Windows XP and loved custom icon packs for OS X. Today I run Gnome with the bare minimum quality of life extensions.
I was going to say I don't have time to mess around with that shit, and then remembered I have spent a bunch of time curating my dotfiles and the actual OS I run is a Bootc image I build nightly on my self hosted Forgejo instance. I may actually have too much time on my hands 😅
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
I agree that KDE is better for newcomers. I'll never understand why the newbie-friendly distros tend to favor GNOME.
It's a lowest common denominator kinda issue, methinks. Gnome is chasing it's own tail trying to create a single UI that will please everyone, plus have it simple to use and both similar enough yet distinct enough to/from Windows/Mac experiences. It's a noble enough goal - but honestly strikes me as well impossible.
KDE gives you a barely updated Win95 era desktop and then becomes a tinkerer's paradise - whenever there was two or more options, they focused on making each available, but neither becomes the default.
Before Ubuntu existed, most distros aimed at newcomers shipped with KDE as the default. I'm not sure why Ubuntu went with GNOME as the default, but since Ubuntu came out, everything shifted to GNOME.
GNOME is definitely not going for a single UI that will please everyone. They're going for a UI that you WILL use THEIR way, or else. And they WILL break any extensions you use within the next release or two. Which is an odd design philosophy for a desktop for an OS aimed at people who like to tweak.
While gnomes simplicity looks better for newcomers, it's actually worse, I hated it, tried kde, loved it, later tried gnome again and swapped to it, had more appeal once I already was using linux and used to it. It's not immediately obvious what extensions to use and where to get them or that they even are a thing you can do. You goto settings and get turned off by the lack of customizability you've been hearing about.
5 hours? ... You have much to learn, padawan.
Why people do ricing
Ownership is cool and customizing your stuff transforms it from something impersonal or commercial into something intimate, revealing, and special. I believe the world needs to rubberband a bit back away from factory made, hyper-commercialized, and unrepairable goods to the hand crafted and human creations we all long for in the utopian media we consume.
Some times it isn't about the destination, but about the journey itself.
Sounds vaguely racist
Dumb question: What exactly is "ricing"? I'd also be curious to learn about the etymology of that term...
Excessively modifying your system, most commonly in how it looks, spending dozens of hours making it look just right.
Not sure of etymology
The etymology is from a racist street racing term. In the street racing scene, the garishly over-done modifications (often combined with anime wraps) were popular in parts of Asia. So those styles of cars were referred to as “rice burners” when Asian drivers inevitably ended up at car meets. And modifying the car in such a way was called “ricing” it. As in, Asians eat a lot of rice, and it looks like an Asian modified that car.
That’s pretty much it. That’s the etymology. Some people will try to claim that “RICE” is actually an acronym. But that’s a common lie, to allow those people to continue using the racist term without feeling guilty. The term “rice burner” existed long before the backronym did. And somehow, the term eventually found its way into the Linux world. And Linux fanboys will screech about how it’s not a racist term, but it is.
you know the Fast and the Furious movies? at least the original 2 or 3, those cars were all tricked out with neon lights, decals, nitros, custom exhaust, all that? most of those cars were Japanese cars that were heavily modified. Basically it was a derogetory term for modifying a piece of shit car to look good, Especally if it was a Japanese car. you slap a body kit on it, neon lights, slap in some bucket seats, switch out the exhaust, but you dont' touch the engine. that's a "Ricer" it's not a good thing in that specific car culture.
So for whatever reason someone at some point was modifying their Desktop Environment or Window Manager with neon borders and all that and decided to call it a Rice. You're essentially modifying your OS without touching the "engine" so to speak. You're just slapping a body kit, neon lights, some bucket seats etc onto your operating system.
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Incorrect, or dumb use of a term originating from modifying Japanese car to street racing, also racist term.
Occasionally people with backronym it as "race inspired cosmetic enhancements" so they can continue saying it with plausible deniability
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i like a good galaxy/space wallpaper, done. files and folders accumulate as they will. a few functional things like one-click shutdown -h now // script. had to rip out a lot of distro cruft i don't need. xfce on ubuntu. set and forget. good practice doing reinstalls
I've seen this word "ricing" three times the past couple of days. It is yet another newfangled "cool" word? It sounds incredibly dumb, just like the vast majority of these kind of words are.
It's an old term from the car customisation scene, but I've seen it in use for referring to custom desktop setups for more than 10 years now. The unixporn subreddit was the first place I ran into it.
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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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