Rice My Desktop. Linux/BSD

[S.B.G]

A little play on words there from that TV show (that I've never seen) "Pimp My Ride." Any serious *nix user should know about ricing which the term seems to have originated on r/unixporn.

Ricing: https://github.com/IbrahimButt/Direwolf-Arch-Rice

"Rice" is a word that is commonly used to refer to making visual improvements and customizations on one's desktop. It was inherited from the practice of customizing cheap Asian import cars to make them appear to be faster than they actually were - which was also known as "ricing". Here on /r/unixporn, the word is accepted by the majority of the community and is used sparingly to refer to a visually attractive desktop upgraded beyond the default.

Anyway, I thought we could have a thread to do more than the "Post your About this.." thread. I wanted a thread on MacRumors that would be similar to r/unixporn which is a really cool place to scroll through.

I wanted a place to show off desktop environments or window managers, what distro we're using at the moment and talk about our favorite programs we're using, and maybe a little helping one another too with this stuff.
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I'll get us started.

Currently on my main rig I'm running Arch with the i3wm. Though I did start messing with spectrwm the other day. I haven't fully gone through the conf file yet to set it up with my key bindings and whatnot. Still a work-in-progress.

Some of my favorite programs right now are:

• Newsboat
• feh
• ffmpeg
• Imagemagick
• picom
• cmus
• cli-visualizer
• unimatrix
• pywal
• neomutt
• cgo
• Powerline-shell
• Youtube-dl
• mpv
• rofi
• castero

At the moment I'm using the default i3 status bar, but for a while I was using Polybar and I want to get back to it soon. I just need to learn the config better. I'm using Hexchat for IRC, but last night started configuring Irssi.

Pic is from a few days ago.

 

[2984839]

I used to use spectrwm quite a bit and liked it. It's high quality code. I use cwm on everything exclusively now, but setup with spectrwm like keybindings because they became habitual.

I don't have much to show off because I just use cwm and plain color schemes.

 

[S.B.G]

Maybe you can give a few tips then. With spectrwm, am I understanding correctly that there are no tray icons for apps?

I was messing with keepassxc the other day once I got a semi-working desktop going and I couldn't get it to load from dmenu. Seems by default it loads minimized into the tray and then I click on it to bring up the window.

The one thing I haven't tried yet, is looking at the app settings while in i3wm and seeing if I can disable that.

 

[2984839]

Maybe you can give a few tips then. With spectrwm, am I understanding correctly that there are no tray icons for apps?

I was messing with keepassxc the other day once I got a semi-working desktop going and I couldn't get it to load from dmenu. Seems by default it loads minimized into the tray and then I click on it to bring up the window.

The one thing I haven't tried yet, is looking at the app settings while in i3wm and seeing if I can disable that.

I don't believe spectrwm itself understands the concept of trays. It may be possible to run a different status bar like xfce's bar in conjunction with spectrwm, which would give you both configurable menus and a tray.
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So here's plain cwm on the T480 with oxbar running on both top and bottom, and cwm's gap set to 30 pixels to ensure maximized windows don't overlap oxbar. One issue with oxbar is that the CPU widget can be quite long with 4 or more cores. If I have SMT enabled in OpenBSD, this shows 8 cores, necessitating running a bottom bar too if you want more widgets.

 

[S.B.G]

Ok then. Running a different bar may be an option if I need to go that way. But before I do that, I'll look into other settings in keepassxc. Plus, I would need to learn a new bar or dig deeper into Polybar which I have used for a while.

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As for your CPU's, is it possible to consolidate all the cores into one load display to save space? Or do you prefer to see all the cores?

 

[2984839]

Ok then. Running a different bar may be an option if I need to go that way. But before I do that, I'll look into other settings in keepassxc. Plus, I would need to learn a new bar or dig deeper into Polybar which I have used for a while.

---

As for your CPU's, is it possible to consolidate all the cores into one load display to save space?

There's a "cpushort" widget which consolidates things a bit, but not completely. The same dev behind oxbar wrote the older xstatbar, which does have that consolidation option so maybe it will come.
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Changed oxbar's font to hermit to match xterm (as seen in vi). One of my favorite fonts.

 

[S.B.G]

Very briefly this morning before leaving for work, I launched spectrwm after changing the setting in keepassxc to not start minimized and I was able to launch it from dmenu this time.

 

[S.B.G]

I have a working spectrwm with pretty much all my keybindings and config's working now. Still having a bit of trouble getting the volume controls to function. I'm a little lost on that one right now.

Using pulseaudio and pavucontrol to manage it but I don't know what to put into .baraction.sh to make it work.

 

[S.B.G]

cgo and gtop

 

[alex cochez]

• Youtube-dl

Thank you for that one. Instant favorite.

It's been a year since I moved away from MAC. Looking back, transitioning to Linux hasn't been so difficult. Exploring different workflows, discovering new apps, it's been fun and I am fine now for years to come.

Below my list of apps, both open source and proprietary.

YAY, a command-line package manager for ARCH based distros, got most apps installed, directly from the AUR repository, without any hassle.


Brave browser
Bitwarden
PIA Private Internet Access
Insync 1.3.7
Google Drive (web app)

Simplenote
Scrivener
Google Notes (web app)
Xournal++
Calibre
Bookworm
Pdfmod
Qpdf
(and Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Photos within the browser)

Deadbeef
Vocal
Pianoteq (MIDI over USB works out of the box)
Audacity
Soundconverter
Finetune
(I did install Mixx and Ardour which look promising, but I haven't had time yet, maybe in a couple of months .. )

Davinci Resolve
Rawtherapee
Krita
FFMPEG
OBS-Studio
mpv
youtube-dl

My DE is GNOME, and apps like gThumb, Screenshot, Document Scanner, Files and Timeshift turn out to be excellent tools. Contacts and Calendar sync easily with my Gmail account.
Plus, I run some utilities from XFCE and KDE:
KCharselect
Kcolorchooser
KDEConnect
Thunar (for root access purpose only)

And last there is Android-File-Transfer, similar to the version for MAC.

 

[S.B.G]

Thank you for that one. Instant favorite.

It's been a year since I moved away from MAC. Looking back, transitioning to Linux hasn't been so difficult. Exploring different workflows, discovering new apps, it's been fun and I am fine now for years to come.

Below my list of apps, both open source and proprietary.

YAY, a command-line package manager for ARCH based distros, got most apps installed, directly from the AUR repository, without any hassle.

Yah, yt-dl is awesome. You can do multitude of cool things with the options is provides. What I have done is I exported my YT channel subscriptions to an ompl file and added that to the RSS reader in Mozilla Thunderbird. So when a new video is posted to a channel I follow, it shows up in t-bird and I can copy the URL from there and then use yt-dl to get it. That way I don't have to visit the bloated YT website nearly as much.

Regarding the AUR, I only have a handful of programs from it so I never installed YAY. I just clone the repo and compile and install the app updates manually. I don't mind it and sort of enjoy it really. I love the command line!

 

[alex cochez]

Yah, yt-dl is awesome. You can do multitude of cool things with the options is provides. What I have done is I exported my YT channel subscriptions to an ompl file and added that to the RSS reader in Mozilla Thunderbird. So when a new video is posted to a channel I follow, it shows up in t-bird and I can copy the URL from there and then use yt-dl to get it. That way I don't have to visit the bloated YT website nearly as much.

Regarding the AUR, I only have a handful of programs from it so I never installed YAY. I just clone the repo and compile and install the app updates manually. I don't mind it and sort of enjoy it really. I love the command line!

Sounds interesting. I will have a look into this.

Command line is growing on me as well. You become more in control of a machine.

I built my current PC about 2 months ago and out of all applications that I am using, only one seems not being updated anymore, so YAY isn't an option there and I will have to compile. Something I have never done, a next step for me, and I will soon get into this. I definitely see your point of compiling and updating manually.
Application is called NASC, an alternative to Soulver, a brilliant calculator for the MAC.

 

[S.B.G]

Sounds interesting. I will have a look into this.

Command line is growing on me as well. You become more in control of a machine.

I built my current PC about 2 months ago and out of all applications that I am using, only one seems not being updated anymore, so YAY isn't an option there and I will have to compile. Something I have never done, a next step for me, and I will soon get into this. I definitely see your point of compiling and updating manually.
Application is called NASC, an alternative to Soulver, a brilliant calculator for the MAC.

Super easy to do. Here is the command for that math program:

~/$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/nasc.git && cd nasc && makepkg -sic

The option -s is short for –syncdeps and will check for and install any required dependencies for the package that you may not already have installed.

The -i and -c options for short for --install and --clean

What this does is install the package you compiled in the previous step and then the option –clean will clean up leftover files and folders. It will prevent obsolete and remnant files from carrying over to any new builds.

You can run each of those commands separately if you want, or all together as I show above.

makepkg -sic

What I do is I keep a separate folder for AUR packages, so my command would look like this:

~/$ cd aur && git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/nasc.git && cd nasc && makepkg -sic

The first command is to change directory to the aur folder. Then the && tells the computer to execute the next command after successful execution of the previous command. If the first command fails, the next one will not execute.

The second command downloads the package from the AUR.

The third command then changes directory into the newly downloaded package folder.

The fouth command syncs any dependencies, compiles and installs the package and then cleans up afterward.

 

[alex cochez]

Super easy to do. Here is the command for that math program:

~/$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/nasc.git && cd nasc && makepkg -sic

The option -s is short for –syncdeps and will check for and install any required dependencies for the package that you may not already have installed.

The -i and -c options for short for --install and --clean

..

Thank you for being so helpful. Much appreciated.

Makepkg is new for me, the other commands you mention I am familiar with. Either way, manually compiled or using YAY, the error turned out the same, apparently a failure in the build function.

This is far beyond my current UNIX skill set, therefore common sense tells me, for now, to stay away from even trying to fix this - and potentially messing up a productive setup - neither do I want to hijack this thread. So I gonna let this one application be for what it is.

But again, I appreciate your input and I actually have been enjoying your contributions in previous Linux related thread a lot.

 

[S.B.G]

Thank you for being so helpful. Much appreciated.

Makepkg is new for me, the other commands you mention I am familiar with. Either way, manually compiled or using YAY, the error turned out the same, apparently a failure in the build function.

This is far beyond my current UNIX skill set, therefore common sense tells me, for now, to stay away from even trying to fix this - and potentially messing up a productive setup - neither do I want to hijack this thread. So I gonna let this one application be for what it is.

But again, I appreciate your input and I actually have been enjoying your contributions in previous Linux related thread a lot.

Have you tried removing it and then re-installing it?

rm -R nasc

 

[alex cochez]

Have you tried removing it and then re-installing it?

rm -R nasc

I did actually.

The error I get each time is this one:

==> Starting prepare()...
/home/alex/nasc/PKGBUILD: line 19: patch: command not found

Which refers to this line in PKGBUILD:

patch -p1 < "${srcdir}/fix-gcc9-build.patch"

It's an outdated application while system libraries are up-to-date. The first thing I did, when configuring this computer not so long ago, was:

sudo pacman -Syyu

So I assume this pathway has to be updated, but not sure where in the system to look for this.
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I just checked, this file is located in the source directory as it should. So that means then that the command 'patch' itself is not recognized/installed, if I understand well.

 

[alex cochez]

Patch command was missing. After installing this specific command, compiling the app ran into other issues though. Definitely outside the scope of this thread and my knowledge of UNIX. It's OK, a non-issue for me. I am glad with where I got within one year time. This is a custom built machine running Davinci smoothly, a MIDI keyboard connects easily and we do our office work on it. Deeply satisfied.

What I do wonder, do you update your ARCH PC now and then (kernel, DE, libraries etc) or once working you let it be? Any specific approach?

 

[S.B.G]

What I do wonder, do you update your ARCH PC now and then (kernel, DE, libraries etc) or once working you let it be? Any specific approach?

When someone uses Arch, they should be prepared to run updates daily. I'll run updates several times per day myself. That's a bit more of a psychological discussion for another day! I enjoy running updates for some reason, and Arch fits my needs very well in that regard.

I've seem some people who let their Arch installs go months without updating, usually due to not turning the machine on for a while, and then when it updates things break. But every case is different and so far I've not had any issues.

When you run on a bleeding edge system like Arch, it really is better to update more often, daily or weekly would be optimal. That way if something goes wrong, you have a much better chance to find and fix the problem package. If you wait too long, then you're going to have multitudes of packages that need updating and finding the right one to fix will be more difficult.

Sometimes, there are packages that will require manual intervention before it can be updated. For that reason, I setup the Arch News page in my RSS reader to be on the lookout for those instances. https://www.archlinux.org/news/

I also do not use a DE (anymore) but rather a WM (window manager), I even wrote about that here. I used i3wm for quite a while and very recently switched to Spectrwm.

Also, Arch isn't an acronym for anything, so it doesn't need to be written in all caps.

 

[S.B.G]

After all this time I finally got around to messing with the GTK themes and icons for those few GTK programs I use.

 

[S.B.G]

Messing around in i3wm again. This time with the py3status bar.

 

[S.B.G]

A little more ricing... Added names and icons to my workspaces..

 

[S.B.G]

Messing around with vis (cli-visualizer) today. Something different than the default config finally.

 

[2984839]

So after about 10 years of using cwm exclusively on every laptop, I tried Gnome on a T470p and it's...not that bad? It gets a lot of hate, but I think I could actually live with it. No performance impact on the CPU, though obviously RAM usage is dramatic.

Right now this is an experiment to see if it's possible to make OpenBSD laptops that are easy to use for underprivileged students at a local school. If not, I'll probably go with Ubuntu for them.

 

[S.B.G]

Yeah, Gnome does get a lot of hate for being bloated. But anyone using any relatively new hardware shouldn't have an issue using it as a DE.

Is it conceivable to teach the students how to use a window manager?

I sure wish I was exposed to them when I was younger, though when I was a student, wm's and de's didn't yet exist. But they were out there after I left the military and entered college.

 

[2984839]

Yeah, Gnome does get a lot of hate for being bloated. But anyone using any relatively new hardware shouldn't have an issue using it as a DE.

Is it conceivable to teach the students how to use a window manager?

I sure wish I was exposed to them when I was younger, though when I was a student, wm's and de's didn't yet exist. But they were out there after I left the military and entered college.

If it was used in a computer class, it might be possible. But these will be given to kids who don't have computers or internet at home, especially if there's a COVID-19 resurgence in the fall and they all go remote again. The only thing that doesn't exist is a graphical network manager, but we may just install school-owned WWAN cards and use them by default, so that might not be necessary. That's the biggest hurdle I see right now.