Linux
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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this is gold, thanks for sharing
Amazing 🤩
Kind of a small thing, but I use an Ultrawide monitor with Sway, so I wrote a oneliner to swap to a higher or lower display scale depending on the workspace I'm on. I like to game in full rez while I'd write code or read with a HiDPI resolution that's easier to squint at. Also adding hotkeys to change scaling on demand is nice
Great example of something I'd never think of. Thanks!
I always install Guake. It's a drop-down terminal emulator and it can be heavily configured with hotkeys. I have it pop open/close with one key and I can split the terminal horizontally or vertically as many times as I want with a couple other hotkeys.
It's so ridiculously efficient (as a developer) that I can't stand to not have it installed at this point.
Love my drop down terminal. I use Yakuake.
Once you get used to it, you'll never go back haha
Do you prefer Guake over Yakuake because you use Gnome or other GTK based DE, because of specific features, or because it's what you're used to? Or something else?
I've only used Yakuake (and I'm on KDE) so I'm not familiar with Guake, but I'm curious
What's better with a drop down terminal vs a normal terminal invoked with global short key?
It's a genuine question, never heard about drop down terminal and looked it up. As I understand they are just normal terminal with a visual effect when they open. Am I missing something?
I've used a drop down terminal before and I find the position convenient. I can never lose it among other windows and it's always on top. If I want to see below, I just slide it back.
Your point is correct, it is functionally nearly identical. Since the terminal is arguably the most important or most central piece of software, I do find it convenient to always have it in the same place and to give it priority over other windows.
This is definitely a matter of opinion, I do admit
It really has nothing to do with the opening animation, in fact, I'm not even sure if Guake has an animation. It's about having a self contained terminal "window" where all of your terminals live and you can quickly navigate between them. Then you can hide said window just as fast as it arrived and get back to what you were doing. Keep in mind, these drop down terminals are not treated as traditional windows and are always-on-top.
The problem with traditional terminal windows is: let's say that I have 4 terminals up for different tasks; it causes a little friction to my workflow when I have to deal with which window is which. That friction is just not present with a drop-down. Of course, you can have a traditional terminal emulator that supports tabs and splitting and set a hotkey to bring the one window into focus with an always-on-top flag; at that point though, you've just recreated another drop-down.
I have a bunch in my KDE:
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Karousel for arranging windows
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Klassy for window decorations/general theming
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Panel Colorizer for customizing the panel/dock
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Kvantum for general theming
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And then a few general things like Wobbly Windows etc.
Panel Colorizer
🤔A KDE application with a name that uses C instead of K?
I know, it really stands out on that list lol
I’m super boring and really like vanilla gnome but without fail I always install Blur My Shell. It’s so pretty and it doesn’t mess with the paradigm at all. On my laptop I also have found Bluetooth Battery Meter to be super helpful since I use more wireless devices with it.
Haven't had a vanilla install since KDE 5 came out, but the biggest thing I use far from the default install is Karousel
I'm a regular auto tiler, but tried a few alternatives such as Karousel to see how it works out. Its not really for me, but it worked fine and did what it should in my experience. So another recommendation if anyone wants a Niri like experience with Karousel addon. Another curious one is Mouse Tiler, which is a completely different method of manual tiling.
In KDE my favorite is an extension to the window manager, for auto tiling: https://codeberg.org/anametologin/Krohnkite or install it from Settings > Window Management > KWin Scripts, then click "Get New" and search for "Krohnkite" by anametologin. Development is a bit slow at the moment, but it does the job well.
I like that there are different layouts available, meaning different logic how a window should be placed and sized. I can switch between layouts on the fly. Every virtual desktop can have their own layout by standard, in example my fourth desktop is always untiled like a normal desktop. Exceptions to specific windows or applications to not tile them can be added too. So the usual stuff. It comes with some features not seen in other tiling window managers. In example I can convert any window into a "Dock". A dock would then be always at the edge or screen, similar to the KDE bar; basically making the screen area to tile windows smaller. Super cool.
Edit: Rephrased a bit to make it more clear and added some more info.
KDE here.
Icons: Candy; Plasma Style Sweet; Window decs : sweet-dark; Autohide Icons-only task manager at the bottom (RIP Latte :( ), always on top panel for my secondary monitor, autohide top panel on the primary.
I actually use and like Activities, I have General, Game, Code, System, Work all with their own workflows and pinned apps etc.
I lean pretty heavily on mouse gestures using logid with a MxMaster 3. Switch activities, control music, switch apps etc.
I have the gesture button pop up Kando which can do ALL sorts of things, basically I can do 90+% of things super fast without touching the keyboard. Not that I dislike the keyboard, using it now, but sometimes I don't want to bother.
Top centre of panel has a command output widget with cat CurrentShort.txt which pulls local temp/humidity from a couple of sensors via HomeAssistant. Hover has weather scraped from Aus BoM and a bunch of other informative stuff and if I click it it runs a script with
kdialog --geometry 1024x1024 --textbox /dev/stdin <<< $(cat CurrentInfo.txt)
which pops up a dialog with a weeks forecast among other things. I also use the command output widget for cpu/gpu temps and fan speeds to the left of the status bar, which is on the right.
The Wunderground widget is pretty cool too, find local weather stations and pop them in a panel.
"Indulge in nostalgia with useless 3D effects." Is all I needed to read on that page ❤️
Papirus icons, Phinger cursors, $HOME/.config/xfce4 copied from previous install.
kde plasma
Mouse: increase pointer speed to 0.8
Sound: change volume increment to 2%
Sound: mute notification sounds
Colours:
Breeze Dark
Material Black Blueberry Icons
Oxygen Neon Cursors
KDE-Story-Blue-SDDM (login screen) with a different background
Screen Locking:
Never
Power Management:
When inactive: Do Nothing
Dim automatically: Never
Turn off screen: Never
Session:
Ask for confirmation: Deselect
On login: Start with an empty session
Panel:
Long date
Date beside time
Modify system tray settings to show what I want
Widgets:
On panel:
Thermal monitor (1 for cpu, 1 for gpu)
Memory Usage
Desktop Folder
Folder View (set to a folder where I keep docs and spreadsheets)
Wastebin
Shutdown or Switch
Love this. Thanks for the breakdown! Some of these options are things that I only set if I happen to pass them. I don't always comb through every option during a fresh install
Setting Caps Lock as the Hyper modifier key.
Setting a keyboard layout that is comfortable for both typing programming symbols and the own language (I use UK international). Consistency is king here.
And configuring the compose key.
Otherwise, I don't customize much, I think of it as a time sink.
What do you use your compose key for? I never feel a need for it
I’m curious to hear what are some favorite things to change in any DE.
I like using a tiling wm instead of a traditional de which is keyboard-centric and lays things out nicely instead of overlapping everything which is kindof stupid. niri and noctalia v5 is my current stack. I also have the settings defined in Nix and synced to other user accounts.
Any particular widgets that you would recommend?
I have the CPU/RAM/Swap/Temp monitors in my bar so that I can keep tabs on the CPU/RAM/Swap/Temp on my computer and if a freeze or lag spike occurs I have a better idea of what's going on.
Do you have a favorite theme?
Catppuccin, which has a Nix module that styles my apps as well. For font I use Inter and JetBrains Mono Nerd Font set through the Stylix module
Focus follows mouse and unchecking the option to auto raise the active window. Couldn't live without it and being used to it has made me extremely clumsy when I do pick up my Windows work laptop.
I change the taskbar clock to be a one-line MM/DD HH:MM:SS format, drop in my customized locale (based on en-US for maximum compatibility, but without having to deal with US formats and units that I'm not fond of), and point the taskbar shortcut for my text editor to a script that creates a pre-named file and launches the editor with autosave enabled. Because having to manually save and come up with a name for your spur-of-the-moment notes sucks, automatically generating 20260831_text_1 is so much better than a, b, a2, etc.
XFCE specific, I get rid of the second panel full of launchers. Acquired taste, but also Chicago95 theme and icon pack.
It's been a while since I've done a clean install, but I think the only thing I do to KDE is install Yakuake and set up 4 virtual desktops. Very handy when I'm working on my more involved projects.
Do the Desktops persist between reboots? As in each work space can become a running working space on its own or they reset and it's just organization?
So, one thing that Windows 11 did that I think was half good was moving the taskbar stuff to the middle.
I hated it at first (have to use it at work, and still some at home for specific things), but then I used Start11 for a little bit to try to get rid of the shitty start menu changes and noticed an option to keep the icons in the middle but move the start button itself back to the left. And honestly... I think that's perfect. Puts the programs that are open front and center while keeping the start button in a fixed location next to a corner border so it's easy to move the mouse to it without hardly even looking.
Anyway, while I didn't keep Start11 (I never do... Like the program but it's always been buggy as hell going back at least as far as Start8 (edit: it ate the 8 in Start8, fixed), I did make my Cinnamon, and later my KDE Plasma, taskbar look like that.
Also moved the sys tray next to the start button instead of next to the clock, and with a couple other monitors on the clock side (CPU and memory usage), the taskbar on my system is pretty balanced.
Maybe not as flashy or interesting as what you're looking for, but it's a layout I've really come to like
(ETA: the centralizing of the taskbar in Windows I think was bad only because it made the one part that should be in a fixed and easy to hit location, the start button, move around based on how many programs are open... I think if they'd gone with centralized programs and left side start button, it would have been much better received overall... But, this is just my opinion so do with that what you will)
The colour scheme. White screens are one of the things that trigger my migraines.
This in turn leads to my modifying several other visual aspects of the desktop, because a lot of widget set themes come with scrollbars that don't work well with really dark colours. I also turn animations and automagic snapping and desktop navigation facilities off, because I find them annoying. Kindly behave like it's 1999 and don't do anything I don't explicitly tell you to do, Mr. Desktop.
And then I embed a conky instance in the second desktop for general monitoring—CPU activity (composite and by thread), memory in use, disk space, network usage, temperatures, fan levels, and greediest processes all conveniently in a single view that doesn't require me figuring out what I did with the window.
If you don't use it already, be sure to check out Dark Reader. As someone who also suffers from screen induced migraines, this thing has been a game changer.
I chose a slightly different way of achieving what that extension does, and long ago set my browser not to allow websites to choose their own colours. That does partially break a few sites that don't handle their images properly, but overall it's workable and gives me white on a slightly different dark colour for each browser profile.
Kde made double click default, it used to be single click.
Put it back to single click. So much better.
Adjust focus stealing to your liking.
Adjust the color and width of the shadow to make active windows obvious in a dark theme.
Wobbly windows: but set higher than default.
I miss window shade. Hopefully it gets worked out and returns.
in m$win/kde-style-env: two row taskbar, titles always visible (like on win2k/kde3)
also sloppy focus and autoraise for mouse. extremely useful when you use many windows.
blur
A must!!
Try wobbly windows, like in Garuda Linux
Whoa! That feels like something from the early days of the internet. Is it useful for anything or just fun?