Ricin'

Roicin'

Basically, you take your computer and make it work and look cool. Some people say it's about the workflow but we all know that's secondary. It's kind of cool for a little while. Like everything else, it gets old because everyone's in the same rut and recreating eachother and not making anything new.

How 2 rice

Lots of people want to jump on board when they see the super cool looking desktops in those threads on your favourite BBS. But how does everyone actually do it? Why does my desktop look so bad compared to the other guy's? I will give you some ideas to get started. One way to get into this terrible "hobby" is to recreate. Recreate that desktop you've seen in that one thread. Set your modem up to download and get that picture on your floppy diskette for safe keeping. Start out with one program or aspect of the desktop and make yours look the same. Could be the icons, the toolbar, the web browser, filemanager, etc. Take it one piece at a time. One. Piece. At. A. Time.

Workflow or Looks?

I'd like to say put emphasis on workflow but looks drives the masses. Some say it's all about workflow but I can't bring myself to lie to you like that. Mind you, somethings are about workflow. Vim plugins, vim-keys in webbrowsers, vim not ema--Wait a second... Just so we are clear, vim != workflow, I was making a joke. One piece of advice, don't get caught up in workflow and efficiency though. If you did, you'd not even care about the look of your desktop and only IDE-using computer enthusiasts do that.

Which Distro?

So from what I can tell, the big difference that would make or break one distro from the next is the package manager among the few, others like that systemd business (no idea what that's about). That's about all I can think of... Most of the main ones have software repositories or can install most of the same programs so you can change window managers and everything except the underground stuff working in the background. Even then, you might be able to change it, it might just be hard to do or pains-taking. I've used Lubuntu and put any window manager I want on it and removed most of the default stuff by the time I switched over to Arch. Doesn't make a difference now that I am on Arch, other than the package manager.

Which Window Manager?

Tough question to tackle here... You have to be careful of a few things. That first tiling windowmanager you try for over a month will stroke your fancy more so than the one you try for a day. I know how to manipulate windows around nicely in i3 but if I started up AwesomeWM, I'd have little to no clue how to do anything and would be more inclined to enjoy i3 instead. Another thing to think about is don't feel you have to follow any sort of pack or herd into one WM. I3wm is pretty popular but that doesn't mean it's for you. It also doesn't mean it isn't for you... You can get into a 'hipster-esque' mentality where you need to feel different than the masses and choose based off of that. That is a poor way to go. Go with what you feel accents your computing.

Some questions you might ask yourself are:

Do you need tiling?
Do you need gaps (if tiled)?
Do you mind recompiling your windowmanager?
Do you need a keyboard driven windowmanager?

What do you use?

Arch linux on a toaster PC. Pentium 4 (4) lyfe. Window manager has gone through changes but I am comfortable with i3 and fumbling with herbstluftwm. One 1024x768 monitor makes me mad when I see i3-gaps. I WANT WHAT THEY HAVE. *seething rage*

Old setup was Lubuntu on the same computer, i3wm.

Package Counts Matter?

No they don't. Go back to bed my child. You can rest easy. Package counts don't matter. I mean, they give you a vague idea of how much is installed on your system but you could've installed loads of stuff outside of the package manager that keeps track of that package count.

That's some good music you are listening to!

Uh... Thanks? It's not about the music though. That's a little off topic.

Wow, you're Not using the same <x> as me! This is a bad setup

Give me a break. It shouldn't rustle your feathers if I use the anti-<x> to your <x>. I have my own needs. You have yours. But please note that the same goes for me. I can't hate on you for using your <x>. You should respect eachother's choices! (YES, even OS choices.)

This ricing stuff looks so cool. I want to switch over to Linux because of it!

While I welcome anyone choose whatever OS they want, switching over just for ricing seems like a bad idea to me. It's like dropping your current hobby for one that looks cooler. Please don't change over for just the ricing. It's fun to customize and do almost anything but if you just want an OS that works, you probably won't want Linux.