LUG Talk - How to Rice

presentationlinux

Context for blog: This is the markdown file I used to present to my local Linux User Group on April 9, 2026. The talk was not recorded but did go very well. Minor disclaimer: I do not own the rights to any images used

Welcome to LUG: Linux desktop customization

Intro

  • Who am I and why you should care
  • Schedule
    • Talk
    • Interactivity

-> Everything you see today is published, including the slides! Link in slack after the talk!

(Here was a QR code to join the private local communication channel)

The etymology of ricing

RICE = Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancement

It comes from English-speaking slang for Japanese street racers who went “all out” with cosmetics on their cars.

A quick terminology check-in

  1. Desktop Environment (DE) is the base software that manages everything that you see
  2. Window Manager (WM) is part of the DE that manages the windows, usually either as tiles or floating pages.
  3. Dotfiles refer to any files in ~/.config that change the appearance (and sometimes functionality) of any applications.
  4. X11 and Wayland are protocols that are defined for building a desktop environment. Generally they are not compatible.

X11 was released on June 19, 1984. 41 years ago.

Also in 1984:

  • The first ever edition of Tetris was released
  • The Apple Macintosh was released
  • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released into theatres, leading to the creation of the PG-13 rating

Dissecting the Desktop

There are a variety of different things that need to be installed and configured for a functioning desktop. These can be broken down into two sections, the “system apps” and “everything else”.

This includes but is not limited to:

  • System apps
    • shell (zsh (mac default))
    • terminal emulator (pick any, kitty)
    • taskbar (waybar)
    • program launcher (rofi)
    • lock screen (hyprlock)
    • browser (pick any, firefox)
    • clipboard (wl-clipboard)
  • Everything else
    • productivity apps (libreoffice suite, workflow specific software)
    • music player (spotify)
    • messaging apps (slack, discord, teams)
    • code editors (or just vim)
    • video recording/editing (obs, davinci resolve, Adobe suite w/ wine)
    • games (steam, lutris launcher, please dont install ubisoft launcher)

What is a taskbar?

  • Weather widget

Waybar

Waybar is a great introduction to ricing

  • Simplest thing you see all the time
  • Instead of shipping with “tasks” and “bar” it ships with modules you can play with and CSS
  • Hackthebox vpn
  • One unique thing!

Lets look at some examples! https://reddit.com/r/unixporn

My own theme-switcher: sqrtPI

The guiding principles:

  1. After changing theme, it needs to automagically update all at once
  2. It needs to work not just for what I have set it up to work with
  3. It must be safe
  4. Global settings must be preserved
  5. Dont dig into the system

Now lets talk about you actually doing this

How to pick a color scheme:

Sources for outside inspiration:

Some relevant links: Waybar: https://github.com/Alexays/Waybar/wiki Hyprland: https://wiki.hypr.land/ Fastfetch: https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch/wiki Rofi: https://davatorium.github.io/rofi/current/rofi.1/

Things to bring up throughout:

  • Everything should work on laptops / touchpads. Hyprland even has native support for custom gestures.
  • Shell versus terminal emulator

minor things to look into: git bash prompt matugen check gtk3/4/5/6 compatability get the slack channel QR code screenshot utility config on github explain the tiles move windows rofi position