What is Linux Ricing

Yo ppl, guess the year is about to end and I havent uploaded a vid on my channel for a long time….nor have I posted nything on my blog here……kek.

So I’ve been asked by a lot of people - What the fuck is ricing? How do I do it?..and stuff.

So according to the favourite social hub of introverted virgin nerds(like me)…reddit and a subreddit where Arch users will never stop flexing, r/unixporn:

“Rice” is a word that is commonly used to refer to making visual improvements and customizations on one’s desktop.

The term “ricing” was inheritted from the practice of customizing or modifying cars in Asia to make them look…..cool?

Not being racist, 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.

OK, so how does one start?

1. Choose your distro

Just like the unique and derived flavours of ice-creams, Linux has different distributions which have unique features and community.

Choose which distro you want to work with and stick to it for atleast 2-3 weeks.

The most popular linux distros are:

• Ubuntu
• XUbuntu(xfce)
• KUbuntu(KDE Plasma)
• Linux Mint
• Elementory
• Arch Linux
• Manjaro …etc

2. Choose your desktop environment

A desktop environment or DE is the part of the Operating System which handles the graphical user interfaces.

If you have worked in the field of Web Development, a DE is basically the front end libraries you use to create a GUI for the user.

Examples of DE:

• KDE
• xfce
• Gnome …etc

3. Choose a window manager

A widow managers job is to manage windows…well no shit sherlock.

In simple words a window manager handles how the user can interact with the windows and how teh windows get displayed on the screen.

Popular window managers:

• xfce-wm
• i3wm
• bspwm
• awesomewm

4. Choose your terminal emulator

Terminal emulators handle how the terminal looks and allows you to customize the look if you dont like the default one.

Popular terminal emulators:

• xfce4-terminal
• urxvt
• tmux …etc

5. Status Bars

Status bars are like the task bar on Windows. It’s just like an applet that you can customize to your hearts content.

Popular status bars

• polybar
• i3bar …etc

6. Theming, Icons and Fonts

Finding the best theme that suits your wallpaper can be quite tough. You can use lxapperance to choose themes for your windows and mouse pointers.

Installing fonts is the most iritating job during ricing, however once you get it done once, the same process can be copied to other distros.

You can hop over xfcelook.org to download some awesome themes.

Well that’s it, its that easy. I’ll explain every step in its own post and will post soon.

Until then, happy holidays and keep learning new stuff.