I was watching a video today of someone doing a full “ricing” tutorial of Arch + Tiling WM and it got me thinking.
I mean, the narrator’s enthusiasm was neat, and sure the colours of the desktop are coordinated. But, long-term, how can you use a desktop like that? All terminals and only terminals open, and coordinated colours between terminal, window manager, and wallpaper? This seems like it should be a “digital art display” and not a device used for productive use.
What am I missing? I am a younger fellow, and it seems like younger people enjoy the ricing and Arch or CachyOS or something similar. Yet I still prefer desktops like MATE and Unity (which I’ve been using lately and very much love) and, although I keep trying Yaru hoping to like it one day, I still love Ambiance and Ambiant MATE.
I guess to each their own. But, I just don’t do these “trends” like others my age do. I honestly think ricing is overrated.
Funny. I haven't heard anyone use that term in like 20 years.
I had to re-find out what you meant by ricing. Decades ago, ricing meant tweaking your Linux kernel compile parameters to eke out every last bit of speed from your computer.
I used to do this with Gentoo back in university.
Turns out it has evolved to include tweaking your UI. This is not a new thing - I've been doing this for even longer - just the name is new to me.
To answer your question: Ricing (how you are using the term) has questionable applicability to using a computer. I find it really fun to tweak the UI to suit a specific aesthetic, but in my case I'm not planning on actually using the computer that way. My day to day requires me to use a bunch of disjoint applications, often maximized, that are not well suited for customization. Having to always fit the aesthetic in a specific tiling configuration is not very ergonomic.
My suggestion is to play around for as long as you care to, definitely share screenshots with us, but don't force yourself to use a riced UI, since they are often more fun to create and look at than to use.
I agree with this. Whenever I start a new distro, I usually set my base theme, choose the icons and folder style I want and then I tweak the apps as I go.
Wow! That’s cool to know! Yeah my understanding is ricing, among people my age (in their 20s), is to really customise a desktop, and it always seems to be a tiling window manager, which I’ve tried a few times, but never lasted more than a couple months on.
I really appreciate your detailed response on this @vkareh and it makes sense that the point of ricing is to see how much you can tweak a UI, but for purely aesthetic reasons not for usability. Maybe I misunderstood the point in the video I watched and the Reddit posts I have seen with decked-out screenshots.
That sounds cool. I made a couple Unity-inspired Ubuntu MATE rices, my latest one I posted here: My Ubuntu MATE Screenshot - with a hint of Disco. I found that I really like the Unity layout and use the Ubuntu Unity flavour now, but I have MATE installed on my secondary machine on NixOS (my friend recommended me this so I figured I’d try it out). I’ll have to try “ricing” it out when I have some time.
Although I use Unity now, I really like this forum and seeing what goes on in Ubuntu MATE based on using it for the better part of the year, so hopefully no one minds me sticking around. Also, would screenshots of desktops created in MATE but not Ubuntu MATE be acceptable to post?
