DEV Community: Natano Ledger

How to get started with ricing on Linux?

Natano Ledger — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 13:29:58 +0000

First, let's understand what is ricing. Ricing is the process of customizing your WM(windows manager) or DE(desktop environment). Usually you do this by editing the config of your window manager or compositor. In this article you will learn some basics about ricing and window managers.

What's the difference between a window manager and a desktop environment?

A window manager is a program that manages windows: how they look like, their behavior and keyboard shortcuts. A desktop environment is a set of utilities for graphical experience. Usually it includes a window manager, a file program, a photo viewer, etc. An example of a window manager could be Hyprland or i3, when GNOME and KDE are desktop environments.

What's the difference between different window managers?

All window managers are divided into 3 groups: tiling window managers, stacking and mixed(can be both stacking and tiling)

A tiling window manager organizes windows so that each one is a some part of your screen, and the screen get divided into several rectangles, and each rectangle corresponds to one window. You can edit the size of the tiles(rectangles) with keyboard bindings that you configured in the config.
In stacking window manager windows are organized like, say, in Microsoft Windows. Each window floats and can overlay other windows, and some space of the screen can remain unused.
A mixed window manager can be either a tiling wm either a stacking wm, depending on the configuration.

How do you use a tiling window manager?

Nowadays quite a few people know about tiling window managers, because they are not used neither in Windows, neither in macOS. But that doesn't make them worse that stacking window managers. In a tiling window manager you open an application by pressing a keyboard bind that you can configure in the config. An application launcher pops up. Usually it is something like rofi or wofi. In the launcher you select the desired application and a new tile is being created for it, shrinking some other tiles. You resize, close and drag windows using keyboard bindings. Some multi-layout wms offer different layouts. A layout is a preset of tiles for windows.

How to write configs?

This question fully depends on the wm you are running. You need to locate the config file. Usually it is located in ~/.config/WMname, where WMname is the name of your wm. Every config has it's own syntax, which you can learn in the wm's docs. Usually in the config you can set keybindings for opening specific applications that you use often like terminal, browser, etc., for closing, resizing, dragging windows and actions with the wm itself, such as exiting a session. Also you can create some decorations for windows. The most common ones are rounded corners, outline(stroke), shadow, animations and blur. The possible options are available in the wm docs.

What are the pros of a custom config?

In a custom config you can set absolutely anything as you like, it takes only your time. It is possible to set keybindings for tons of different actions, like changing volume. brightness and so on. When one has a config that one has written for oneself, the system is completely optimized for one. Also you can show off with your system on different communities.

Wayland? X11? XWayland? What is it?

There are several different protocols for window managers. Basically they state which operations are allowed to be done with windows, and which aren't. Also, some applications run better in specific protocols, as they have been coded to fit this specific protocol. For example, Spotify is pixelated on Hyprland.

Where to get inspiration and show off?

There are very many different rices on this reddit community. There you can publish your own rices and like/comment others. Also there are Discord servers of, say, Arch Linux, and there is a thread devoted to theming, you could post there too. There are many, many more communities, perhaps, not as big as the reddit community I mentioned, but the size doesn't matter. What matters is the people in the community.

Hackintosh guide - install macOS on non-apple PC!

Natano Ledger — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 11:43:34 +0000

I think, everyone has seen macOS at least once in their lives. It is a very beautiful, easy to use and pleasant operating system. Although Apple Macs are very expensive and are not so functional, as many of them have only USB Type-C ports.

So in this guide I will show you how to install OpenCore Hackintosh on your PC. Please note, that in this guide I am just showing my experience of installing and fixing post-install issues, and if something goes wrong with your machine, I am not responsible in any way for any damage or data loss. And now, let’s roll!

Step #1:
In this guide it will be crucial to know your CPU codename, as you will need to download or create EFI for yourself, and usually different EFIs are classified by the CPU codename they are oriented to.

Now, to know your CPU codename, if you’re on Windows, you can download a free tool called CPU-Z, that shows you the processor codename. After obtaining the information, head to this website and download EFI with accordance to your system specs. Here I would like to say big THANKS to the Olarila team for the EFI folders, as sometimes it is rather difficult to collect them. If you CAN’T see the EFI folder for your system, you can also visit https://olarila.com/topic/5676-hackintosh-efi-folder-with-clover-and-opencore/ with EFI for Intel PCs. Also you can use your own EFI if you have one.

Step #2:
Now we need a recovery image for macOS. To get this, visit https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg, and download the latest release from the releases page. After downloading, extract the files, and head to Utilities/macrecovery. There, if you don’t have Python installed, then this is a perfect time to install it. Open the file named recovery_urls.txt and copy the first line under latest, or copy the line under a specific version. If you’re on Windows, open Command Prompt as admin and paste the command you just copied and add download on the very end. This would download a folder named com.apple.recovery.boot. Now, if you’re on Windows, install Rufus and open it. (If you can’t install Rufus, then skip everything until the :), then just you will have to format the flash drive as FAT32 manually.). Then insert a flash drive with a minimum of 1GB and configure Rufus as shown:

Now click create, this would create a bootable USB. When the flash in complete, close Rufus, open File Explorer, navigate to the flash drive and delete the two files now located in it :) Now, copy the com.apple.recovery.boot folder we downloaded earlier to the flash drive. Now copy the EFI folder to the flash drive and rename it to EFI. The flash drive is ready.

Step #3:
Now we need to boot to the installer. To do this, if you created the flash drive with Rufus, then just open boot menu and select the flash drive. Otherwise, in boot menu select boot from EFI file and then select the flash drive, and go to /EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi. In the boot loader select macOS recovery, it should be selected automatically.

After you have booted in the installer, in the menu select Disk Utility and format the partition you want to install macOS on as APFS. When the format is completed, close Disk Utility and click reinstall macOS . At this step you will need a working Ethernet connection. Now the install process has started. Your computer will reboot several times, and each time you need to boot to the installer. If you booted accidentally not to the installer, but to something else, just shutdown and boot back to the installer.
When the installation is completed, you will be introduced to a quick setup guide. you might not be able to sign in to Apple ID. To fix this, click skip, and when the setup is complete, open App Store and login to Apple ID from the App Store.

Post-Install

Fixing WiFi:

Open https://github.com/OpenIntelWireless/itlwm/releases and choose the latest release. Them choose the AirportItlwm.kext for your macOS version. If there is no AirportItlwm.kext for your version, download itlwm.kext. Now download OpenCoreConfigurator (you could do this by clicking on this link https://mackie100projects.altervista.org/download-opencore-configurator/). Now head to the EFI/OC/Kexts and copy the itlwm.kext or AirportItlwm.kext to the folder, renaming them to itlwm.kext or AirportItlwm.kext respectively.

WARNING!!! DON’T USE ITLWM AND AIRPORTITLWM AT THE SAME TIME!!!!

Now open config.plist under EFI/OC with OpenCoreConfigurator and head to Kernel tab. Drag the copied kext from the Kexts folder to the list. If it fails to drag, just click on the + button and select the kext. Now save the changes. If you are using itlwm.kext, download HeliPort from https://github.com/OpenIntelWireless/HeliPort/releases and install it. Set HeliPort as a login item in Settings/General/Login items. Reboot and enjoy. If you are using itlwm.kext, the wifi logo will appear on the very left of the right tab on the upper menu. If using AirportItlwm.kext, then it will still be where it was.

Fixing sound:

Download Hackintool from https://github.com/benbaker76/Hackintool and install it. Open Hackintool and head to the sound tab and in the lowest tab scroll down to ALC Layout ID and click on the number on the right to see possible numbers for your audio. Now open config.plist with OpenCoreConfigurator and head to the NVRAM tab and under the last entry (the third one) in the boot args set alcid to one of the possible entries from Hackintool. Save changes and reboot. If the sound still doesn’t work, change the value under alcid again and reboot. Repeat this until succeeded.

Booting without USB:

If you want to boot macOS without a USB flash drive always sticking out, open OCC(OpenCoreConfigurator) and on the icon in the upper menu click on mount partition. Now open Finder, click on NO NAME and if you want only OpenCore as boot loader, delete everything. If not, it will be more tricky and will not be covered in the guide. For more info you can visit Dortania’s guide. Now copy all files from the flash drive to the EFI partition and you’re good to go!

Who to thank:
Apple for macOS
Acidanthera for OpenCore
Olarila for EFI folders
OpenIntelWireless for itlwm.kext, HeliPort and AirportItlwm.kext
BenBaker76 for Hackintool

.....and many, many more!!!