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Nicolas Beauvais
Nicolas Beauvais

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at invariance.dev

Linux for productivity and elegance

Linux is a wonderful piece of software with some of the best tools and development productivity apps out there. But as with every thing that you get to use 10h a day, it can start to get a bit boring to work with, I personally do not like staring at small green text on a black terminal, and if Apple had less vendor lock-in and more open hardware I would probably not be writing this today, but here I am. If you like your Linux raw, and there is nothing wrong with that, this blog series is probably not for you.

Hacker Terminal


We will not learn how to do that here.

In the other end, if you want to learn how to make your own flavor of Linux by changing, step by step, how everything looks and feel, and learn more about how it works in the process, this blog series has been written
for you, so keep on reading, and welcome to the world of customized Linux desktop, also known as Linux Ricing.

This will not be a classic tutorial, my goal with this series is to show you what is possible by sharing the best resources I curated over the internet to customize each piece of your Linux desktop environment, most example will rely on Debian and I3, but you will hopefully have everything in hand to fine tune any Linux distro, with the window manager of your choice.

My current Linux desktop.

Finally, this guide is not intended for Linux beginner as in my opinion you should first learn the basics first before changing everything, or expert, as I'm far from one, you will probably get bored by reading all this! If you're somewhere in the middle you might be able to learn a thing or two, and hopefully push your Linux knowledge to the next level!

  1. The dotfiles repository (work in progress)
  2. Productivity window management with I3 (work in progress)
  3. Homemade menubar (work in progress)
  4. Automated screen layouts (work in progress)
  5. Everything terminal (work in progress)
  6. Customized GTK design (work in progress)
  7. Application launcher and search (work in progress)
  8. Attractive notifications (work in progress)
  9. Windows transparency (work in progress)
  10. Automated backups (work in progress)
  11. Theme switch (work in progress)
  12. Adaptive lock screen (work in progress)
  13. Personalised login screen (work in progress)
  14. Custom keyboard mapping (work in progress)

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