How much do you mod your desktop?

[antikythera]

It's my opinion if one can't afford enough drive space to be able to back up their data, then they can't afford to have that much data.

+1

The same applies to smartphones. It beggars belief when folk get distraught that either their phone is broken beyond repair or stolen and they have lost photos or videos of deceased loved ones in the process. Why the hell did they not back them up off the phone somewhere else?

[Drugwash]

Problem is, when you're dirt poor you can't afford both data and backup - if you have no data then you have nothing to back up, and if you have data...

[antikythera]

I sometimes buy recertified drives from WD, they come with a 30-day money back guarantee and 1-year limited warranty and are a chunk cheaper than the normal retail price. I currently have two that I use in rotation along with a pair of NAS arrays to backup machines to.

£38.99 each for the drives I have at the moment including free shipping, My Book (RWDBFJK) (Recertified) 2TB. Inside them is a WD Blue 3.5" drive. There are other larger models too that could work out cheaper per GB but as you said you have little money... Also 2TB should be sufficient for linux backups from a single laptop

They come very well packaged in plain cardboard boxes with thick foam frames and power lead adapters for every country under the sun. I still use the packaging to store them in the cupboard.

The page below will offer to change to your location so don't worry about it being a UK link:

https://www.westerndigital.com/en-gb/pr ... ecertified

I mean, yes you can rely on github and cloud storage of course, but local is faster to recover from if need be. I hope that's food for thought at least, external drives do not have to be prohibitively expensive mouse traps in 2.5" form factor.

[Drugwash]

but as you said you have little money

I didn't say but I have no money at all, period. Had some for a short time a couple years ago after my aunt died but it's gone. No job, nothing. As mentioned elsewhere I'm living on borrowed time. So really, I don't need backups because the data will most likely survive me.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Problem is, when you're dirt poor you can't afford both data and backup - if you have no data then you have nothing to back up, and if you have data...

Let me ask you this; how much is your data worth to you? How much would it cost to replace it if you lost it, assuming you even could replace it?

If an HDD should die, professional data recovery will easily cost you north of $1k, and data recovery comes with no guarantees of success. Buying HDDs for backup drives will cost umpteen times less and theyill be far more reliable.

Again, you have to budget your drive purchases against the amount of data you have. If you can't afford buy more drives, then you need to pare down the amount of data you have to free up one or more drives for backups. Ideally, you should have two backup drives for each data drive you have but, when finances are tight (and I get it; I've been there, too, and it's rough), even only one backup drive for each data drive is dramatically better than no backup drives at all.

One option to reduce the cost of backup drives is to sort through your data and decide what you absolutely cannot afford to lose and only backup that data.

[antikythera]

Fair enough, enjoy the time you have left as best you can then Drugwash

[Drugwash]

Let me ask you this; how much is your data worth to you? [...] If an HDD should die, professional data recovery will easily cost you north of $1k

To be honest I'm used to losing, it's an exercise I've practiced in for my whole life, so it wouldn't be such a drama.

decide what you absolutely cannot afford to lose

That'd be the time left, however long or short it may be. And that, my dear Lady, cannot be backed up on any kind of drive.

Fair enough, enjoy the time you have left as best you can then Drugwash

Thank you, that's precisely what I'm trying to do. (if only they didn't cut the power every so often out here... )

[Valsodar]

How much do you mod your desktop?

To the point no one can tell what the DE is, unless I tell them.

[Moem]

no one can tell what the DE is, unless I tell them.

Like so?

[Valsodar]

Like so?

I know about that and I always hide it either by running heavier applications, or, if I'm not lazy, using Pinta's blur effects. If I don't hide it, it would be pointless to make them to try and guess.
I didn't hide it for this post here bc we're all using Cinnamon here and that fact makes it pointless to hide the process name.

[Moem]

I didn't hide it for this post here bc we're all using Cinnamon here and that fact makes it pointless to hide the process name.

I don´t believe that to be true. Some of us are running Xfce or MATE.

[Valsodar]

Oh... I thought these have been dropped from support long ago.

[antikythera]

The huge default menu@cinnamon.org applet is a giveaway too

It may fool folk in National City along with the dodgiest superhero disguise in history (a pair of glasses), it won't fool people who know linux desktops

But... why kryptonite green?

[Valsodar]

The huge default menu@cinnamon.org applet is a giveaway too

They never recognize the applet, even experienced users don't. It's size depends on the height of the panel (which I had to increase with 2 pixels since 5.4.0, otherwise it was cutting off the icons top and bottom).

It may fool folk in National City along with the dodgiest superhero disguise in history (a pair of glasses)

Yeah, nobody can mistake that cute nose and the perfect smile, so why bother with the glasses at all?

But... why kryptonite green?

Because that's the only version of green (#08000) or any color in general that doesn't torment my eyes when I look at it. I have this condition on the eyes which makes them hurt when the color is too bright - white, silver, big yellow areas, etc. That's why the most of the time the background is dark. I only change it to a lighter one for screenshots, so that the transparency can be seen better.

[antikythera]

I just experimented with building a custom colour icon set today using Mint-Yz as the source, I need to redo it because I screwed a folder name up which caused build errors. It did output enough for me to see the colour choice works fine for places icons anyway.

EDIT - Done


Now available for download on my dropbox but not packaged properly - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ud085ak84g4ns ... ar.gz?dl=0

Linux Mint logo icons coloured to match for use with menu/cinnamenu/mate-menu/whisker etc. - https://www.dropbox.com/s/3os3bfspb0guf ... ar.gz?dl=0

[MurphCID]

How much do you mod your desktop?

To the point no one can tell what the DE is, unless I tell them.

LOL! That is a good answer!

[antikythera]

Whoever thought the need to edit stupidly complex CSS files would be a great way for people to theme Cinnamon and GTK in general going forwards needs shooting. All the SVG and PNG files are easy to generate after modifying the Python files. The annoying bit is dealing with the convoluted CSS which dictates window border controls and the cinnamon panel and menu colour scheme.

My eyes glaze over far to readily these days when faced with hunting for and changing a load of hex values placed randomly through hundreds of lines of code.

Kudos to SebastJava and the other theme creators who don't tear their hair out when faced with this laborious challenge.

I'll attack it again when I have a bit more patience...

[Drugwash]

Whoever thought the need to edit stupidly complex CSS files would be a great way for people to theme Cinnamon and GTK in general going forwards needs shooting.

I second that.
Coming from Windows where I could build a skinned theme for 98/ME in a couple hours and an XP theme slightly longer all this Linux theming comes across as chaotic to say the least.

I started porting a Win7-looking theme made for XP about two years ago - or was it three? - and still haven't finished it, not by a long shot; a lot of elements are still stupidly gray, and the GTK2 part is yet untouched. And now with the [...] changes in Cinnamon 5.4+ all the best in that theme, which was using Metacity, is gone. The theme became useless.

Fortunately I'm not gonna move past Mint 19.2 ever so it doesn't really matter to me but it would've been nice to be able to share it with other users. Can't do that now. So thanks Mint Team. For nothing.

[bluedxca93]

Sadly cinnamon is very limited regarding skinning. Might sound strange but XFCE and Mate are easier to theme.

@Drugwash
Its done using SCSS. Currently with CSS only you dont get the whole theme running.Each theme has to be based on adwaita. You need an app that converts gradient pictures to code and some box shadow presets. Pictures get most times buggy, some do still great themes using only pictures tough.
Can you show me howbthe borders looked? Some things can be done even now.

[Drugwash]

Can you show me how the borders looked? Some things can be done even now.

Yeah, sure. I did try to fix it but it's only halfway there and it looks uglier than it would've been without the attempted fix.
Gradient is a joke, I need pictures for everything, including borders. Metacity was doing everything right. The whole concept of client-side decorations is inept, many have said that before me.
Here's the look in Mint 19.2/Cinnamon 4.2:

P.S. When I mentioned Win98/ME I was referring to themes for Tihiy's Revolutions Pack which can look exactly like XP or 7, not the "classic" look which I could never stand (especially that ugly impersonal grey). Those are also based on images (bitmaps) with alpha transparency or "magic pink".
In case you're interested in a peek, here's a tool developed by myself in AutoHotkey; unfortunately it remained in the viewer stage although it was meant to be a full editor. The theme selected is part of a small collection of variations on the Royale theme - variations also done by myself: