How much do you mod your desktop?

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How modded is your desktop

Poll ended at Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:50 pm

None:, I use stock Mint
4
11%
A little: minor theming to make it mine.
13
37%
Moderately themed
8
23%
Heavily themed
4
11%
I am a Wild Child
6
17%
 
Total votes: 35

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smurphos
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by smurphos »

Drugwash wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 4:16 am
smurphos wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 1:49 am [...] and another one that allows me to switch workspaces with a mousewheel scroll on the desktop.
Have you tried the Cinn'r eyes applet? Can switch workspaces through Ctrl+scroll over the icon and can also show Expo/Overview on click/Ctrl+click. :wink:
Thanks - the animated eyes on the panel thing is a bit 'gimmicky' for my taste. Hotcorners do me fine for Expo and Scale Views, and I spent a lot of time of the script a while back (it was requested by another user) and decided I like it.
For custom Nemo actions, useful scripts for the Cinnamon desktop, and Cinnamox themes visit my Github pages.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by Drugwash »

Ah, no worries. Workflow differs from individual to individual. :) Personally I disabled those corners to avoid any unwanted triggers since I don't use multiple workspaces and the multiline window list is enough for me. Actually I added those functions to the "eyes" only to make the applet somehow useful instead of it being a simple gimmick that wastes space. :wink: Hopefuly somebody would like it and use it. :)
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by Lady Fitzgerald »

I also left hot corners disabled so I don't accidentally trigger something. I can do everything hot corners can do from the panel.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by MurphCID »

Lady Fitzgerald wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 2:50 am I also left hot corners disabled so I don't accidentally trigger something. I can do everything hot corners can do from the panel.
I do the same since I am a klutz and those are something else for me to foul up.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by MurphCID »

So it looks like many of us just do some minor mods, but we do have a nice number of Wild Children who test the limits, and bend it to their will.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by sebastjava »

MurphCID wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 8:14 am So it looks like many of us just do some minor mods, but we do have a nice number of Wild Children who test the limits, and bend it to their will.
I didn't do all this just to "test the limits."

When i started i was just a frozen programmer who haven't done much since his childhood, bending over a Commodore 64. Later, in the 90s, i was into desktop publishing and graphic design on a Macintosh. So, when i first experienced this LinuxMint, i was amazed by two things:
But, thanks to Clément and all the Mint team, you can easily change everything: GTK themes, icons, logo, desktop background, etc. Because design should be considered the same way the applications are considered here. Applications are constantly evolving. Design should be constantly evolving too !
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by MurphCID »

sebastjava wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 8:42 am
MurphCID wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 8:14 am So it looks like many of us just do some minor mods, but we do have a nice number of Wild Children who test the limits, and bend it to their will.
I didn't do all this just to "test the limits."

When i started i was just a frozen programmer who haven't done much since his childhood, bending over a Commodore 64. Later, in the 90s, i was into desktop publishing and graphic design on a Macintosh. So, when i first experienced this LinuxMint, i was amazed by two things:
But, thanks to Clément and all the Mint team, you can easily change everything: GTK themes, icons, logo, desktop background, etc. Because design should be considered the same way the applications are considered here. Applications are constantly evolving. Design should be constantly evolving too !
Exactly! I make it mine, as I could never do in Windows or Mac OS.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by Drugwash »

sebastjava wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 8:42 am But, thanks to Clément and all the Mint team, you can easily change everything: GTK themes, icons, logo, desktop background, etc.
Uhm, not so much starting with Mint 19.3 compared to 19.2, then 20.x compared to 19.x and now the utterly crippled 21 compared to 20.x.
sebastjava wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 8:42 am Because design should be considered the same way the applications are considered here. Applications are constantly evolving. Design should be constantly evolving too !
Actually applications are constantly devolving and design is going the same route too. It's the one microsoft way - pun intended.

Let me explain. Those that have used Firefox back in the day should remember the plethora of add-ons that could do about anything, including the aspect of the application GUI. Personalization was down to the slightest bit possible. Look at the Firefox ecosystem now: a stiff walled garden worth not a damn. I wouldn't open in Firefox the URLs I open in Pale Moon today because I can't have the same level of control over all aspects.

Most applications nowadays are stripped off of a lot of useful options that would offer a true leverage for personalization. It's "my way or the highway". In the mid 2000s I had the chance to participate in a community project where the possibilities were practically endless, every minor detail from aspect to operation could be tweaked by the user precisely to their liking. People were coming up with wonderful setups, proud they could call "their own". Years later the "services" cut access to third-party applications, offering their own bland, useless interfaces instead; I chose to leave that ecosystem, it offered no more joy.

Let's talk about Mint now.
A few years ago I managed to install Mint 17.1 Cinnamon on some computer. That was my first real, long-time contact with Linux after a few short testing attempts with various versions of Knoppix and an interesting Puppy (Tiger Puppy 1.6) that sported Compiz. That Mint 17.1 was perfectly able to connect to my Windows 98SE and XP machines through Samba on the local network. Well, actually it was not so able by itself, directly - it required the use of Gigolo for mapping the network drives, but after that the connections were fine.

Still, applications on Mint were subpar to those on Windows. One day I had a Linux-user friend over and proved that to him, since he had been praising Linux/Ubuntu over Windows. Started VLC with a locally-hosted movie on Mint and it was looking ugly, running sluggish; then started Gom Player in Windows XP loading the very same movie over the network from the Mint computer - it was looking fine and was running normally without hiccups. And before anyone tries to bring hardware into discussion: the XP machine was way lower in CPU speed, RAM and video than the Mint machine.

Now let's fast-forward to Mint 19. Can't remember if I started with 19.1 and updated to 19.2, or directly installed 19.2 on this notebook. Thing is I've been struggling for a couple years or so to customize it to my liking, and it's still far from done but it's mostly there. At some point I thought about updating to 19.3, and in view of the update installed 19.3 in VirtualBox for a preview. First thing that caught my attention - in a negative way - was that the menu, sticky and shade buttons in the toolbar were gone. confused?! Started asking around and found out they were deemed unimportant and were being phased out. Really?! I'm am using the shade button very often and also the menu button when the min/max/close are unaccesible for whatever reason.
OK, those buttons are not accesible anymore through the settings dialog but can be brought back using the dconf-editor - something that the average user has no clue about and is not installed by default. For all intents and purposes those buttons are nonexistant for a Linux newcomer. An improvement, they say. Ha! :evil:

Going further to the 20.x line I've read about users being displeased with the changes in the window effects. Personally I have and had all of them disabled so wouldn't know what it's all about but I trust those users had certain settings personalized and then everything had been screwed up by the "upgrade". The menu/sticky/shade buttons were still available through dconf-editor in the 20.1 and 20.2 versions; no idea about 20.3, never got to update to it.
Can't remember now other points where 20.x is worse than 19.x, a 20.1 updated to 20.2 in a VirtualBox is running too sluggish and required too many resources for me to perform more thorough tests, but even the fact that it does require more while providing less is an indication that something is not right.

And now we land in the Mint 21 zone. Having read the official "what's new" page sent cold shivers down my spine: Metacity is dead! This means the theme I've been working for so long, porting it from an XP custom theme, is now useless - the most important part was precisely the Metacity section that provided the titlebar image, button images, borders. Without them there is no theme - just a bland POS. A quick test of the live 21 in VirtualBox proved I was right; even the most elaborated themes available in the Themes list were now crippled.
The menu/sticky/shade buttons have now completely dissapeared, not even dconf-editor can bring them back. Makes sense once Metacity is gone. The titlebar is now more useless than the Windows one which back in the day people were trying hard to enrich with various additional buttons much in the way menu/sticky/shade have been doing until now. Way to go Mint team, now that's an "improvement". Not! :evil:

Please note I've only touched the visible aspect of the OS and applications here since we are in a desktop customization topic. The functionality is a completely different topic and I'm sure there would be much to discuss on that topic too, especially about the new Cinnamon 5.4 that breaks things, but not here and not now. I'm just grateful that this 12-13 year old notebook can't take anything more than it already has - an Intel i5 2.5GHz dual-core CPU, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 512MB NVIDIA video. I won't cry over the inability to run the "so-much-improved" Mint 21.

P.S.
MurphCID wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 9:52 am Exactly! I make it mine, as I could never do in Windows or Mac OS.
You'd be amazed at how I managed to customize my 98SE and XP. Actually you wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Now in view of the above I'm curious how your customization would still work with Mint 21. 8)
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by MurphCID »

We shall see soon enough I guess. I do pretty minor tweaks.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by attah »

All i do is put a non-light window titlebar. A minor but important tweak.
Since the titlebar functions so differently compared to the rest of the window, i like to distinguish it visually.
I also just don't like the the "enormous forehead"-look non-distinct titlebars give applications.

Unfortunately this seems to no longer be possible out of the box on 21.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by MurphCID »

Well any comments on Mint 21 and has it changed how you theme/mod your desktop?
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by antikythera »

LMDE5 has the new Cinnamon too now.

I've switched back to Mint-Y but will use Yz again soon no doubt.

Adapta worked for the most part still but some dialogues with input boxes were messed up in normal and Eta adapta variants to the point of not seeing what I was typing in them. I'd even selected the recommended fonts for use with the theme.

Apart from that, I noticed too that the icon theme and not the control theme dictates the style of certain window control buttons but it looked a mess with GTK instead of metacity.

On the subject of fonts, I prefer using a German car manufacturer's font to the default Ubuntu. It's the Audi Normal from their Digital font zip and is rendered better (with both radeon and nvidia drivers) than Ubuntu font family and is still a sans glyph with decent character width and spacing. I use Audi Bold for the window titles and noto sans mono for terminal. All still 10pt size. It's not really a coincidence since their Audi Connect and MMI system is linux powered.

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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by sebastjava »

antikythera wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 5:44 am I've switched back to Mint-Y but will use Yz again soon no doubt.
That Mint-Yz for LM 21 is not ready yet. Not even started yet. Sorry about that. At least, you can be sure I did not forget it. I feel the tic-tac-tic-tac from the clock behind me. The main reasons are: I wanted some summer time outside, I have many other projects, and... I am not satisfied with the current state of LM Cinnamon 21. Some bugs did not get fixed from LM 21 beta to "stable" release. Nothing critical, just the way things looks and feels. But, you guessed it, I do care about the way things looks and feels...
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by antikythera »

Of course there's no rush at all, real life comes first as does having some summer downtime to enjoy the great outdoors
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by Drugwash »

Speaking of desktops: did anyone here install - or attempt to - the Trinity desktop in Mint?
I'd be interested in trying it if it wouldn't mess the system completely and would not be too large of a download.
This is for the current Mint 19.2 Cinnamon, if it matters. Can't run a proper test in a virtual machine for this reason.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by antikythera »

Technically it shouldn't screw Mint up but it may be worth having a separate home partition for it. Would you use Mint XFCE as the base?
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by Drugwash »

Unfortunately there's no room for moving the /home on this daily machine, I barely reclaimed ~6GB by moving a few large videos out, and recreated a 2GB swap file that had been deleted (for lack of free space) long ago. On top of this I have a NTFS partition on the same drive that has been severely screwed up by a defrag application and is now mounted in read-only mode, so I won't even attempt messing with partitions in such conditions.

The idea was to attempt installing Trinity along Cinnamon and switch at log in. But I have a feeling that might not be the best idea. Reason why I asked. Maybe somebody else can provide more useful info...?
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by antikythera »

You may be better off opening another thread about adding trinity then. However, do you backup the partitions? If so, why not just try it? If not, try out foxclone. You can always restore the current state that way if it goes belly up.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by Drugwash »

Nah, apparently threads created by me don't have much value and are hardly ever visited. :)

Never did backups even back in Windows 95/98 days. Space is too valuable for immediate tasks and data, can't afford new drives.

I did try Foxclone some time ago and it was dissapointing. Maybe my setup was uncommon, something in the hardware or whatever. It wasted my time and then errored out. Then I ran out of free space.

I'll try another approach, using the VBox currently installed and working on this netbook,while its images would be stored on the testing machine which still has some free space left. That is if VBox allows network-shared drives for storage.
That way I could try Q4OS with Trinity by default and/or any other distros.
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Re: How much do you mod your desktop?

Post by Lady Fitzgerald »

Drugwash wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:32 pm ...Never did backups even back in Windows 95/98 days. Space is too valuable for immediate tasks and data, can't afford new drives...
I always advise people, when budgeting for a new drive, to budget for two or, preferably, three drives so one will have one or, preferably, two backups (one onsite and one offsite). 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. Of course, you're entitled to your own opinion.
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