All Desktop Screenshots of 2021

[MattJ86]

@darkstrike

I think that keeping notes in text files is a very good idea (they are portable). I could always use Sticky Notes (which is actually an awesome app), but as you see my resolution is only 1280x800 (16:10) and I have to keep it uncluttered. People with those crazy-ass widescreen 21:9, hi-res monitors can go crazy with tons of widgets and stuff. At least Full-HD resolution would change the game.

The more fancier app to keep notes is Obsidian (you can see the icon on my dock on the right side). It supports markdown and can turn into very sophisticated data collecting/organising app with tons of extensions, graphs, graphics, links, embedded videos, audio etc. Obsidian uses plain text. I can easily recommend it to anyone.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I came up with this by editing one of the settings that came with Conky Manager. I can even add notes by editing a file called NOTATKI that you can see on my desktop. After saving the changes to the file Conky displays the contents.

Nice! If I have to leave quick notes to myself, I usually just leave empty text files on my desktop with the filename as whatever reminder I need as in:

'GET GROCERIES.txt' or 'Car appointment Thurs.txt' or the like....crude, but I don't use it often (I use Google Calendar for reminders more!) and it works!

@darkstrike

I think that keeping notes in text files is a very good idea (they are portable). I could always use Sticky Notes (which is actually an awesome app), but as you see my resolution is only 1280x800 (16:10) and I have to keep it uncluttered. People with those crazy-ass widescreen 21:9, hi-res monitors can go crazy with tons of widgets and stuff. At least Full-HD resolution would change the game.

The more fancier app to keep notes is Obsidian (you can see the icon on my dock on the right side). It supports markdown and can turn into very sophisticated data collecting/organising app with tons of extensions, graphs, graphics, links, embedded videos, audio etc. Obsidian uses plain text. I can easily recommend it to anyone.

The size of Sticky Notes can be easily changed so the don't take up as much screen real estate. I've used them on a lower resolution note book, too.

I also had "fun" coming up with a calendar app that didn't eat an excessive amount of screen real estate. People here pointed me to Evolution's Calendar and told me how to get rid of the email handling portions so just the calendar was shown on the screen. At that time, I was using a low resolution notebook as my daily driver. I still use both on the 1920x1080 screen on my current daily driver.

Both Sticky Notes and Evolution Calendar can be easily backed up (once you know how), essentially making them portable. The backup files can then be used to move data from computer to computer.

[jungle_boy]

The name of the theme is BeautyLine icons, I got it in gnome-look.org.

To install the menu icon, right-click on the menu icon, then click the icon option and choose the icon you want.

THX Much - I ended up using candy-icon icon theme which are similar but downloaded the BeautyLine now as well.
I know how to change the menu icon - what I was curious about is where lm logo that you use came from - I have been looking all over for it but can't find it anywhere

Here is my Cinnamon on Ubuntu server with the candy-icon with the Cinnamox-Aubergine theme and the Cinnamenu

Well, I don't know too where it came from.

Your desktop looks cool!

[MattJ86]

After getting some experience with Conky I came up with two widgets like this. Found a nice wallpaper and made fitting Plank theme.

The font used for the clock widget is called [F500] (It's made to look like font from Wipeout game) and you can find in the repos. The other font is obviously my favourite Spleen font.

And the cursor after my user@host name at the bottom of the system monitoring widget is blinking for aeasthetics...

To add some craziness to the whole experience I installed 'bucklespring' that emulates Model M keyboard sounds then pressing keyboard keys. It's awesome.

[majpooper]

Ever since jungle_boy turned me on to neon icons I am hooked. I actually think they look better on a darker desktop (see my Ubuntu server/cinnamon VM) but thought I would play with them on my daily driver - a work in progress and will probably go with a slightly darker background and theme although I am not really a fan of dark themes I think I need to go a little darker for these icons to pop and maybe try Plank for an even more modern look . . . . ? ? ? ?

[MattJ86]

@majpooper

These neon icons don't look well on bright wallpapers, because they are bright themselves. To build sensible UI you need contrasting colours. Also their 'outline' design makes it even worse. I really like to look at people's desktop and I see that many people do the same design mistakes. They put white texted Conkys with fully transparent backgrounds on brigh wallpapers and icons that are similar colour shades as wallpaper and it's all blending into some freaking 'persian carpet'. It would be nice if modern desktop environments had something like an adaptive shadow for icons and icon text. Also some wallpapers that look like freaking Hieronim Bosch's paintings turn desktop into a total mess.

[DisturbedDragon]

Been awhile since I've done any work on my Mint theme so I gave it a go with new icons and took a liking to BeautyLine icons

[MattJ86]

@DisturbedDragon

These neon icon's look awesome on black background, but there's a problem with them I can't get over. They are so exceptional in their design that they mix very badly with other icon sets that mostly are various Android-style designs and flat icons. The set seems incomplete with so many programs not having their neon icon. Mint's X and Y icon sets are probably one of the most complete I've ever seen. That's why I like them so much. I know that it's not easy to make an icon set covering like a hundred of most popular apps + symbolic icons for system tray + icons for various window and UI controls etc. That must be a hell...

[DisturbedDragon]

@DisturbedDragon

These neon icon's look awesome on black background, but there's a problem with them I can't get over. They are so exceptional in their design that they mix very badly with other icon sets that mostly are various Android-style designs and flat icons. The set seems incomplete with so many programs not having their neon icon. Mint's X and Y icon sets are probably one of the most complete I've ever seen. That's why I like them so much. I know that it's not easy to make an icon set covering like a hundred of most popular apps + symbolic icons for system tray + icons for various window and UI controls etc. That must be a hell...

All of the out of place icons are custom launchers that I have manually set icons or didn't set an icon. I could replace them with an icon from the pack but don't find it necessary since I have been swapping icon packs out to see which I like the best and really, just don't feel like it

[Dark Owl]

I really like to look at people's desktop and I see that many people do the same design mistakes...

It's no good assuming your taste is everyone's taste, as is so frequently demonstrated in this thread. What might be a design mistake to you could be the height of fashion to somebody else. Taste changes with time/age too.

Hence the availability of options and alternatives.

Personally, I would rather spend time getting stuff done than tweaking my desktop.

[MattJ86]

@Dark Owl

I didn't mean to tell people what to do. And I think that your desktop is your desktop and if you like 'persian carpet'-like design it's fine. It was only my opinion on what makes UI readable or not. For example I don't like either Windows and MacOS designs (and I don't mean layouts). Windows is despressing and boring while MacOS is childish, hippy-dippy nonsense. The sweet spot is somewhere in between.

[majpooper]

@DisturbedDragon

These neon icon's look awesome on black background, but there's a problem with them I can't get over. They are so exceptional in their design that they mix very badly with other icon sets that mostly are various Android-style designs and flat icons. The set seems incomplete with so many programs not having their neon icon. Mint's X and Y icon sets are probably one of the most complete I've ever seen. That's why I like them so much. I know that it's not easy to make an icon set covering like a hundred of most popular apps + symbolic icons for system tray + icons for various window and UI controls etc. That must be a hell...

When icons don't match it really is not that difficult to replace them just a bit tedious - in the neon icon case I went and replaced several non matching with substitutes from the beauty-line and candy-icon sets.

[rossdv8]

I Liked playing around with the dials conky as a learning exercise, but I really prefer something clean, simple and which doesn't impinge too much on the desktop.
Still trying to find font colours that work across multiple wallpaper backgrounds without needing a translucent canvas behind them, but I'm running out of ideas, so I've added some bits to make changing the colours sort of click n collect, using an idea I got from something Mattj68 wrote.

[Rooo]

but I really prefer something clean, simple and which doesn't impinge too much on the desktop.

like that font,looks great and really easy to read

[MattJ86]

@rossdv8

What's the name of the font in your Conky? I really like it.

The only way that could help a fully transparent Conky to look good on all kind of wallpapers would be a some kind of adaptive font colours or adaptive outline/shadow around the the font and other elements in the Conky. But I don't think Conky supports such active elements. People who use auto changing wallpaper and use a mix of bright and dark ones will find it painful without at least translucent background in their Conkys. We can't have everything...

[rossdv8]

I agree about the adaptive font colours, and the idea of outline is not as silly as it might seem at first. A drop shadow would work, and there just might be a way to do it by making a modified font face, or doing a 'faux drop shadow' by printing two lines to the screen for the same text, with one line offset a couple of pixels down and across, in a different colour.
I can't see why it wouldn't work. Whether it would look ok with the small text is another thing, Might be worth trying though.
I'm re-tyred so I can find the time.

UPDATE - I tried it, and while it 'sort of' works, it is a bit like having double vision. So far the best 'almost' universal colour I've found for the test is that bright yellow. On the upside, I discovered some weird new colours by accident

The conky is modified from one of the Victor Conkies at: https://github.com/Vict0rBit

The fonts 'Chinacat', and 'Zekton' are available separately at:
Clock digits: https://www.cufonfonts.com/font/chinacat
Most of the other stuff: https://www.dafont.com/zekton.font

[Gruppo Sportivo]

[majpooper]

I went over to the dark side. I really am not a dark theme fan so we will see how long this lasts. But I really really like the way neon icons pop. I tried them on a light theme (see my previous post) and they just don't work. As someone (I apologize for not remembering who) pointed out the neon icon sets tend not to include everything so you end up with mixed icon themes . . . for example some neon icons and some flat icons. To fix that I had to change out the non-neon icons to neon icons.

The other thing I tried was change the panel font to a neon hydrogen gas lights font (like the Temple University Owls) to give it a neon look. The hydrogen gas lights font just didn't work in the panel as it was too small and looked blurred. I did however change the font color away from white.

In the mean time I am working on how to create some neon caps/num lock icons.

[MattJ86]

@majpooper

I must say I really like it. And yes, these icons are made for dark backgrounds and themes. You can clearly see the darker the background the better they resemble real life neons. They look awesome on the bottom panel.

And for the fonts I tried lots of different fonts and the more sophisticated (fancy) fonts the worse they will look in small sizes and they won't work for desktop and terminal. The Spleen font I use for everything in my desktop (excluding the huge clock font which is [F500] font) is set to 12 size, because it seems smaller than Ubuntu fonts used by default in Mint when set to the same size (10 by default).

[Gruppo Sportivo]

Have been using Candy icons for a long time now
But have to remind myself to update the package to a newer version every now and then (new added icons)