What is Ricing?

Hi, i have been messing with EndeavourOS for a months now and i saw some people discussing about themes and something about ricing. I don’t really know what it means besides it is to make your desktop look better on your own.
I am very curious about this and want to look into this further, can someone explain to me if there is a perk to doing this or is it just customization? And where do i start if i want to give them a try.

Yeah, it’s basically customisation, usually visual but it can also mean auditory with system sounds. You can see some excellent customisation in the Show Your Desktop thread.

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OK wow those look cool, how do people make stuff like that and is it hard to learn?

You can install other peoples themes, which is easy, then you can start customising one of those themes which is harder depending on how deep you go with tools like Inkscape. Then you can build an entirely bespoke theme which is a lot harder of course.

You can also do a lot of theming with window managers such as Sway and Hyperland, but in that case you have to build your whole environment from the ground up.

For Plasma, which is the most themeable desktop, you can get started here

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Ironically when i first installed EOS before switching back to Plasma, i did try Hyprland since google said it was the best looking so i used someone’s dotfiles setup. Maybe i can make my own one in the future.

I think this term comes from a car customisation. When you paint flames on the car it will go faster.
By the same logic if you put RGB lights on the computer you get higher CPU clock frequency. :rofl: Do not confuse it with “customisation” - that is just plain old change of the look.

To me “customization” has a broader sens and it is not restricted to the “Look and Feel”.

Anything I do on top of the standard/default installation of the system, be it modifying the system itself or changing how it looks falls under the “customization”.

Simply put, I make the system mine.

And if I get a couple of cpu cycles more out of it, as alluded to here above , even better. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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For KDE here are some ressources you might find usefull:

You can find all sort of stuff on KDE Store/Pling, from global themes to icon sets, cursors, login screens,widgets etc…

As for apps, a list of the most common ones :

Main :

Kvantum : Qt6 engine which allow you to customize window appearance
Klassy : This one is used to customize Window decoration (Titlebar, buttons etc…)
Panel Colorizer : This one is for the taskbar/docks, really powerful with lots of possibilities

Effects :

KDE Rounded Corners : As the name implies, add rounded corners to you windows and/or colored outline
Kwin ForceBlur : Better configuration possibility thant the default blur, specially usefull for apps that doesn’t handle blur well by default like Firefox

Color :

Pywal16 : Allow you to generate colors based on you wallpaper and use it in pre-made templates or anywhere you want
Material You Color : Will use colors generated by Pywal and dynamically apply them to your plasma theme, konsole, kate or pretty much any app you want (lots of support for pywal)
Pywalfox : Use Pywal to color Firefox

Tiling :

Krohnkite : Probably the best Tiling script for KDE right now, lots of different layouts. Not the easiest to customize but the default layouts are already really good. Lots of available shortcuts.

There are a lot more but you can already do so much with just these.

Ricing can be incredibly easy if you find the right place to learn (this forum being one), and making you own theme is not far from reach, lots of people here have made their own theme and a few guides are available.

Edit : If you really want to make your OWN plasma theme you might have to learn the bases of Inkscape, but for customizing an already existing theme, a simple text editor is enough.

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I believe the term started out as a bit of a racial slur, as it was applied to Asians who were adding cool customizations to their cars.

Could be wrong, but I recall reading that somewhere - this etymology seems to have been scrubbed from many sources currently defining the term.

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I do Noodling :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Alright i am committed time to go research for a month

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My vote: None of the above :wink:

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KDE Docs is quite complete and “easy” to understand, a good place to start if you want to completely make your own theme

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Ricing is tweaking the look and feel of your operating system until your eyes hurt so much that you have to change everything again - usually once a week or so. (If you suffer from OSD, good luck.)

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That’s probably the most accurate description. You can swap once a week according to any schedule you like.

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I thought you’re more on blimmin :squinting_face_with_tongue:

edit: did i spelled it correctly?

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Is there any guide ( as you all mentioned KDE already) for making KDE look a like Hyprland or WM s ? :slight_smile: