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How much effort do you put into interface customization?
| 29% | 39 votes |
| 24% | 33 votes |
| 16% | 22 votes |
| 5% | 7 votes |
| 4% | 6 votes |
| 9% | 12 votes |
| 5% | 7 votes |
| 5% | 7 votes |
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- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
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How much effort do you put into interface customization?
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Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ingar on Saturday November 23, @09:31AM (13 children)
I've been down the customization road: fvwm2, gnome, KDE, enlightenment, bash, vim, ...
You spend hours getting the interface to a point where it is just how you like it.
And then there's an update. Or you have to reinstall your system, or something, and it all breaks.
Or you have to use a different computer with a default interface and feel totally lost.
Sure, I do change some settings like colors or fonts, but that's how far as I go these days.
Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zocalo on Saturday November 23, @12:53PM (2 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by KritonK on Monday November 25, @06:55AM
I'll add changing the icon theme to the above. I can't stand monochromatic icons, where I have to pay close attention to the design of each icon, to tell icons apart, especially if the icons are drawn in gray, which to my eyes mean "deactivated". When Thunderbird switched to monochromatic icons, my reaction wasn't "wow, look at all those trendy icons", but "why were all the buttons suddenly deactivated"?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday November 26, @04:46PM
As for keeping things as vanilla as possible, as someone else points out: unless your customisations are easily portable between machines, as soon as you have to use some machine other than your own customised one, you still have to remember how to use the default abomination, giving you considerable workload. There are some great customisations out there that I don't use for that reason.
There's still stuff I want to customise that I can't, which irks me. For example, I'd love to try 'pie menus [wikipedia.org]' in my current DE (Cinnamon). I may have used them in an application on a Classic Mac many years ago - might have been a simple drawing or CAD application, or some other application of a similar vintage - and thought they were a very interesting idea.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday November 25, @02:39PM (6 children)
I am equally comfortable with ANY of those interfaces. My only customization is to the colors. As long as ALL PIXELS on the entire screen are one uniform color, I'm good.
Give me freedom or something of lesser or equal value, or a coupon for it.
My New Years resolution for 2025: DON'T MAKE A NEW YEARS RESOLUTION FOR 2025! That way, I can't break it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by pTamok on Tuesday November 26, @03:59PM (5 children)
That's trivial. Just remove power to the screen.
I guess you are one of those 'modern' UIX people who like a 'flat' interface where it is not possible to distinguish a button from its background.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday November 26, @04:59PM (4 children)
I am definitely not one of those 'modern' UX people. I like controls that look like controls, without going overboard the other direction.
I started with the Apple Lisa, and later Macintosh, the first GUIs that were available to large numbers of people. Those had relatively flat UI components. But it worked and was visually easy. It was monochrome, black and white no grayscale. So they did the best they could. A few years later NeXT showed nice 3D components using grayscale which everyone copied. Then color. Then everyone else copied this.
The best UI that I ever used was KDE 3. Then they ruined it. I didn't find anything that I really liked for a long time. I'm happy with MATE and some others.
My New Years resolution for 2025: DON'T MAKE A NEW YEARS RESOLUTION FOR 2025! That way, I can't break it.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday November 26, @10:22PM (3 children)
I was joking (if that wasn't clear).
If you want all the pixels to be one uniform colour, then you want a monochrome screen, where the information is conveyed by differing brightness levels. Whether that is green, orange, or grey, or some other hue is a free choice.
But, joking and pedantry aside, I get where you are coming from, and have great sympathy with your choices.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, @07:43AM (2 children)
I just assumed he was visually impaired and using a screen reader. Voice capture would explain some of his odd spelling choices.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 03, @03:26PM (1 child)
No voice capture system could be bad enough to come up with my homophone substitutions.
You can't have fun on the weak days, but you can on the weakened.
Missionaries want to heal us and save our souls.
Shoe salesmen want to heel us and save our soles.
I brake for animals.
I break fur animals.
My New Years resolution for 2025: DON'T MAKE A NEW YEARS RESOLUTION FOR 2025! That way, I can't break it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 07, @02:00AM
Amazon phone transcription service; "Challenge Accepted!!"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 26, @03:33PM (1 child)
Until the day when "everything is in the cloud" and my customized interface will follow me everywhere, effortlessly... why bother?
No matter how "superior" my customized interface is, using it will cripple my learning of the standard / default interface which I am bound to encounter from time to time, if not frequently...
I'd rather be good at using what's out there than making something that I'm even better at using... because: let's face it, just like nobody is interested in the SimCity you spent 9 hours building, nobody cares about your custom interface.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday November 26, @10:38PM
Sun Microsystems demonstrated personalisation for thin clients by using an Id card ("Sun Ray smartcard [wikipedia.org]") that you plugged into the local system that brought up your personal set-up. No cloud necessary for personalisation, even though Sun were in the business of selling network computing.
The hard bit is implementing systems that will read information from a source (be it cloud, or local smartcard/phone/other device) and use that information to customise your session. There's no standard for it, even though it is not great technical problem. There is probably insufficient demand.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday November 29, @01:27PM
I've gone the opposite, as time progressed I have refined and modified my interface to the point where it matches exactly how I like to work (so I voted "I've modded things I'll never even see."), so much that I notice the drop in productivity when I have to use another interface (especially "modern" DEs like Gnome where they love to hide things and you have to use the mouse to click multiple times for something I can otherwise do in one go without leaving the keyboard). I am not completely lost in other environments, I just realise how much slower and less productive I am using them.
After trying loads of WM's and DE's I settled years ago on Windowmaker on my large multi-monitor workstation and fluxbox on my laptops and other single/reduced screen machines. My main GUI editor is GVIM (when not just using it in a shell), which is also customised to my likes.
Most of the modifications I wrote in perl (both visible and invisible), with some bash and C here and there. It ranges from logic was to detect which machine it was running on, and applying the correct settings, onwards to creating my own shell shortcuts and aliases and interfaces for easy parallel/remote execution, to "eyecandy" like a script that automatically changes the background image sets and WM theme to match the what season of the year I am currently in.
From my side I spend most of my life staring a computer screen and desktop environment, so to me it makes perfect sense that over years I would have refined the environment to what works for me. If I have to spend so much of my time in a desktop environment I want to customise it to my needs.
I can't say I've ever had much of an issue with reinstalls and upgrades. At least with wmaker and fluxbox they never introduced any major breakage, so as long as my home directory is backed up I never had any loss. Nowadays my desktop configuration is in a git repo, which gives me all the benefits of version control for my configuration.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday November 23, @03:21PM
I voted "Everything must be seamless. I've modded things I'll never even see.", but it's not quite that bad: I just have certain things i like, others i ignore.
Even in i3, i will customize to a degree (mostly to help me remember programs i don't use everyday but have trouble remembering how to initiate them).
Other stuff...who cares?
I have some conkys set up for info and 'oooh, shiny' and guake for 'oooh, handy'.
Currently XFCE on MX linux.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Saturday November 23, @03:28PM (1 child)
I use MATE. I don't really care what the desktop colour is, or what pattern is displayed. MATE allows me to extend the functioning of the desktop, file manager, etc which I can do with scripts. So I extend the existing menus with functions that I need and use daily, activating them either by a key press or a mouse click. I have been using some of these extensions for well over 15 years now.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Sunday November 24, @02:16AM
I'm also a MATE user, but I replaced it's window manager with i3.
Recently I also started using vifm too.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday November 23, @07:10PM
A partial snippet from my 1k loc home.nix:
I've also been upstreaming patches to various qt and gtk themes and various programs over the years, including android apps due to shitty dark theme handling and key bindings / mouse / touch behavior that irritated me. More damnably, I've ticked off the TODO for theme support in a few different text editors that are being extended with Lua or Lisp and even had my own working early Acme knockoff with highlighters prototype.
Also, I've built my own sheet music reader using a touch "portable monitor" and an old baytrail hdmi stick running a phosh instance under armbian (which oddly is the only distro with decent baytrail support). Nothing about that setup is meant to run the way I use it. Like, I have udev rules to handle the libinput calibration matrix... grub command line additions to the kernel to rotate... A ~/.config/autostart script for wlr-randr a few gsettings for the scaling factor and the likes... Fun stuff.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday November 24, @12:41AM (6 children)
One thing that helps a lot under Windows is a portable applications [portableapps.com] standard that overwrites and restores the registry and other local files with a local copy of customization information. It makes it possible to run applications from an external hard drive or a self-contained directory that lets you keep customizations alongside the application, and leaves minimal traces on the individual Windows box.
It also makes it feasible to run multiple versions of an application from a network share, which makes it a lot easier to back up user and application stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 08, @07:28AM (5 children)
Windows 11 sucks.
Windows 7 isn't too bad for me. Windows 10 is a bit worse but still better than "Desktop Linux" in many ways.
I configure Windows to use double height taskbars, small icons (showing title text), ordered by horizontal first then vertical. Haven't figured out how to do that on Linux.
I also use run: shell:sendto to add shortcuts to a folder containing some utilities. That way I can do stuff like tail, grep, hash, hexedit, play or compare almost any file/folder using the GUI.
I also configure Windows Explorer to show extensions, owner, attributes etc (I notice someone has added "Developer Settings" to Windows to do some of these stuff more quickly).
I also wrote a utility to allow quick assigning and switching among multiple different windows: https://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/ [sourceforge.net]
e.g. alt+1,2,3,4,5 will switch among five different windows.
(Score: 2, Troll) by janrinok on Sunday December 08, @08:48AM (4 children)
I don't think that you have given 'Linux' more than a cursory glance. And furthermore what you are complaining about is the desktop, not 'Linux'. For example, I use MATE, but similar functions are available for most desktops other desktops.
Right click on the icon bar, select Properties, set it to whatever height you want. You can place icons anywhere you wish, in any order, on the icon bar. Time taken? 30 seconds?
I've been doing that for years. And it isn't limited to any particular function (shell:sendto). You can write any script that you wish, in any language that you wish, to carry out any function that you wish.
The other 'problems' that you describe are equally trivial.
The difference is that you know where things are in Windows. You are used to Windows. But Linux is different for a good reason. A different desktop isn't meant to be the same as Windows (although there are some that are...) You can do far more with some desktops than Windows will ever let you do. I am not criticising you, or Windows. You appear to be happy with your choice which is all that is really important. But if you are going to switch to Linux then select the desktop that suits your way of working (you can't do that with Windows, you can only modify what they give you) and then spend a short while getting used to it. Google has the answer to all your problems (for both Linux and Windows).
It is equivalent to leaving your current country to live in another with a different language and culture. If all you do is complain that it isn't the same as 'back home' then that is where you should have stayed. Take time to get accustomed to your new home (or distro) and you will also discover many benefits that didn't exist where you came from.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 12, @02:50PM (3 children)
As mentioned currently on Windows I have them so that they are ordered horizontal first then vertical e.g.:
1234
5678
MATE seems to do vertical then horizontal:
1357
2468
I don't like that because it's more likely that closing a window will change the relative positions of more stuff.
I tried doing that on KDE, GNOME, LXDE, etc and I can't figure out how to do that. But Win 11 can't do it either.
(Score: 1, Troll) by janrinok on Thursday December 12, @03:02PM (2 children)
Once it has positioned them you can move each one individually in whatever order you wish.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13, @10:18AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday December 13, @11:05AM
Are you locking them into position (it is a right click function)?
If you are then it seems to be a bug. But I'm sorry I haven't got any other suggestions.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday November 24, @12:44AM
Autohotkey under Windows makes it possible to re/bind sequences of operations to a per-application key/mouse sequence of your choice. Then you just keep the script and autohotkey with you, run it on a new PC, and all your bindings stay with you. I've been using it so long that I can't remember which keyboard accelerators on some applications are built-in and which are part of my script.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24, @01:33PM
I don't really do cosmetic modifications, other than not having much to modify in the first place, but I maintain custom keybinds for my window manager and tmux. Even my kshrc just sets vi mode and a few utility functions and aliases (I do have a somewhat complex bit in there to fix ksh93's vi mode arrow key handling though, but it doesn't get used much, just hasn't been deleted yet).
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday November 24, @10:08PM
I use Soylent News in its dark-mode setting with green text. So much easier to read than bright mode.
In the old days when monitors were still CRTs, dark mode was essential: the electron beam would be very slightly out of focus, and in bright mode the bright unfocused background would eat letters away into barely visible spindles.
I've set my DrRacket editor to use dark mode, but I customized the colour for parentheses. I made them very bright and visible. For some bizarre reason, the default settings are for unobtrusive parentheses -- the most important structural elements of Racket code become are made hard to see by default. No wonder people have trouble with parenthesis matching when they are hidden from clear view.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Gertlex on Monday November 25, @05:30AM
Every time I use ctrl+v in winamp ("stop playing music after the current song finishes"), I spend a split second bemused at how unfazed I am by this one-off totally different meaning of a hotkey that's nearly universal in everything else I use. (Vim is another spot where my fingers know an alternate ctrl+v meaning...)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Cyrix6x86 on Wednesday November 27, @09:19PM (1 child)
I think I do more customization than most people. Even at work. Back in the day, everyone, even tech novices would have their own custom cursors and color schemes and wallpapers and sounds.
These days most people go with the stock wallpaper and don't change their ringtone. Computers are just an appliance and not something to make individual anymore.
I think KDE 3 was best peak UI ever made. I know some older types are nostalgic for OS/2 but that was before my time. I think KDE 3 was as close as I'll ever get to experiencing that.
After KDE 3 I used cwm for a decade because if we're going to burn the whole thing down, at least re-baseline to something simple and understandable.
Now I'm using sway with some custom keybinds since my keyboard doesn't have a Windows key on it. I can set it up and go rolling release and the interface stays the same until I want to do something else. This config file was last updated in December 2023 and is documented pretty well with my own comments. The last major change I did to the interface was switch back to Spanish to match my phone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, @12:59AM
Trinity FTW! https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ [trinitydesktop.org]
Myself, I switched after looking at KDE 5 (KDE 4 as installed by Slackware 14.2 was still tolerable IMO).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, @12:53AM
The coloring of ancient Norton Commander, or todays Midnight Commander, is in fact not random; it hugely helps preserve one's eyes in a working state.
When a mere half an year spent tweaking formulae in Word's black-on-white has resulted in new glasses, that after a decade spent writing code in cyan/yellow on blue had done nothing at all, I learned my lesson. Never again.
Which means having to totally recolor the code highlighting schemas. Is time-consuming but doable, while replacing failed eyes isn't.
(Score: 2, Touché) by shrewdsheep on Friday November 29, @03:33PM
F-keys have to be virtual desktops, window/screen presenters. It is an atrocity to use them for anything else. It is beyond me how people thought it a good idea to use them for arbitrary functions, different in each application.