fridge

Reclaiming The Desktop

08 | 03rd Nov 2024

The computer desktop is where everyone spends all their time on a computer (unless their computer is severely broken and they're trying to get it to boot again).

In my opinion, it's not worth using a desktop unless you have liberty over every single part of it, so I've decided to take back control with my own customizations and preferences.

Operating Systems

For many people, their operating system is just a gateway to Google Chrome. They don't really care what OS they're using, as long as it launches a web browser and whatever else they need to do as effortlessly as possible, which makes Windows the standard choice.

Windows is great for running everything you need it to, but it's very limited when it comes to personalisation and it takes using a more controllable OS to realize how much you're missing out on. When I tried Linux for the first time, I went for the Pop!_OS distribution and it made me aware of how much I could actually do with my experience.

Linux allows you to make a choice over things you'd never even consider on Windows or MacOS, such as how titlebars look, how program windows present themselves and how the taskbar at the bottom of your screen behaves. Since my discovery of Linux, I've been using distributions of it since 2021 and I've valued the desktop experience more than anything.

Recently, I've decided to go the full mile and I've opted for fully customizing my desktop from scratch. That includes customizing my own theme, taskbar, and everything else that makes up the desktop.

Options

I knew that if I wanted as much control as possible, I'd have to opt for a distribution of Linux that comes with nothing out-the-box. I felt that Arch Linux is the most suitable, because its easy install script allows you to make preference choices unheard of on other distros while also not being too much hassle to install.

For the first time, I also went for i3 as a window manager. i3 is a tiling window manager, which means that windows are automatically resized to fill the entire screen as they appear. It's a keyboard-heavy solution, which means I'll be setting up keybinds in a text file to control the windows and to start applications. I'll also be removing titlebars for maximum space efficiency. Compared to a floating window manager (which is what Windows uses), I much prefer this workflow.

There are also many options for the taskbar at the bottom (including not having one!) so I opted for Polybar. Polybar uses a text file for setting up various displays and buttons that serve multiple purposes, from displaying the time in a custom format to displaying your download/upload traffic live. To compensate for the missing titlebars, I'll also be adding a text bar to Polybar that'll display the name of the focused window.

Since it's likely I won't have a dedicated button on my Polybar for launching applications, I'll add a keybind to my i3 configuration that launches dmenu, a minimalistic search option that allows you to launch any executable on the system (regardless of whether or not a shortcut is set up for it). This also removes the need to set up these shortcuts myself.

Final results

Click image to view full size

After spending some hours customizing i3, dmenu and Polybar with colour schemes, keybinds, fonts and functionality, I've accomplished a result I'm really happy with.

My chosen font is IBM VGA 8x16, the same font I use for code snippets on this website and the font used site-wide before the redesign. The icons on the Polybar come from Siji, a font that provides many icons for different purposes.

The volume indicator can be scrolled on to change the volume, and clicking on it will toggle mute. The time can also be clicked on to toggle a display of the date.

Afterword

If you'd like to see the configuration of this theme yourself, all customization options are available on this GitHub page.

I'd also recommend having a look at the subreddit r/unixporn, where you can find a whole community of people customizing their desktop just like me! Maybe one day, we'll all reclaim our desktops and be happy :)