Linux Ricing days!

The Linux philosophy is ‘Laugh in the face of danger’. Oops. Wrong One. ‘Do it yourself’.
— Linus Torwald

I never thought I would be writing a blog about my experience with Linux, but here I am. It all started before I went to college for undergrad and I was introduced to the concept of “ricing.” For those who don’t know, ricing is the process of customizing the appearance and hacking functionality of your operating system to make it look and feel more visually appealing or it could be to make it less UI bloaty but efficient. Or in other words, making your computer work the way you want it to be.

For context, I was always been a Windows user before this summer, but always intrigued by the idea of ricing so during summer break I decided to give Linux ricing a try. I started with Ubuntu, which is one of the most popular and user-friendly Linux distributions out there. At first, I was overwhelmed by the terminal and the command-line interface, but I quickly got the hang of it. Now I can finally say that I’m a terminal pro. To back this statement I use the following command to record the screen instead of GUI apps :)

ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 30 -s 1920x1080 -i :0.0 -c:v libx264 -c:a -preset medium -crf 23 -pix_fmt yuv420p lol.mp4

Further as I explored more and more of what Linux offers, I discovered the world of customization. I started by tweaking my desktop with different themes and icons, but it soon evolved into more advanced customization such as creating my own scripts to automate tasks and creating my own window manager. I found the ricing communities on Reddit and Discord, specifically unixporn, helped me a lot in learning and finding new ways to customize my setup.

I eventually settled on using Arch Linux as my distribution of choice, as it allowed me to have complete control over my system and tailor it to my exact needs. I also found the Arch Linux community to be very helpful and supportive, which made the transition to Linux even easier.

One of the major advantages of using a standalone window manager, rather than a desktop environment, is the increased performance and speed. Standalone window managers are lightweight and don’t come with unnecessary features, which allows for a more efficient use of system resources. This results in a snappier and more responsive system. Think of it like upgrading from a bicycle to a sports car.

I’ve been using Linux for a 6 months now and I can say that it has changed the way I think about computing. The ability to customize and tailor my system to my exact needs has made my experience so much more enjoyable. And the best part? Everything is open-source, meaning that I have the freedom to make changes and share my creations with others. It’s like a potluck, but instead of bringing food, we bring our custom scripts and themes.

If you’re curious about Linux and ricing, I highly recommend giving it a try. It may be intimidating at first, but the community is there to help and the sense of accomplishment you get from customizing your own system is worth it. Happy ricing!