What does your desktop look like?

JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 431 points –
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Here's mine. No inspiration at all taken from a certain California based company's OS ;p

I use:

  • Manjaro OS
  • GNOME desktop
  • WhiteSur icon theme (with a few icons changed in the desktop file)
  • WhiteSur GTK and shell theme
  • Bing wallpaper
  • net speed simplified
  • Logo Menu
  • Show Desktop
  • Top Bar Organiser (to move the time to the right)
  • Overview background

I apologise if I missed anything.

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This is my my phone running Debian with XFCE:

KDE + AeroThemePlasma

This is amazing. It even has the classic guassian blur.

Do the light ribbons that overlay the blur remain constant like in Win7? Or are they fixed on the window borders?

Yes, they remain constant. The theme author actually created a Plasma extension specifically for this!

That's quite amazing that someone is ab'e to replicate all those aspects of Windows' desktop environment, or whatever it's called

I wanted to install this but apparently it doesn't work with Wayland. A bummer, I love how Aero looks!

Oh, this screenshot is on Wayland! I don't think the author tested it on Wayland but besides a couple of negligible glitches the only thing that's missing is the slight blue tint on the glassy panel.

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That's an odd aspect ratio for a phone. And I can't say I love the look of that DE.

It's a foldable, unfolded. And that's XFCE with a Windows 95 theme - there's plenty of fans of the classic 90's look, in fact, people have made an entire operating system around that aesthetic.

I'd love that theme in my industrial equipment. Such a clear and concise visual language.

Ah, that makes sense with it being a foldable. As for the theme, each to their own, I guess.

What foldable are you using?

And how easy/hard was it to geht Linux running on it?

A modern phone running Linux, riced to look like 90s Windows.

Oh that's CRIMINAL.

Oh I love it.

I was born on 96' but I have to say this picture made me happy

This is so cool! I love the theme.

You have good taste in DOS games as well. Is the “CAT” folder the 1984 game “Alley Cat”?

Thanks! And yeah, CAT is indeed the old Alley Cat game.

Lol link me the phone natively displaying this

Based on the neofetch it's a Samsung Fold Z 4

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Day Theme Night Theme

Gnome + Dash to Dock + Arc Menu. Nothing too crazy.

Could you share your icon theme?

Tela icons.

(if you look at the night theme shot, there are other details of the setup in the terminal output)

You use both light and dark mode? And what's arc menu?

Yeah, so Gnome has an extension called Night Theme Switcher which automatically changes your background, icons, theme, cursor etc. based on a user-defined day/night schedule. It works great.

Arc Menu is another extension which gives Gnome a standard start menu (since it doesn't come with one by default) in the top lefthand corner. It also comes with a KRunner-like app launcher that pops up in the middle of the screen instead of using the default Gnome Overview UI.

Both these extensions make Gnome feel a little more natural for desktop use, IMO.

One of the great things I like about GNOME is how much you can customise it.

Yeah, the customization might not be as extensive as Plasma, but you can certainly add a ton of extra functionality with extensions.

I find this comment really funny, because while gnome is very customisable compared to the desktop environments in macos and Windows, compared to the majority of DEs/WMs in Linux, it's not very customisable at all.

Yep Behold KDE and XFCE.

<3 my pinephone pro

That's running on a phone?

Yes! SXMO Arch with waybar. It's a great little device (if you're ready and able to jump thru some hoops).

Also, you can embed images so I don't have to got to another site to see them like this

``![](image URL)

Just XFCE

Did you install a theme? That looks different to the XFCE I use on my Ubuntu VM.

Yes, I installed Catppuccin theme and Bibata Modern Cursor. What I mean with "Just XFCE" was that I didn't install any other software to add features.

screenshot of my desktop. Pictured are two floating windows, both kitty, the left one is small, with pfetch just executed, the right one is bigger, with Neovim, open on src/Compositor.cpp from the Hyprland repo. At the top is a mostly default waybar. The wallpaper is a cute promotional wallpaper for Slime Rancher.

Stuff here is:

  • Hyprland: Window Manager
  • Waybar: Status bar
  • Kitty: Terminal
  • Neovim: Editor
  • swww: Wallpaper daemon (Image (archive.org link, scroll down) is a promotional wallpaper for Slime Rancher)

Workspace 3, which I actually use:

the same desktop, but two other, tiled, windows are open. The left one takes up more space. Again both Kitty, the left one with ncmpcpp open, and the right one with newsboat open.

Additional stuff here:

  • ncmpcpp: front-end for mpd (Music Player Daemon)
  • Newsboat: rss reader

The pretty wallpaper and Catppuccin Mocha theme terminal carry the looks quite a bit tbh.

I need that wallpaper! Is there a way you could provide me that?

I never understood why people make their linux distros look like mac

The obvious answer is people who grew up using Macs tend to like the Ui and workflow.

Even though I've never enjoyed my times using MacOS, I'll still sell being able to perfectly clone it's desktop as a feature of Linux for those who do.

Its looks fancy and feels nice. Its really just a theme so everything else works the same. Everyone has different things they like.

I hate Apple but macOs is always super well.designed. if you wann know what Windows will look like in 5-6 years, look at the current macOs version.

I wouldn't use a complete macos theme with the logo and everything, but the mac design language does have some pretty nice details that even help usability.

For example, I love the double outline that macos windows have, the normal darker line and another lighter inside. To me, it really separates windows when I am working with several, and they overlap (I use mac at work), in addition to looking nice and giving some depth. That's just a little detail, but there are many like that one that is easy to see why someone could appreciate them.

Obviously it varies from person to person, there's also stuff that I don't like, but I do can see why someone would use a theme like that.

It looks nice. I still prefer the functionality and responsiveness of Linux though, and I didn't clone every feature of the macOS UI.

Themes and DEs inspired by Mac tend to have a very clear and consistent design language IME

Gnome also falls into the clear and consistent camp too.

I value consistency a lot

It kinda makes sense to me; my KDE desktop is basically set up like Windows in terms of layout (not theming). It's what I'm used to and prefer the familiarity.

I can imagine people who are used to MacOS like the familiarity of GUI layout and the aesthetics too. Also in fairness to Apple, it is an aesthetically pleasing desktop even if the layout and GUI elements (such as the dock or the top menu bar) isn't what I like.

MacOS is very user friendly (in my use-case. Everyone has different needs). I like they layout of the top bar, the dock front and center, the fullscreen "launchpad" as opposed to a start menu, etc. To each their own.

Just a completely blank screen atm, I updated to plasma 6 and it has not been going well lol

Well, mine looks like Windows XP, but not.

It's like the XP olive theme with the vista/7 style widgets sidebar - all you need is the RPM style CPU usage gauges.

I like the widgets , how can I get them?

They are installed by default with KDE Plasma. Although, on the taskbar, you can just get them in the KDE Plasma widget store.

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Pretty utilitarian on the ol thinkpad

devil wallpaper

not a BSD user

My brain bugged a little when I saw arch linux on the terminal.

What Firefox css is that?

I honestly don't remember but I do recall it's way more of a process than it used to be

Just did a fresh install of EndeavourOS with KDE 6...still using the same theme I've been using on 5.27 for months. I call it 'Windows 7 but better'

And yes I deleted my last comment while figuring out how embedding images actually works >.>

image

image

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Pretty simplistic, but I really like it :)

  • Arch
  • Hyprland
  • Lots of dracula

I use dracula for everything too! Thank you so much for sharing!

not a fan of that font, but cool setup

It's Monocraft, monospaced version of Minecraft font, makes me very nostalgic. First tried it for fun and giggles, but it stuck

1000007199

Here's my weeb'd out set-up. KDE Plasma 6 with the Breeze Dark theme and a slideshow of animu wallpapers.

Edit: gah I forgot to mention my OS. At the risk of sounding like a meme... It's Arch.

Like default KDE fedora. I’ve done zero tweaks

Does your keyboard have 13 number keys? How do you have 13 work spaces?

Some WM has chained-shortcuts or chorded key bonds, but it is more probably a shortcut of the style "go next workspace" and you can have as many as you want.

I wanted more workspaces, so I decided that ~ is 0, - is 11, = is 12 and backspace is 13.

Looks like this, 3 monitor setup

Image of a 3 monitor setup with Streets of Rage wallpaper across all 3 monitors.

GNOME 45.5 with only a few extensions. Most of the good ones break every time there's a new GNOME release anyway. I especially miss having the top bar on all monitors. Dash to Dock on the center monitor.

You use GNOME Web? How do you like it compared to other browsers like Firefox?

I rarely use it but I have it synced with my Firefox account so it should have all my favorites and tabs, but not its extensions. I sometimes use it to test something. I think it's an ok every day browser.

I think it might just be my theme, but it looks a lot like Safari to me. Apparently it is based on webkit. Can you send me a screenshot of what it looks like for you?

An image of GNOME Web 45

Thanks! So it does look somewhat similar to Safari even without the theme, but the theme makes it look even more like it, mostly by changing the button CSS.

If I ever started customizing my KDE Plasma, then that would be the last direction I'd ever go in.

Hehe, any kind of ricing can be taken too far.

Funnily enough I recently switched from WM's to DE (and KDE plasma at that) so that I don't spend entire days adjusting making pointless window border customization and autostart scripts that are already taken care of by a Desktop environment.

That said, I cant live without my keybinds so I've replicated the same on my Plasma setup.

KDE plasma 6 on Nobara. breeze with Catpuchin theme and wall paper

Can you link the wallpaper ? :-)

I'm basic...

Fedora Kinoite, Plasma desktop, Arc shell theme, and Catppuccin window/app theme.

I included more information about my setup on my Codeberg page.

I'm guessing you haven't switched to Plasma 6 yet? I had that clock widget and loved it, but now it doesn't work..

I haven't, Fedora will only get Plasma 6 on April. :c

What happened to the clock widget?? I really like it and don't want to lose it...

It hasn't been ported over to Plasma 6, any widgets that were on 5 need to be updated to work, unfortunately. So if there are any widgets that have been abandoned, that's it for them. No clue if Clear Clock has been abandoned, but it hasn't been touched since release, so that's concerning.

Crud, I had no idea. I thought they'd still work on 6 :c

So did I, so imagine my dismay when I updated Arch to find my entire desktop plastered with error messages lol..

Luckily every day there's more widgets being added, but I'm still missing a couple. If you keep an eye on the Plasma Extensions page, you can see what's currently available.

  • Debian 12
  • Openbox
  • Tint2
  • Minimal japanese wallpaper

Pretty minimal to my habits :)

Default GNOME I'm a simple girl

GNOME looks nice by default, but I couldn't imagine using a device without a net speed tracker anymore.

  • OS: Manjaro
  • DE: KDE Plasma 5
  • Global: Scratchy
  • Plasma Style, Window Decorations, and Colors are customized and don't remember their sources, sorry
  • Icons: Colorful-Dark-Icons
  • Cursor: Breeze

I know there's a lot of defaults in here, but this has been my daily driver for 6 years now and been loving this setup

Awesome ricing!,tired of people which bring mac os or windows ui desing in open source world.

Thanks a ton! I loved changing everything and finding what things I could or could not do without and optimize everything to my use-case. Getting off of my work Windows PC and logging into my home Linux PC feels like such a breath of fresh air

Looks very cool. Nobody could mistake this for any other OS :)

Thank you! I love the flexibility of Plasma and being able to make a uniquely me environment

What's the bar style achieved with?

It's actually just the normal KDE one, set as floating, then shrunk it to my desired size. My partner then added some embellishments to the wallpaper to make the clock and taskbar pop

Looks sweet, kinda reminds of the league UI a little.

I despise Apple, but ngl this looks beautiful

I also hate Apple, I just like parts of their UI. Other parts I don't like, like the long transitions on absolutely everything.

What music player is that?

Lollypop. I also have GNOME music, but after trying a bunch of different music players, I like this the best.

Wallpaper is Bing image of the day

I have a folder where I dump any interesting wallpaper I find, and it rotates every few seconds, so this is already inaccurate... :)

Fresh install, KDE Neon 6.0.0 user edition:

Can you actually use Microsoft Office and Google Messages, or are those just custom icons for other apps?

Btw, you're one of the only people with as many apps in their screenshot as me, lol.

lol

They're custom icons for Libre Office Write and Libre Office Calc. No MS Office here! Google Messages works perfectly as an official web app.

KDE Plasma on Manjaro Linux

  • Desktop folder pinned to left screen for working stuff
  • Conky on my 3rd screen for monitoring resources
  • Plasma Activity folder on 3rd screen for general folders used often (On Gaming and Video Recording activities this folder differs for those activities)
  • Golobonotes pinned notes on 3rd screen fore commonly accessed references

do you feel weird using logos for an OS you're not using? Like, I'd find it weird to use Manjaro's logo on my KDE Neon desktop. Maybe I'm just a stickler for da roolz

I would use a GNOME logo, but I like the puzzled looks I get too much :)

KDE on Wayland

KDE Plasma 5 on Wayland, Opensuse Slowroll. Big Sur theme with latte dock. 4 virtual desktops in a 2x2 grid (not visible in screenshot)

Different docks for different kinds of apps.. Slightly ugly, but very convenient.

I see you also like to pretend your device is an Apple 😂

To be honest, I've never owned an apple device: only Android phones and windows (with Linux immediately installed) laptops. However, I kind of like the icon aesthetic the most out of all the ones I've tried.

The theme also grew on me during my Gnome days, so yup, these days I pretend my device is an apple from a cosmetic sense 😂

I was given an iPhone that I used for a couple of years, besides that I haven't owned an Apple device too.

honest question. Why would you pretend?

I honestly just like many aspects of the UI, so I try and recreate those. The only thing that's actually just copying apple for no good reason is setting the icon of logo menu to Apple, and I mostly do it to see others' puzzled faces.

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed

  • xfce

  • theme (diy, but inspiration and code also from various themes)

  • icons (standard ones, diy & symbolic lucide icons, weather icons and openSUSE start button (i cant find again the source for))

  • wallpaper macOS Big Sur from 512pixels.net

That it i guess 🤔

Mint Cinnamon with a few tweaks.

Nice, that looks really cool. And that screen is huge, or at a tiny scale.

TY, and yes, it's a 1440p ulrawide, 34 inch.

I didn't want to post an even larger picture with, like, just my desktop, then with windows and neofetch and whatever because it'd be even larger, but there is a pretty cool detail in that my terminal is set to the exact same color and transparency as the panel so it matches beautifully when open. I kinda wish I could do the same thing with Nemo and Xed.

Mine is pretty simple, about the same since 2008, Xfce, with a bottom taskbar with window, a little bit like in Windows XP. I added Teams quicklaunch lately, else it's only file manager, FF, terminal.

Excellent. Mature, functional, clean.

EndeavourOS (Arch-derived), Hyprland, KITTY terminal, custom furry art wallpaper(s) that I commissioned.

Pretty close to default. Using SF Compact Display fonts and Newaita reborn icons. Most of the time I have a bunch of windows open and I rarely see the desktop, except when I start the day :)

If i wanted to use MacOS, i'd just use my macbook

anyways, my linux looks like standard mint... coz im a linux noob

Or they're getting the best of both worlds, a Linux desktop with the MacOS aesthetic. Not to my taste, but they're using Linux how they want it to look.

You can do a lot with the Mint Cinnamon desktop too, without much effort.

No, I normally don't use emacs as browser.

  • NixOS

  • Hyprland

  • Waybar

  • Dracula

--

Mine is simply default KDE. The only visible thing I've changed is the wallpaper -- changes to my desktop mostly concentrate on the "invisible" ones like shortcut keys or setting changes or scripting.

I am a simple person, GNOME on Fedora 39 with AppIndicator extension and I haven't even changed the desktop background (though other times I have used Bliss as my background)

I've been running stock Pop!_OS for quite a while now. The only thing I've done is pin the dock to the left side of the screen.

By the way, I see Toto coming up on your playlist!

More or less replicated the desktop layout I had used throughout childhood, sans desktop icons

  • Debian 12 stable
  • XFCE + Chicago95
  • Chicago95 black cursors
  • Helvetica bitmap font
  • Not shown: wdm login and slock screen locker
  • Running on an X230T with classic keyboard mod to complete the look

11 inch screen, so packed pretty tight. Openbox with tint2, left half of the top bar is conky. The bargraph that shows "Mem" is dynamic, it alternates between Mem/Swap/HD. I think the background image is from LXDE's very nice collection of wallpapers.

Seeing lots of discord on these. Anyone else like me and have to install updates to it a couple times a week from the package manager before it will open? I also notice it seems to close itself after a while, I think if the computer sleeps then wakes.

yeah discord is kinda fucking annoying on linux for that reason. i'd recommend something like vencord (vesktop) over discord's client

I just use discord in a browser on my machine. Cant stand the desktop client.

I have a custom animated shader as my desktop background

Debian with KDE. I've had this set up on my laptop for a few weeks to see how well Debian stable would work as a daily driver with Flatpaks and/or Nix packages mixed in. I'm really liking it so far, so I'll probably migrate my desktop over to a pretty similar set up soon. Right now it looks pretty similar visually, but is running Fedora 39.

How do you get the file edit view etc things in the top bar?

It's a KDE widget called global menu, but I believe there's also a GNOME extension that will do the same thing.

I'm on pop os with gnome but using dash-to-panel to get a more classic Taskbar look. I love that extension and seems extremely well supported even across upgrades, it's so good I donated. Maybe I'll add a screenie later.

As for op's pic, I understand liking a particular setup, but to use their proprietary icons too seems strange to me. To each their own, I guess. I thought it was literally a mac on a Linux /c.

I use gnome with dash-to-panel. I can't do docks or top bars.

Currently, I have 3 DEs installed that I use regularly. Cinnamon, i3, and Unity. Cinnamon is for retro themes, and Unity is for a modern mac look after tweaks. and i3 is just nerd porn

This is my most recent one. I’m working on a new one that uses tint2 instead of xfce4-panel. Having trouble with the systray though😤

At this point you might go for a hackintosh.

Nah, I'm just inspired my macOS's design, there are still many things I prefer about Linux.

For one thing, the UI on macOS feels very unresponsive, and that's not just because I've mainly used it in a VM, I've used it on a real device too and it had the same issues. It's a fundamental issue on putting transitions that are way too long on simple functions that don't need to be a transition at all. I can't even move the cursor normally, it's smoothed in such a way that it takes much longer to get it into a precise position.

Secondly, they refuse to use the same keyboard shortcuts as Windows and Linux, and I didn't see an easy way to change them back.

Thirdly, you need to sign into an Apple account to use many apps or features of the OS. They also block a bunch of things that are simple to do in Linux.

At this point why not use Pantheon instead of GNOME?