r/UsabilityPorn Jun 28 '18

Welcome! [Why this sub exists]

146 Upvotes

r/UnixPorn has inspired a lot of creativity in the *nix community.

However, there is one problem.

A lot of the setups are too "riced-out" and unappealing for long-term desktop use.

This subreddit is an attempt to form a community around the love of practical, cozy, and solid desktop experiences.

DEFAULTS AND MINIMALLY-CONFIGURED SETUPS WELCOME! Let's create something special!

Rules:

  1. Screenshots of desktops must have at least one window open. You may include a screenshot of your blank desktop if necessary as an additional image in the album.
  2. Image links should either be from Imgur or reddit's built-in image service. Please don't use the Imgur album link unless you are posting an album.
  3. Text posts are allowed as long as they are relevant to creating a functional *nix setup. Try to post to support forums and desktop-specific subreddits instead whenever possible.
  4. Follow the reddiquette
  5. Right now only *nix (Linux, BSD (That includes Mac OS)) operating systems are allowed. This is open for discussion though.
  6. Moderators can be wrong. Don't hesitate to message the mods if your post has been wrongfully deleted.

Content Ideas:

  • Screenshots of a unique workflow for a specific task
    • ex. A desktop optimized for pen testing that has easy access to all of your tools.
    • ex. A desktop that you use graphic design with an easy-to-access color picker widget and Krita opened
  • Screenshots with beautiful software that ties in nice with your desktop
  • Regular screenshots of your every-day setup!
  • A short screencast of how you implement a given environment (DE, tilling windows manager, terminal multiplexer or even just your text editor) This idea came from u/piotr_wonsz
  • A photograph of your rig running Linux (Must have screen clearly visible and not glared out).
    • Ex. Raspberry Pi running a Nextcloud server and your Laptop right next to it with the Nextcloud page loaded on your web browser
    • Ex. Two project computers of yours comunicating through a socket application you wrote - I plan to do this, patent pending, patent pending, patent pending!
    • Ex. Your music production setup with MIDI devices hooked up to your computer and Bitwig Studio for Linux on your screen.
  • An album of a desktop environment with different GTK/Qt themes applied

UPDATE: I am now moderating this community as u/dougie-io.


r/UsabilityPorn 9h ago

Arch Linux - DWL

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20 Upvotes

im using foot for my terminal emulator, wmenu for my application launcher and a few other things such as notes and powermenu and im using qutebrowser with a simple privacy focused configuration as my main browser

dotfiles


r/UsabilityPorn 22h ago

Void Linux - Labwc

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11 Upvotes

r/UsabilityPorn 17h ago

[XFCE4] Void Linux with my game launcher

2 Upvotes

I really love how simple Chicago95 is, but all launchers for games I've found were either too bloated, or just... not Gtk, So i wrote my own, and it works pretty well!


r/UsabilityPorn 1d ago

[KDE] - like windows 10 and android table

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2 Upvotes

r/UsabilityPorn 3d ago

[hyprland] clean debian rice

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12 Upvotes

r/UsabilityPorn 5d ago

Where can I find configs for getting this simple yet elegant prompt? (picture from foot term)

3 Upvotes

I found this on foo terminal codeberg repository, and I truly like it but i have no idea how to implement it.


r/UsabilityPorn 6d ago

[sway] that's one way to resist the eyecandy of a computer

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23 Upvotes

I work (and play) on a 13" laptop I'll often put in my lap or on one knee, or in a weirder position. I don't want to fight with a tiny trackpad to move windows around and resize constantly. A tiling window manager helps.

But a tiling window manager invites (relatively) easy configuration and... ricing. Ricing takes time, is addictive, and will leave me with a desktop that's more edible than useful, and a few hours a week of my time taken by a sisyphean task.

Took a few radical steps and I'm down to this: as big a portion as possible of the visual interface(s) of my system must be no-crap black and white. Typeface is Noto, biggest Unicode support. I use a white-on-black rofi window as a launcher and quick actions menu for stuff like font testing and quick notes (scripts from a friend). Banished icons from my waybar a week ago (we'll see how that goes, might go back). My window gaps are... zero. I like opening the laptop to a black screen yelling at me to prove I have a reason of opening the computer.

It leaves the screen legible as hell, absolutely no nonsense from the UI, which makes it so that if I want to have fun, I'll have to build my own dopamine shot instead of relying on sweesh-swoosh effects.

I wonder how others feel about this approach. As austere as it is, it might actually be pushing me to open the terminal and/or a text editor and write an article, a script, or an image (like the wallpaper), read something, and not obsess once again over how my setup looks (which I have been guilty of plenty). Do you use any UI-mind-tricks like this, whether for the same reasons or other?

Here we go:

  • Sway WM, near-default config, just put everything to B&W
  • Waybar, near-default with a couple added scripts (PPD, keyboard layout, screen capture)
  • Rofi as a 40% wide sheet of paper
  • Prefer terminal for quick tasks, any other file manager for bigger operations
  • Prefer qutebrowser for quick surfing, but my default is Firefox

I can't decide if I'm being too hardline or poseur on the matter. I like looking at pretty setups, but I'm never quite satisfied with mine, this one having stuck longest.


r/UsabilityPorn 9d ago

[Niri] Calm + Zero bs

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51 Upvotes

- Vanilla Arch

- Niri

- Foot

- Fuzzel

- Mako

- Waybar

- Pywal16

- https://github.com/bitterhalt/dotfiles


r/UsabilityPorn 9d ago

Calm and Peaceful...

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101 Upvotes

r/UsabilityPorn 9d ago

Labwc Void Linux

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28 Upvotes

Labwc on Void Linux with waybar.


r/UsabilityPorn 9d ago

What's the best ergonomic(usability focused + simplicity) window manager?

7 Upvotes

Tried, niri, mangowc, dwl

I'm not gonna lie, but dwl is cool in these aspects, but i use mngowc, cause it hs more features(not ultra minimalistic)


r/UsabilityPorn 9d ago

Made a minimal wallpaper manager in C# (.NET 10) for my Hyprland setup

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I was using some messy shell scripts with mpvpaper and static images to change my wallpapers on Hyprland, so I decided to learn C# and build a native utility for it.

It's compiled with Native AOT, so it runs completely standalone with zero dependencies.

I'm 13 and still learning, so any real feedback on how to improve the code or the logic would be amazing. Sorry about my previous post, the description looked too much like AI slop because I asked an LLM to make the formatting look "professional".

https://github.com/hediye2620-glitch/AuroForge


r/UsabilityPorn 11d ago

i love the colorsss!!!

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67 Upvotes

r/UsabilityPorn 12d ago

My new setup based on guix home

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37 Upvotes

r/UsabilityPorn 11d ago

huh?

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0 Upvotes

r/UsabilityPorn 15d ago

My First Customization!

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20 Upvotes

r/UsabilityPorn 15d ago

[x11] nostalgia-based screensaver that you can play

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7 Upvotes

Sure it ain't much. Sure it's mostly AI generated codebase. But -- well, there's really not much here! Hope somebody else finds it as amusing as I found to develop it. Look at the comment below for more details. 😸


r/UsabilityPorn 18d ago

windowmaker rice 🪻

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30 Upvotes

dotfiles & WPrefs configuration: https://github.com/Ashwani1330/dotfiles_windowmaker


r/UsabilityPorn 18d ago

[awesome] void has been cool to use so far i guess

9 Upvotes

uhhh yeah this is cool right yeah


r/UsabilityPorn 19d ago

[LXQt, Openbox, Kvantum] IF MY COMPUTER IS FROM 2012 AND MY DISTRO IS FOR 2012 COMPUTERS THEN IT BETTER LOOK 2012! (Ft. VLC media player, Firefox)

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13 Upvotes

My first attempt at a ricing! I mixed and matched a buncha stuffs from other people (on opendesktop) and made this thing for my cutie computer. All black and red and emo all over! (For the record, I am a poser. Don't let me listening to Pierce The Veil fool ya. Emo is not my favourite genre.) I tried to give my computer an early 2010's feel while also not just recapturing Win7, I wanted her to look unique. (I use my computer mostly for teh internetz - browsing and such - but I also use her for other stuff, too, she's an all-rounder.)


r/UsabilityPorn 22d ago

[Hyprland] Debian Port / Auto-Installer for Caelestia!

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93 Upvotes

I've created an automated installation script and a dedicated repository for it here: caelestia-debian

  • Maps all the required Arch dependencies to their Debian equivalents.
  • Automatically compiles and installs Quickshell and QtEngine from source.
  • Added patch for screen recorder
  • Clone dots and sets everything up

r/UsabilityPorn 22d ago

ORW got scrolling :)

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22 Upvotes

r/UsabilityPorn 22d ago

Why does everyone optimize for RAM instead of CPU?

27 Upvotes

I’ve noticed that many discussions about optimizing Linux on older PCs focus almost entirely on reducing RAM usage. But what if RAM isn’t the bottleneck?
What about systems where the real limitation is an older or slower CPU with low clock speeds, limited cache, or weak single-core performance? In those cases, shaving off another 100 MB of RAM doesn’t seem to make much difference.
I’m curious about a different optimization philosophy: reducing CPU workload rather than memory usage.
For example:
Disabling unnecessary background services and daemons.
Using software that wakes the CPU less often instead of simply using less RAM.
Choosing lightweight desktop environments or window managers that minimize CPU overhead.
Tweaking CPU governors and power management.
Reducing browser overhead with content blockers and fewer active processes.
Disabling visual effects and compositing.
Considering kernel tuning or, on personal machines where the trade-offs are acceptable, disabling certain security mitigations to recover performance.
In your experience, what changes have produced the biggest improvements on CPU-limited machines? Which optimizations actually make a noticeable difference, and which are mostly placebo?
I’d love to hear real-world experiences rather than benchmark numbers.


r/UsabilityPorn 23d ago

[GNOME] Heavy anime rice with GTK4 hooks, but it survived a 2GB RAM torture test and runs GIMP smoothly.

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25 Upvotes