Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

blues.win

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 77 posts

Re: The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

#41

Post by nickjj »

bagatelle wrote: post #38
nickjj wrote: post #15

Regular containers also happen to work great for testing dotfiles. Many years ago I added an install script to https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles to get set up in basically 1 command because I wanted a quick way to bootstrap my own system. I used the official Debian and Ubuntu images to test things. Over the last few days I refactored things further to support Arch Linux which has an official Docker image too. This e…

Just glancing through your dotfiles, I was wondering why you use VcXsrv. WSLg has always been fine for me, and I've never heard of anyone trying to use a different X server.

Thanks a lot for the reminder.

I just pushed an update to remove VcXsrv at: https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/commit/fdc1ddd95c2defb791...

As for why I was using it:

I've been using WSL since nearly the beginning (2017 / 2018) and used VcXsrv back then to get bi-directional clipboard sharing before WSLg was available. For a brief time I even ran Sublime Text in WSL 1 way back in the day.

Then I used WSL 2.

Then I tried WSLg when it first came out and it was really bad. Clipboard sharing didn't work for me which was the only reason I wanted to use it. I set `guiApplications=false` and never looked back.

I just tried it again now by closing VcXsrv and removing any DISPLAY related settings I had in my zsh profile. Then I shutdown WSL and started up my instance.

Bingo, clipboard sharing "just works" and I also installed xcalc which ran flawlessly. This simplifies things so much.

Re: The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

#42

Post by jcastro »

kayson wrote: post #13

I really like the idea of immutable Linux and bootable containers. My next project will probably be switching to bazzite. But I took a look at the Containerfile[1], and I have some big concerns about the fragility of their supply chain. It uses 20 different copr repos (granted, half are their own), and I didn't count how many packages. Best I can tell, none of the versions are pinned. They do dump a diff of all packa…

> It uses 20 different copr repos (granted, half are their own), and I didn't count how many packages. Best I can tell, none of the versions are pinned.

Contributor here, we've been working on this diligently over the past cycle (the rest of the org is mostly done, Bazzite is largest so we're only getting to it now). We're hoping to be done over the summer with published SBOMs and all that good stuff.

Re: The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

#43

Post by samhclark »

kayson wrote: post #13

I really like the idea of immutable Linux and bootable containers. My next project will probably be switching to bazzite. But I took a look at the Containerfile[1], and I have some big concerns about the fragility of their supply chain. It uses 20 different copr repos (granted, half are their own), and I didn't count how many packages. Best I can tell, none of the versions are pinned. They do dump a diff of all packa…

I agree with your concerns—at least, last time I looked.

I looked over their code, saw some things (I believed) I would do differently, and it was very easy to make my own personal spin to use.

After doing that, maintaining it, and using it daily for the last year I went back on some of my original choices. I feel much less critical of the decisions Jorge Castro made and it's probably time to compare and contribute if I can. Like, Homebrew on Linux ended up being way better than I expected. But some things I liked better my way. Say, including the signing keys for Chrome's 3rd-party repo statically instead of fetching them over the network. (Writing this from my phone I don't exactly remember how they do/did it.)

Overall, I'd recommend trying it yourself! It's been a ton of fun.

Re: The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

#44

Post by II2II »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #2

Sometimes I wonder why there isn't more enthusiasm around theming. Chicago95[0] is popular, but I also love how Garuda[0] themes KDE. There's some small websites for downloading themes on various DEs, but most of them are a bit jank and it seems built-in support beyond basic things like accents aren't there. [0] https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 [1] https://garudalinux.org/editions (screenshots don't do it justi…

> Sometimes I wonder why there isn't more enthusiasm around theming.

My guess: because it is difficult to develop software that can be themed and it is difficult to create themes that look good. Not only is it high effort, but it has relatively low returns. Themes mostly affect how things look and, ideally, have very little impact on functionality. I say ideally since, when there is an impact on functionality it is usually a negative one (e.g. buggy behaviour). Contrast that to a window manager or compositor: while it won't affect the functionality of individual applications (ideally), it does have a fairly significant impact upon how one interacts with the desktop as a whole.

Re: The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

#46

Post by II2II »

aecsocket wrote: post #25
gnomeluvscorpo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps with all these changes to GUI since initial Shell release their goal is to enter some niche mobile market and call job done. Because nothing else explains all this interface gutting out they did over 14 years. Once they finish sucking donations and other forms of financial support they'll probably announce it's time to " sunset " Gnome/gtk because it sadly didn't met unspecified expectations of unspecified gr…

This opinion of "Gnome is killing customization" is something I see quite a lot, but which I think people take the wrong way. It's absolutely true that Gnome is designed to be less themeable than other DEs like KDE, or individual WMs - and by extension, GTK apps and apps designed to be used on Gnome are harder to customize/break more when you do theme them. But I disagree that "customization of Linux [being] half-dea…

I generally prefer to live with defaults, so the lack of theming and user interface customization in Gnome is a good thing in my opinion. I tend to take the view that software that requires too much customization is poorly suited to my needs.

I suspect the thing that rubs a lot of people the wrong way with Gnome isn't so much the lack of customization or theming, but actual decisions behind how the user interface should work. People simply complain about the inability to customize Gnome as a reflection of how powerless they are to do anything about those decisions.

Re: The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

#47

Post by AlienRobot »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #2

Sometimes I wonder why there isn't more enthusiasm around theming. Chicago95[0] is popular, but I also love how Garuda[0] themes KDE. There's some small websites for downloading themes on various DEs, but most of them are a bit jank and it seems built-in support beyond basic things like accents aren't there. [0] https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 [1] https://garudalinux.org/editions (screenshots don't do it justi…

Until I can change the color and font of everything on Linux the way I can on Windows XP, I'll never take Linux theming seriously.

Seriously, just make GUIs. That is the solution to ALL of Linux problems. MAKE THE GUIs!!! I can't select the background color of panes from a color picker and instead I have to manually edit text config files and create folders inside dotfolders. Ridiculous. It's 2025.

Re: The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

#49

Post by wlesieutre »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #7
wlesieutre wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it always works well for like two applications and everything else looks half assed

That's how it works in GNOME, yes.

That and half of all new software being "draw a pretty picture, stick it in a webview" with no attempt to use the themeable widgets.

Even on Mac OS there used to be solid theming support (thanks, Unsanity) because software all used the system UI widgets. Not nearly as common anymore.

Re: The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

#50

Post by saagarjha »

nickjj wrote: post #15

Regular containers also happen to work great for testing dotfiles. Many years ago I added an install script to https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles to get set up in basically 1 command because I wanted a quick way to bootstrap my own system. I used the official Debian and Ubuntu images to test things. Over the last few days I refactored things further to support Arch Linux which has an official Docker image too. This e…

I have one of these too. In fact if you have a dotfiles repo and an install.sh GitHub Codespaces will run it for you when setting up the container: https://github.com/saagarjha/dotfiles/blob/master/install.sh
Post reply on HN