I’m not trying to mimic how Omarchy looks. I am looking to replicate a very specific end result not “turn another distro into Omarchy.”

There is one specific part of what Omarchy does that I am asking about: how to achieve the custom branding of certain aspects of the OS. Nothing else. I don’t care if the path to the end result is the “Omarchy way” or not, I’m trying to see what avenues exist to achieve that same end result. Linux has many ways to do the same thing.

I don’t need an LLM for that. I don’t want to use an LLM to try and achieve it. And I don’t have to. That’s the beauty of choice. I won’t be replying to you past this point, as there’s no merit here. Thanks for your engagement, have a nice night, day, or whatever time it is wherever you are!

Hello, TrollAccount69. 🙂

I could let AI think for me, or I could learn how to manage in on my own.

If you seriously want to employ AI effectively, I find knowing how to do what you’re asking it to do is the best way to get good results. Otherwise… Who knows what’s going to come out the other end!

I like to handle my system myself. Managing my install is fun for me. I’m just looking for general advice, not for someone to do it all for me.

Interesting. Thanks!

Cachy has been on my radar for a while, too. Definitely worth checking out, thanks!

Thanks for the links and advice! I’ll take a look at those dotfiles for sure.

Hmm, another solid call-out. ISO 100 gang, where you at?

True. I was hoping for an element of human experience, more general guidance and personal preferences than a step-by-step.

I’m sure the Arch Wiki probably has a page in it somewhere that covers the basics, and I definitely plan on looking for neutral resources like that. I’d also love to hear from the community, likes or dislikes, different software solutions. I always find it interesting and enlightening to learn how other people are doing things. 🙂

A fair point! You’d be surprised where some people’s deficits lie. I’ve used Linux for many years, but never bothered messing with the theming for greeters or the like before – I never really cared. 🤷‍♂️

So while I would definitely say I’m technically savvy enough to accomplish the task, it’s also something I’ve never poked before. Figured it couldn’t hurt to pick the collective brain of the Internet for knowledge and recommendations. Maybe someone out there knows a trick I wouldn’t find elsewhere, or a lovely piece of software I should look into.

A solid recommendation. I’ll bookmark it for a rainy day.

“I really only use the PC for gaming. Mostly, I play Valorant.”

There ya go, you’re not getting that working under Linux even if you are a master tinker. 🤷‍♂️ He did eventually switch, but not until long after he stopped playing Valorant regularly.

Some reasons are silly, some are incredibly valid. Sometimes it’s just “I don’t want to” and that’s OK too, lol.

As much as people whine about it as a trend, “/s” goes a long way. 😂

There’s no winning… I get you, though. And you’re right, they do think they know best… Which is why I won’t use GNOME. I left Windows for the same reason. And I’ll catch a lot of hate for it, but IMO GNOME is far too opinionated about how the end-user “should” interact with their PC for my tastes.

Honest answer: I’ve never had need of cutting edge repositories in Linux Mint, so I’ve never looked or tried. I would doubt that adding cutting edge repositories to Mint would be a good idea for system stability – there’s a reason “bleeding edge” distributions have a reputation for being a tinkerer’s playground. Look at the stability reputation of, say, ArchLinux as an example.

I love Arch, and have used it extensively over the last decade or so, but I would not recommend it or nearly any other rolling release to a newcomer to the space; if you aren’t comfortable getting your hands dirty in the terminal, it’s only a matter of time before you end up with an unstable system that may or may not boot without the confidence to fix it.

My one exception to the rule above, if you aren’t afraid of configuring some repositories for non-free software: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed was a wicked stable rolling release last time I tried it due to the way the organization behind it runs it. It tends to be a little heavier than what you’re asking for, but as far as graphical options for system configuration you can’t really beat OpenSUSE, IMO. YaST (their system configuration platform) has a tool to configure… Well, damn near everything, honestly. Even if the UI/UX feels a bit “dated”, everything you need is there.

Depending on how mission-critical your PC setup is, I might recommend doing a little “distro-hopping.” Back up your data, wipe your drive, install a distro and trial it for about a week or so. If one feels like it “fits,” just stay there.

I would not say Fedora is hard to install and maintain. The biggest issue by far is a setup hurdle for getting “non-free packages” enabled – Fedora (and a few other distros) is a “FOSS-only” distribution, meaning they don’t include anything by default that is not “free, open-source software.” That means media codecs for playing popular audio and video file formats, web browsers like Chrome (I would recommend migrating away from this platform if you’re using it) and anything else that’s “proprietary software.”

There are ways to enable access to this software, but it requires configuring your software package repositories to point to them. It’s not hard, just something to keep in mind.

Linux Mint is a great choice for newcomers to the space – it includes access to non-free software OOTB, has sane default applications on all of its “flavors” with their separate desktop environments, provides decent utilities for configuring your system graphically without blocking you from learning how to do so by config file or terminal should you want to learn. It stays decently up-to-date with packages, you won’t be on the bleeding edge but that’s not a bad thing. If you aren’t doing intense activities (gaming, video editing, etc) having the absolute latest packages won’t really matter to you. It still gets security updates, so you’re good there. It’s a well documented distro with a friendly community and forum if you run into trouble with anything. All around a really solid choice, and would be my first recommendation for someone not looking to do any heavy gaming or other specialized work on their PC.

XFCE is my desktop environment of choice. Not only is it lightweight, it also comes with some of the better desktop environment defaults, in my opinion. Linux Mint will theme it nicely upon install, but it’s a long-standing DE that has a huge backlog of support for customization and “beautifying” your install however you like. Lots of themes and cursor options for those who care, all without pushing your resources. It’s a traditional desktop paradigm, so it won’t try and force you to interact with your PC in new and unusual ways (looking at you, GNOME, you weirdo). It just… Gets out of your way and lets you use your PC the way you’re used to.

Linux Mint + XFCE is my recommendation, for sure.

I have the sneaking suspicion this was supposed to be sarcastic, but the Internet doesn’t carry “tone”… Am I correct? 😂

As someone who dailied Linux for years and years and whose primary use of my PC is to game… I have to disagree with you. The only title in my entire Steam library that doesn’t work is Halo: Infinite, and that only because I’m using an Intel ARC card which has a known issue running Infinite on Linux due to an incompatibility between a specific set of DirectX 12 calls and Vulkan. If I had chosen to upgrade to a new AMD card instead, I’d still be running Linux. But I wanted to support Intel, so here we are. When I’m done playing around on Infinite, I’ll switch back and never think about Windows again.

Hell, some of my library runs BETTER on Linux than on Windows with the ARC card. The only game that runs better on Windows is Halo: Infinite, and that’s only because it literally doesn’t run at all on Linux. 😂

It does not.

There is a place for graphically gorgeous distro’s

As a current KDE user but extensive user of XFCE in the past, it may not come “pretty” out-of-the-box but XFCE can be a very aesthetically pleasing desktop environment. It can be configured just about every which way, and if I had to switch back to XFCE right now I could have things just about how I want them and be 100% as happy with my desktop as I am with KDE.

It’s got defaults that just make sense, doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or the way we interact with our desktops, it’s light and fast and reliable. It’s associated default programs (Thunar, etc.) follow the same design paradigms and are a delight to use.

I Iove XFCE, and it will always have a special place in my heart.

Plus one for Linux Mint Cinnamon. Easily the best beginner distro, IMO. If you’re technical enough to advance past Mint w/Cinnamon, you’re probably technical enough to not need a service like the linked website.

It’s still nice to see tools like this coming out, though, as a show of support for newcomers to the ecosystem.

Endeavor is fantastic. For all the time I ran it, I never had any of the issues that people say Arch is riddled with: updates irreparably mucking up your system, packages making a mess of things, the AUR being unstable and dangerous. I’ve found that most of these claims come from people who are against the way Arch does things and have never actually tried it for any extensive amount of time.

You do need to be mindful of updates being pushed to your system (read the newsletters, they will tell you if anything in the update is broken and how to fix it) and have the technical know-how of how to fix those things when they do happen… And they will happen. That’s any rolling release, though.

Personally I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for gaming, it was a breeze to set up and continues to be a breeze to work with. I love every second of it. But EndeavorOS is a very close second for me.

My single remaining use for Windows is to run the CaptureOne photo editing software. It is, in my opinion, peerless. I love using it so much that it ruined basically all other photo editing suites for me. DarkTable, PhotoTherapee, ART, none of them come close for me. Everything else has some alternative that I’ve come to term with using, or even prefer using, but not CaptureOne.

I’m only a hobbyist photographer so it’s not like my livelihood is tied up in this software… I just get tired and sour working in other softwares, no matter how long of a trial I give them. Sometimes you find a solution that’s just absolutely perfect for you and the way you work, and CaptureOne is that for me. 🤷‍♂️

In my case, I’d have my host Linux OS for 99.99% of my use case, and then Windows solely for photo editing. But I opted not to do that just because of all my previous experiences trying to use a VM for any production level work with anything that’s graphically intensive. Apparently that has changed a lot since I last looked at it, or I didn’t dig deep enough and I missed the actually worthwhile software. I’m just not sure I’m going to put in the work. I’ve got a baby now, and haven’t taken a photo on anything other than my smartphone since she was born. 😅