mojibake

D e s k t o p . C O N F I G

Here I'd like to outline what I do to config my desktop how I like lately. There was once time where I would pour endlessly over dot files in r/unixporn, and I'm still that person deep down, but as things change and compton is replaced with picom so now you have to learn that or weyland is replacing xorg and so on. So these what are ironically considered minimalist tools expand in their entropy of consistency i just think "wow all this sucks." Sometimes when I hit shit like this, where the tech (specifilcally in relation to ricing) is just this elitist naval gazey rabbit hole of needless complexity that barely works and researching it leads to forum posts by nerds who hate you for knowing where the question mark key is, I hear Terry Davis' rant about how hackers are lame, decoder-ring-having-ass-children, and how everything in tech is a psyop to make it all unfun so as to create tech illiteracy to further government and corporate control over the infrastructure in my head. I dont think he's LITERALLY correct, but I think the spirit of it holds. ## CLI login I prefer to log in at the terminal and have the window manager populate from my `.zshrc`. To achieve this I perform the following. - Disable lightdm from launching at boot: ```bash sudo systemctl stop lightdm.service ``` - Place the following at the end of my `.xinitrc` to launch xfce4: ```bash startxfce4 ``` - And the following in my `.zshrc` to detect when im using TTY 1 and only run startx when that's the case. ```bash if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ "$XDG_VTNR" = 1 ]; then exec startx fi ``` ## XFCE4 I wanted to try something new-to-me, old-to-time, stable, and well documented. I've heard nothing but good things. and just look at this guy,

He looks so stressed out! Truly a mouse who understands the modern reality of americas descent into fascism. Let's get into the docs. https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/install_new_themes

Wait, im sorry, did you just tell me to download themes from DeviantArt??? Deviant Art Dot Com? Blessed are the furry artsts for they shall inherit the internet. Ok I'm already in love. How do I follow this thread. When I was active on deviant art circa 2010 I was using a Windows Vista machine my mom got for her job. Lets frutiger Aero this rice. Oh BLESS. https://github.com/x35gaming/ReVista?tab=readme-ov-file

## VLC skins as a treat - https://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.php - https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-skins2-go.php?url=windows_media_player_12.vlt Beautiful. ## Optionally Blur FX https://github.com/dev-andi/xfce-blur-effects I used this- the instructions are pretty good so I wont repeat them here- but also I experienced some major performance degredation even on my laptop with crazy specs so use at your own risk. ## Troubleshooting ### Tools At multiple points while figuring all this out (this is a very streamlined process and admittedly simple, but I tried a number of things prior to settling on this) [xfce4-settings-editor](https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-settings/editor) This is the GUI tool of [Xconf-query](https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfconf/4.18/xfconf-query) xfce4-settings-editor works a little like a registry where you set values of properties. However learning how to use the ### Vocabulary [xfxonf](https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfconf/4.18/start) outlines configuration documentation - Channel - Xfconf is a hierarchical (tree-like) configuration system where the immediate child nodes of the root are called “channels”. - cli option - `-c` - `--channel` - Property - sets the - cli option - `-p` - `--property` - Value - the data populating a property that effects behavior. - cli option - assumed with specifying value type with `-t` or `--type` ## Security ### Kiosk Mode System administrators can lock certain values or entire channels to prevent users from changing them. In this case, the administrator may provide default values that will be used regardless of what may appear in a user-writable configuration file. The session manager offers support for the Kiosk Mode, that helps to prevent users from making changes to their session settings. To use it you have to edit or create the file ${sysconfdir}/xdg/xfce4/kiosk/kioskrc. - [primer](https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfconf/4.18/start#kiosk_mode) - [configuration](https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-session/4.18/advanced#kiosk_mode) ---