They certainly exist in Ikea here in the Philippines. I’ve been there a few months ago and the free pencils and paper tape measures (rulers?) are still there and being used.

I’ll add another datapoint. I’ve had to do some effort removing/disabling OEM bloatware and adware on my Xiaomi phone.

To be fair though, I bought it because it has good specs for its price, and I was already aware of all the bloat and adware that came with it. The first thing I did after unboxing the phone is to just excise all of that shit.

Global version from the Philippines, if you must know.

That loop of config hell is real! It has subsided recently because I got enticed into writing my own widgets. Also, yes to rainbow pastel (tho I’m using gruvbox as a base/reference color theme).

Can’t really remember much of how it looked out of the box, since I proceeded to customize it quite heavily. However, though my memory is fuzzy, I remember it looking like a combination of Windows XP and mid 2010’s Ubuntu.

Checking with the xfce website, they have this screenshot of one of their latest versions:

KDE has sane defaults when it comes to windows: it opens a window at cursor position and whether or not it’s fullscreen or maximized depends on what it is when you last closed the window.

So for example, if the LibreOffice Calc is maximized when I last closed it, the next time I use it, it’d be maximized.

Window rules, however, can be as fairly simple or as complicated as you want it to be.

For example, this is my settings for discord:

I set it to open horizontally and vertically maximized, on any virtual desktop in the ‘Background’ activity (not really something most KDE Plasma users make use of, but I do).

I had a similar workflow with maximized screens residing on different workspaces. KDE Plasma also have window rules which you can set on a per-program/application or a per-window basis (for example, main window for a program goes fullscreen into one monitor, in a workspace you specify, and the tools window opens in a different monitor in the same workspace you specify).

I used KDE Plasma for a long time ever since I started daily-driving Linux.

I like how KDE Plasma allows quite a surprising amount of customization. I also had some experience with Gnome via Ubuntu, and XFCE. Gnome looks polished, but doesn’t allow for much customization. XFCE is a lot more customizable than Gnome, but getting it to look quite right took a lot of effort.

I might be displaying my ignorance of TTRPG systems, my Linux distro and my window manager, but here we go!

Arch Linux [uncommon armor]

• manual installation process — +2 WIS
• Arch Wiki — +2 on arcana checks
• AUR — +1 DEX
• system update — after every long rest, roll a d20. on a nat 1, you have disadvantage on dexterity saving throws until the next long rest.
• I use Arch btw — +2 on persuasion checks against people who use this same armor

Customized Hyprland [rare armor, attunement]

• attunement prerequisite: once every long rest, roll arcana with DC 25. must succeed thrice
• unlimited customization — when attuned, +2 CHA
• perpetually under construction — regardless of attunement, -1 DEX

Customized Neovim [rare weapon, attunement]

• attunement prerequisite: once every long rest, roll arcana with DC 25. must succeed thrice
• unlimited customization — when attuned, +2 to attack rolls
• learning cliff — disadvantage to attack rolls when not attuned to this weapon
• I use (neo)vi(m) — regardless of attunement, +2 on persuasion checks against people who use a similar weapon to this one (DM discretion)

Ventoy USB [uncommon accessory]

• various installation media — +1 CON

EDIT: formatting

KDE themes are a mixed bag for me. On one hand, they can potentially provide theming for little to no effort on my part (provided I do find a pre-made theme to my liking), but on the other, I had more luck with mixing and matching (and a lot of tweaking) different theme components (that is: color theme, application style, plasma style, window decorations, icon theme, cursor theme, etc). It’s a lot of work, and the result might not exactly be coherent, but you can really tweak quite a lot.

I haven’t really tried emulating the win7 look and feel by customizing KDE Plasma, but I think it’s possible. Someone in this comment chain claimed there’s a Win7 theme available, albeit not pulling it off perfectly. I guess that can be used as a starting point.

KDE Plasma + Klassy can do that. I think you can pull off a Win7 look with just those two.

KDE Plasma can get you far with its customization options, and Klassy adds more customization on top of that, and adds the translucent/transparent effects you need to emulate the Win7 look.

As far as I understand those selectors work, using shift as the level 3 modifier is a bad idea since …

I suppose customizing the keyboard layout such that SHIFT can be used as L3 modifier can be done. Otherwise, you might want to refer to /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst.

Here’s the relevant part(s):

It depends on what you need on a terminal. If I just wanted a terminal, I’d go with Foot, but Konsole (on KDE Plasma) might be a good all-around solution.

Thanks for the explanation. Prior to our exchange, I didn’t even know such a thing is possible. It’s wonderful, though to be honest, being as technologically klutzy as I am, I might find it easier to just buy a different set of hardware for my win10 to use, if ever, and disable any networking capabilities (because if it’s no longer supported, it needs to be taken offline).

Again, thanks!

I swear, I can read the first part of your first sentence just fine, but I don’t understand what it means, lol!

I tried to look it up, and as far as I understood it, it’s a technique that allows a virtual machine to access a physical GPU directly. I guess that means that even if your VM is elsewhere (a server or wherever) it can still use the GPU you have. But the more relevant part is that since your Win10 install is on a VM, it can’t do shit on the rest of your system, and the GPU access is just there so that it won’t run as slow as shit when gaming, right?

Huh, that’s interesting. I’ve gotten used to using the Grub menu every time I had to reboot (which is quite often), but it defaults to the Linux installation (auto-selects the Linux install after a timeout), so if I want to go to Windows, I’ll just have to make sure I catch the Grub menu.

I’ve kept a Windows 10 install on a separate SSD for the programs that stubbornly refuse to run on Linux (games, in my case). However, I won’t be upgrading that to Windows 11. I’ll just reclaim that SSD for other purposes and use Linux exclusively.

I can only speak from experience but from my understanding most people’s knowledge of Linux is derived solely from wanting to do something and then figuring out how to do it, instead of studying a list of “things you must know to use Linux”.

I second this. While I’ve been exposed to Linux quite a while back (Linux Mint, circa mid-2000’s if memory serves me right) and was given a “Linux basics” rundown, I only started daily-driving Linux around late 2019, and by then, my knowledge of Linux pretty much have faded. It still hasn’t prevented me from getting re-familiarized with Linux (Manjaro, then Arch). Of course, some bit of knowledge would help, but a lot of the Linux basics you’d need are already out there if you need it. Just look things up if the need arises.

Also, I find having to learn something I don’t immediately would need to use not very productive, even counterproductive at times since it leads me to having a mindset of “I should already know this, why am I‌ being so stupid?”

So yeah!‌ I second this sentiment of “just use your computer, look things up if you have to, it’s not going to hurt.”

And oh, don’t be afraid to mess with your computer from time to time. If you’re concerned about breaking things, you can install the distro of your choice into an old laptop or something, and use that as a place to “mess things up.”

Edit: I forgot that OP already is using Linux in a virtual box. OP can use that as a laboratory to “mess things up.”

Thanks! I’m glad to have inspired you.

While KDE Plasma offers a whole lot of options for customization, it’s really daunting especially if you’re just new to it. What really helped me is to just go with a little bit of customization and tweaking at a time. As I got more experience, I started to want more and more which lead to a lot more customization and tweaking.

I’m weaning myself away from it. However, it’s still unavoidable in my case because my work uses it. Thus, my work-related appointments and such are on there, which is one of the reasons why I had that widget in the first place (to monitor work-related appointments, deadlines, etc).

I’ve been working on it on and off since I’ve started using this system. It started with just the basics, tweaking the defaults, wanting more, and so on and so forth.

I usually can spend an entire (weekend’s) afternoon just tweaking things, making a change here and then, and observing if I like the changes I’ve made. Rinse and repeat that over a period of several months.