I Tried Designing My FIRST Linux UI

I always looked at screenshots of Linux desktops and thought to myself, damn, that looks complicated. I could never. But I secretly always wanted to design my own OS, so why not? It's got to be worth a try. The operating system in these screenshots is mostly Arch Linux, which is super customizable, but I am so not ready for the installation process or what I'm going to do after that. My week-long research and your comments turned up one answer. Endeavor OS as the foundation, which is based on Arch, and KBE Plasma for the UI layer. I heard that KDE is super beginner friendly while being super customizable, which is exactly what I'm looking for. I was still scared of messing it up on my actual laptop because it is my most beloved potato. So, I grabbed the ISO and booted up on a VM. The installation took like 5 minutes. Is that it? That was so fast. Well, then let's go all in. In the very beginning, I had to figure out why the hell my Bluetooth doesn't work. and thankfully it had a quick fix that I found on the Endeavor OS knowledge base. After that, I installed Flatpack, which is like an app store for Linux, and I used it to download every app I needed. Think we have everything we need now. A console, a browser, and a Dolphin. So, let's get this party started. This default Windows style taskbar is all right, but let me see what else I can do. There are so many options, I actually don't know where to begin. change the position, make a custom width, choose if it can float or not, and even its height. And then there are all these widgets to choose from. I can add more panels. Now it looks like Mac OS. But I don't really want this. Let's see if we can mix Windows in Mac OS to come up with something in between. How about this? One panel on the top with the system info on one side, most used apps in the middle, and app menu on the other side. Now I have the best of both worlds on my tiny laptop screen. The next thing I did was go to the settings and quickly change the wallpaper because sometimes the wallpaper alone adds a lot of character. I was kind of curious what themes other users created. So, I installed KDE's own theme store. After looking around for a long time to just try good themes that other devs had already created, I found a few that I liked, but this just wasn't what I was looking for. I want to design my own UI from scratch. Starting with the colors. To do that, I tried editing the main color scheme called Breeze, but there were a lot of different sections and I kind of got confused. Then I remembered Linux tends to have good documentation. So I looked up KDs and what do you know? Everything was explained. I want my theme to be bluish because well, I just like blue. So I started from the common colors, choosing blue and then making it darker or lighter for different sections and finally named my new color scheme. Let's apply it and see how it looks. I think it looks pretty good. The next step is the icons. And I'm going to be honest, I tried a bunch of different icon packs, but colorful icons just didn't sit right with me. I was this close to deciding to make my own monochrome icon pack when I suddenly found this beauty. It went perfectly with my current aesthetic. There was only one icon I found not to work for me. And I found the equivalent on other icon packs and made a copy with the correct file name. And now it all looks amazing. Finally, we want the right font. And of course, it has to be monospace. But which one? I tested Space Mono, DM Mono, and a bunch others, but this font really stuck with me. It's free and open source, and after trying it out on my system, I really ended up liking it more than the other fonts. It's just more balanced, I guess. Now that we have the basic set, let's dig a little deeper. The panel is translucent, sure, but it's not pretty enough. I have some options. Panels are a part of the plasma shell. So, I can either change the plasma style or use this tool called the panel colorizer. After going through the presets in the tool, I realized it might not be what I'm looking for. I don't need panel colorizer. I want to design my theme from scratch. So, let's go edit the plasma style. I tried installing a few community styles to get a sense of what exactly can be changed. But then, of course, I absolutely designed all of it from scratch with a little help from another existing style. Okay, the truth is I opened Dolphin, clicked on home, panicked because where are the themes? Realized I got to show hidden files. Got it. Then navigated a bit, found the existing theme, copied it, and changed the name and the metadata and everything. But little did I know that now I have to actually edit these SVG files. That's easy. I can do it in Figma, right? Right. Not right. Apparently, the best app to edit these files is Inkscape. I'd heard of Inkscape before, but never really tried it. After opening one of the files in Inkscape, it took me a few days to learn the controls. And this was the hardest part of this entire video. So, that should say a lot. Once I learned the few tools and properties I use more often, it was just the same as any other design app. Hell, even better. But that wasn't nearly it. Now, I have to figure out what the hell these mean and how I'm supposed to edit this to look like this. Can I just say I love love love the KD documentations. Like, I was ready to be confused the hell out. But the way the documentations explained everything like I've lived in a cave all my life genuinely caught me by surprise. It's super simple. There are nine pieces here, each with a unique ID. And each of them make up one edge corner or the centerpiece of the panels. And not just the panels, but almost everything else like the scroll bars or the buttons or the task overlays on the taskbar, everything. And just like that, I imagined what if there was a border around the panel and there it was. It looks good for an experiment. Then I started applying the same blue in every file. And it was really as simple as selecting a piece with a color, then choosing everything with that color, and that's about it. Let's apply the new plasma style we just made and see if it looks as good everywhere. I still am not fully happy with this panel because it would look too crowded. I'm itching for something different. I don't need panel colorizer. I want to design my theme from scratch. Fine. Let's see what we have. To be honest, none of the things really caught my eyes. Even the blurring and the gradient. Wait, wait, wait. Say that again. Uh, blurring. That's it. I've been really looking for a way to get this type of progressive or gradient blur on my taskbar or menu bar, and this might be my chance. So, after a few hours of trying a gradient with a blur or searching the internet for some hint of this ability, I gave up. But then I had an idea. If the panel colorizer allowed me to hide the panel completely, then I could put a progressive blur on the top of my wallpaper to fake the effect. And to be honest, it's probably more efficient anyway, but it looks good and way less cluttered now that the panel looks like this. So, the task icons don't look too good being so solid. So, I quickly changed their color to a gradient instead. Let's apply it and see if it works. Okay. Wow. We can't get too excited because we still have the windows to edit. Before we continue, I want to update my system just to be safe. And in the meantime, why don't I tell you about Brilliant, today's sponsor. Brilliant has thousands of lessons in all areas of tech, math, science, and so on. I don't like memorizing, so Brilliance quizzes and interactive courses help me actually solidify what I'm learning. And the great thing is I can just use the Brilliant app on my phone whenever I'm bored. Right now, I'm learning about building simple computers with bits and gates on the digital circuits course, and it's super eye openening. You can learn for free on Brilliant. Just go to brilliant.org/juxaptopose, scan this QR code, or click on the link in the description. Brilliant's also given you guys 20% off an annual premium subscription, which gives you unlimited access to everything on Brilliant. I think the update is done, so let's go to the next step. In the beginning of this video, I said I wanted to try these designs. So, I was curious how you'd snap your windows to these frames or if that's even possible in KD. Apparently, KD uses Kwin Quinn to manage windows. Hence, it's a window manager. And thanks to that, I can easily use a script like this one to achieve the dynamic tiling I'm looking for. Just follow the instructions here and apply. That is awesome. This layout is actually super helpful for multitasking right now, especially since I'm constantly searching for stuff. The next step, according to these images, would be removing the window decorations, which I can easily achieve by editing my current theme to remove the title bar and then close and open windows entirely with keyboard. But the thing is, gosh, how do I say this? I'm just going to say it. I like the window decorations. Okay, I like my options and I am keeping them. But not these ones. Not these. And not these either. How about these? Just hear me out. They're narrow and minimal, but color-coded, and I honestly like them. Unfortunately, it's still just a concept, and we got to edit the main theme. Once again, I had to find an existing theme, copy it, and rename everything. Before actually designing though, I got to make sure the buttons are not squares. So, in the configuration file, let's edit the width and height. Now, I can find the close, maximize, restore, minimize, and other buttons. Design the same rectangles again in Inkscape and hit apply. Wait, why doesn't it work? Oh, the config file must have the same name followed by RC. Okay, let's try again. What even? This is so cool. I can already see everything coming together. Next thing I want to do is edit the border, which is the same process we went through for the panels. So, let's apply that and enjoy the clean view. What else should I do to the windows? I want to make them transparent and blurry, but I'm worried it might become too overwhelming too fast. But we won't know till we try. I tried a bunch of different methods, but what really worked for me at the end was go to window rules and reduce every windows active opacity to 85% and inactive opacity to 75%. But right now, they're see-through. So, I want to blur all of these windows through the blur effect. But that was not really good. So, I installed a better blur effect, found the name of every window I wanted blurred, and added that name to the better blur settings. You can even add noise, which I found really cool, but not really for me. And now everything is uniquely blurred, and it's beautiful. Will I get tired of it? I don't know. We'll see. At this point, it looks like everything is styled in my theme, but there's one little detail left. Apps like Dolphin or System Settings are still using the default application style. And I mean, it's cool and all, but I'm looking for something new. One day, as I was browsing Reddit for Linux inspirations, like you do, I saw this really cool style. Plus, it was named after No Man's Sky, which I just started playing again, trying to give it another shot because the developers have been working really hard at it, and it's such a beautiful game. And uh where was I? Oh, yeah. So, it caught my attention, and I realized it works on an engine called Quantum. So, I had to give it a try. After installing Quantum, I opened Quantum Manager, loaded the theme file into it, and applied it. Of course, there were so many different settings to try, too. And Dolphin itself allowed for even more customization. So, I managed to make it look the way I wanted, but I still want my own colors on it. At this point, I knew I just had to look for the design file somewhere and edit it. Then, I had a better idea. Why not turn these solid buttons to shining gradients like my taskbar? Now my desktop looks a lot more consistent. Well, except for one thing. When I look around the place, I see a lot of things painted the way I want, but the UX is still pretty much KD, especially the settings app. One thing that bothered me was how the settings sidebar was so long and there were two columns next to each other. Sometimes lots of clicking back and forth and no real hierarchy. I went into the categories folder and tried moving them up and down and changing their names just to make the settings a little bit more to my liking. But I feel like I'm going to have to redesign the whole thing, but that's a video for another day. Still, let me know in the comments if you have any problems with Katie. You might have noticed that I'm still using the default widgets up here. I did try a bunch of alternatives for these widgets and saw the craziest things like Mac OS styled control centers, but I don't need all this. I'm a simple person and this application menu is not simple. Plus, it's all the way over there on the edge of the screen and I want my search box here in front of my eyes instead. I was wondering if Linux has something like Spotlight search on Mac OS and of course it does. I found this thing called KRunner and it's literally the same thing. Seriously, when were you planning on telling me that my issue with it is that it's ugly, but I couldn't find a way to redesign it like I wanted. So, I looked up my favorite word, alternatives. There are a bunch of projects out there, but I gave this one a try. ROI is really cool. It's called ROI. Okay, fine. ROI is really cool because you can just customize it with CSS. And as a CSS engineer myself and thanks to the clear documentations, I managed to make the exact design I wanted similar to the rest of my theme. Now all I have to do is create a shortcut for it and easily open it and type something. Finally, I got rid of this application menu and downloaded a new widget called simple customizable power menu and put any option I wanted inside it. I think I'm pretty happy with the way things look like now. Although I am getting pretty bored of this wallpaper, so let's change it to something else. And yes, I put the gradient blur on this one, too. The desktop looks kind of empty, but I have an idea. Let's put some picture frames on the screen, remove the background, and fill them up with some custom stickers I made. One here, one here, and just a bunch more. Now I'm happy. But J, this is just a theme. What did you do on Linux? Well, first of all, I had to install NeoBIM and actually force myself to learn all the keyboard shortcuts and use it. Then I installed Spotify and added a widget in the panel to be able to control the songs easily. And the pop-up is pretty awesome, too. And of course, I wanted the cool music visualizer everyone has. So, I installed Cava, which runs on the console. All I had to do is hide the window decorations and have it run in the background. Finally, I had to check out the gaming situation on Linux. And while I was pretty pessimistic, I found all of my games playable. What? Wait, did you hear that? It's a sound of liberation. This was just the beginning of my journey through Linux, so let me know what else to try. Putting this all together, are you tired of your same old boring desktop? Have you considered an exciting journey through Linux? Introducing the extraordinary mystical blue theme with a dash of peace, clarity, and excitement. It's not like the other themes. One user said, "Say hello to your stylish new blurry taskbar. Extraordinary, right? Same as our unique new window decorations. No scores or circles here, only rectangles. Doesn't it just look dazzling? And the best part is you can modify it as much as you like. So, what are you waiting for? Try the extraordinary mystical blue theme available on a Linux desktop near you today. Well, that's all for this video. If you liked it, make sure you do your magic down below and see you on the next one.