Was about to mention this. 25y+ linux user here, we all had our ricing phase, where we'd customize our desktop and shell to oblivion. Now, I'm always on a as-vanilla-as-possible Ubuntu machine, or a Macbook with the same default wallpaper that came when I bought it.

The only thing I do to my new systems is installing oh-my-zsh, because that gives me a lot of goodies for basically zero configuration (I just use and learned the default presets to be "my own")

i'm using the default macos wallpaper as well. i almost never see the desktop, anyways... on my sway desktop, i don't have gaps or anything -- doesn't matter to me, i'm too busy doing something.

Or if you customize for ergonomics, the phase can last you a lifetime

I guess I am still in that phase then, after 25y+ of Linux. Not that I rice constantly but that I configure my desktop exactly how I like it and then let it stay. Usually the ricing/configuring comes when I buy new hardware.. so not that often. Or when a major change like Wayland comes around which is what made switch from Arch/X11/Bspwm to Arch/Wayland/Hyperland. I have tried but can not use vanilla for long... I just have to adapt the system to me. I feel constrained if I have to adapt to the system.

The only major non-vanilla thing I had was Rectangle, couldn't live without it.

Now I've replaced it with a Hammerspoon script with some additions like setting my window layout based on where I am.

It's so much easier when you don't need to customise everything to the nines.

(I SO MUCH want to like and use Nix, but every time I've tried I've failed :D)

I always had a keybind to toggle gaps. sometimes certain layouts just feel congested, and the gaps put spaces between the windows and helps them feel like they are in their own space (even though it makes them even smaller). It's purely psychological and often doesnt make sense, but it's not just "show off the wallpaper and waste real estate", it's for mental processing.

And same goes for the icons. I've personally never gotten there. but also, I don't look at the icons. They could be hidden. I know if I need to get to slack or email, it's on workspace one. So if the workspace badge says "1" or "1: Comms" or "" ... it doesn't really matter, because the keybind is muscle memory anyway. But on the flip side, because all of that is muscle memory... I might go "Where was my email at again? Workspace 1, or 2?" and having an envelope as the label makes it easier to find.

Different people have different workflows. And yes, some people are doing those things to sacrifice usability in the name of aesthetics, but some people may be GAINING usability by doing these things. People are vast and diverse.

I use gaps in sway. My windows have margins anyway because I use a border to indicate the active window and the border uses that margin. Fortunately sway has a built-in setting be space saving eg. in single window cases (where I know the window had focus always).

I set this up many years ago and never changed it.

There’s a 500 line script called “xborders” that will draw eye-candy borders on i3. By default I think it does solid colors, but it is 500 lines of Python, I bet you could customize it to draw whatever gradients you want. Needs a compositor, of course.

I guess you sabotaged your own point with the answer. If it takes a full weekend to just have my DE look like what I feel is needed, that's a lot of time wasted that you could be doing useful work or even gaming, in that sense, idk. But to each their own.

I was a ricer before in my heydays of Linux, but now, after 25 years, I just use whatever comes by default with Xubuntu (XFCE) and a Macbook

Further down the list, the biggest offender for me was 'Golden Era' there is no way you're using that to do actual coding (shown in the video).