What's a unique customization on your Linux machine you think no one else has?

I use KDE's defaults.

I made a user for my partner

Small thing, but I really like it: I have ~/autoclean_tmp directory on most of the hosts I use as a desktop. Then on crontab I have a find-command which automatically deletes files which are 7 days or older. I can throw stuff I download from the internet and copy from other hosts, random text files when setting up new stuff and so on in there and they just vanish after a while.

Maybe a bit plain since I'm only at mediocre level in my Linux journey, but I use my favorite fonts for Kitty. Recursive Mono Linear and then for italics and comments in neovim I use Recursive Mono Casual Italic.

Recursive Linear is so tidy and neat, with just the lightest touch of personality. And Casual keeps that style but tweaks it just ever so slightly to a more comic. And they have sans versions of both as well for everything else.

I also made my own Starship prompt to match my desktop. It runs an easily reconfigurable color palette and uses color coded chevrons to denote different git statuses.

Does stuff I wrote myself count?

Apache server that has a bunch of webpages that are all configured by simple JSON files and loaded by PHP. The pages have buttons on them which when pressed enter macros. So I push "Deploy Landing Gear" and Shift+alt+F8 or some obscure as fuck combination no one would ever use normally gets pressed and the game can be set to use that keybind. Most of it is for simple immediate key presses but also made a few for macros as well.

The HTML/PHP that runs the show is a grand total of 2018 bytes, including comments. Plus a fairly bloated 2444 byte CSS file that includes some button colour options that I never use now because I decided they look ugly. Should update some of the background images though, my sheet steel Faulcon DeLacy logo looks a bit basic.

I have stickers on it, some of them hand drawn by my daughters.

My applications menu icon (or the “start” menu for the philistines) is a 🐢.

I'm using XFCE with Compiz, and since I have two monitors I have a 3D octagon instead of a 3D cube desktop.

I use this app (webapps is the name I think) to make apps for YouTube, Mubi and TorrentLeech and I have then pinned on the task bar and use them as apps instead of webpages. This is in my hometheater pc

I use many KDE activities all mapped to a single hotkey. Meta+H, Meta+J, Meta+K, then L, Y, U, G.

I set my browser and maybe one other as sticky to show on all. I also have specific desktop picture for all of them.

On top of that I have a startup command that opens all applications I use for work. Each application is configured to open in a certain activity.

The end result is that instead of doing Alt-Tab or looking for the window I do Meta+Key and it's there in front of my eyes with focus.

Coming from Windows, I set up KDE's Spectacle to open with Super + Shift + S in Area Select Mode and save and copy to clipboard on click release

Maybe not as unique but kinda neat I think

I have an old gamer keyboard with extra programmable keys on the side, which I use for cut, copy, paste, close tab, close window, etc. Logitech provides drivers/software for Windows & Mac only.

To make it work I have a custom monkey-patched USB driver that I compiled from source, some weird daemon that interacts with the driver and some shell scripts on top of that. I'm not sure how but it works thanks to a 9 year old youtube video made by a guy from eastern europe somewhere.

When I press Super + PrtSc, a bash script performs the following:

Takes a screenshot of the entire desktop (import -window root) and saves it as ~/screenshot.png..

Analyzes the screenshot to calculate the "mean brightness" value of the image. It converts the image to grayscale and determines the average pixel brightness (a value between 0 and 1, where 0 is black and 1 is white).

Checks if the image is dark by comparing the mean brightness to a threshold of 0.2. If the mean brightness is less than 0.2 (i.e., the image is very dark), it applies a negative filter to the image (convert -negate), effectively inverting the colors (black becomes white and vice versa).

Sends the image to a printer (lp command) named MF741C-743C for printing.

Machined badge reading "Built Not Bought".

My dad used to put them on the cars he built.

I suspect my habit of having an alias userctl="systemctl --user" is slightly unusual, as is running Firefox, Steam, and some other graphical programs as systemd units is somewhat unusual (e.g. mod4-enter runs systemd-run --user alacritty)

But what I'm actually pretty sure is unique is my keyboard layout. I taught myself dvorak a summer some decades ago, but the norwegian dvorak layout has some annoyances, so I've made some tweaks. Used to be a Xmodmap file, but with the switch to wayland I turned it into a file in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/.

Part of what I did to teach myself dvorak and touch-typing at the same time was randomize the placement of the keycaps too. It has a side effect of being a kind of security by obscurity layer: I type quickly and confidently, but others who want to use my machines have an "uhh …" reaction.

I have two mice, one for either hand, and use xinput to flip the buttons on JUST the left one. It's actually one of the main things keeping me from moving to Wayland, which doesn't seem to have the same configuration features

I have scripts set up to switch between my desk setup and my home theater setup that swap monitor configurations with wlrandr and default audio devices in wireplumber. These scripts are triggered with the "Netflix" button on my Nvidia Shield remote via Home Assistant and SSH. Simultaneously on Home Assistant power to the peripherals on my desk is toggled, the TV input is toggled between the Nvidia Shield and the PC, my AV receiver settings are toggled, and if the PC was asleep, it's turned on with a WoL magic packet.

I use compose key sequences to save time writing out long email addresses. For example, I have something like this in my ~/.XCompose:

<Multi_key> <b> <o> <s> <at>: "myangryboss@company.com" # Email of my very angry boss

So I can just type Compose (right alt on my system), bos@ and get his email address. Less error prone than typing out emails manually.

I'm probably not the only one to use compose strings as a replacement to a text expander, but I don't know anyone else who does this.

I'm one of at most a handful people in the world with a full disk encrypted Steam Deck and unlocking using the touchscreen.

Until someone implements https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/464 in Bazzite.

I am indecisive when it comes to wallpapers so I have a script somewhere which accepts tag-words as arguments and then scrapes wallhaven.cc for those words at the resolution of my setup and picks one that contains those words at random before downloading it to my wallpapers folder and setting it as my wallpaper image.

So for example, you could just know you want something blue so you would run wallpaper blue and it just grabs one and sets it. You could get a wallpaper of the sky, of a blue car, of the ocean, whatever happens to be a wallpaper that met the criteria of the word/s supplied.

I've got a RPI running a full-screen 'kiosk' view from homeassitant that turns an external display on/off based on a motion sensor.

So basically it's showing current temperatures, thermostat control, etc. but I have the display turn off after X minutes of no movement and turn on when there has been movement so it's only on when you're in the room.

While I doubt the concept is unique, the script is: a keyboard shortcut will check the clipboard for a YouTube link and then show launcher options for mpv or yt-dlp, including launch arguments for lower quality format and audio only. It launches that in a terminal for easier handling when yt-dlp doesn't work properly (much more common if using proxies, but also if a video is age-restricted or deleted).

So when I see a yt link here, I can just copy it, keyboard shortcut and then it's playing in my local video player.

edit: here's the script. It assumes xsel (clipboard access), rofi (menu creator), gnome-terminal (terminal) and notify-send (system notification on failure) are installed and working, you'll need to replace any which don't match your system. My DE just runs it in bash when the shortcut is entered.

#!/bin/bash

ARR=()
ARR+=("mpv full")
ARR+=("mpv medium")
ARR+=("yt-dlp")

NORMAL_URL=`xsel -ob | sed -r "s/.*(v=|\/)([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11}).*/https:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=\2/"`

CHOICE=$(printf '%s\n' "${ARR[@]}" | rofi -dmenu -p "mpv + yt-dlp from clipboard")
DOWNLOAD="false"
MPV="false"
OPTIONS=""

if [ "$CHOICE" = "mpv full" ]; then
	MPV="true"
fi

if [ "$CHOICE" = "mpv medium" ]; then
	MPV="true"
	OPTIONS+="'--ytdl-format=bv*[height<721]+ba' "
fi

if [ "$CHOICE" = "yt-dlp" ]; then
	DOWNLOAD="true"
fi

if [ $MPV == "true" ]; then
	COMMAND="mpv $OPTIONS $NORMAL_URL"
	gnome-terminal --title "$NORMAL_URL" -- bash -c "echo $COMMAND;$COMMAND;if [ \$? -ne 0 ]; then notify-send 'yt-dlp failed' $NORMAL_URL; bash; fi;"
elif [ $DOWNLOAD == "true" ]; then
	COMMAND="yt-dlp $OPTIONS $NORMAL_URL"
        gnome-terminal --title "$NORMAL_URL" -- bash -c "echo $COMMAND;$COMMAND;if [ \$? -ne 0 ]; then notify-send 'yt-dlp failed' $NORMAL_URL; bash; fi;"
fi

I boot on a custom EFI app to control my dualboot (instead of systemd-boot or grub) that asks a service on my proxmox server which OS I'm supposed to boot.

Overkill, but it allows me to control my dual-boot without a keyboard in my computer (because it's a Bluetooth keyboard so I can't really use it in grub anyway)

CTRL+SHIFT+L to sync my room lights to the screen using huenicorn. Plan on hooking up openrgb as well when I can be bothered to write a script.

I have a meshtastic script that runs once a day that sends a weather report for our local area at 6:00 am. It was based off a script that some awesome person did. I also have a script that once a week sends out ham/meshtastic events to all local people. Its worked out pretty well.

On my desktop, I wrote a Python script that pulls a random Star Trek: The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine script from a folder and prints it in STDOUT. I use this in the XScreenSaver Text Manipulation > Program option to turn Star Trek into a screen saver.

Currently, I use it with the Apple II screensaver, but in its original incarnation, I used the Star Wars intro screensaver. 😈

My keyboard automatically change the keys depending of the app I'm using: closing a tab in the terminal or closing a tab inlthe browser are always the same key.

https://git.chimrod.com/smartcropad.git/about/

Definitely not nobody but statistically VERY FEW people will have this combination:

• pop!os (fight me!)
• script that limits accumulator charge to 80% on asus laptop
• script that turns on vpn if out of home and kicks off a backup if at home (through wifi ssid)

Edit: nice try to fingerprint me, big tech. You succeeded! /j

Custom cowsay written in Rust that pulls German song lyrics from my favorite band from a text file?

I've got basically the bspwm workflow, but on KDE.

So, bspwm has tiling of windows and doesn't want you to minimize (nowadays, it actually has a minimize-feature, but back when I last used it, it didn't). As a result, if a window is open, it is visible on some workspace. If you want to hide windows, put them on a different workspace.
I like that workflow, because while it probably seems complex when you first hear about it, it actually simplifies things. When you're looking for a window, you don't have to check all the workspaces and minimized windows and behind other windows.

KDE adds to that, in that I can have a workspace overview in my panel, so where I can see all workspaces with the windows that are visible on them (which with this workflow is all windows on that workspace). I like to call it my minimap.
It makes the workflow a lot easier to use, but it also allows me to group workspaces by location. So, if I'm working on a topic, I often have a Firefox window on one workspace, my text editor on the workspace below and then a terminal on the workspace below that. If I then realize, I need to quickly look up something for a related topic, I'll open up a new Firefox window two workspaces below that (leaving an empty workspace as separator). If I do something completely different, I might leave a whole bunch of empty workspaces in between. Or, well, KDE actually allows grouping workspaces with a feature called "Activities", so I'll often switch Activities.

I find that works a lot better for multi-tasking than the traditional Windows workflow of one window per application, with all kinds of different topics mixed into all kinds of ungrouped windows. If I switch between topics, I just go to the right location on my minimap and I've all the topic-related information in the windows that are there.

my awesome wm config has a lot of customization. We're talking 5+ years of basically re-writing an entire theme, along with behaviours, widgets, and bindings.

I have Syncthing set up to copy save data between my pc and steam deck, but not just for emulator stuff: its got my entire modded minecraft directory and my balatro modloader nn there too.

I'm pretty sure no one else has my shell script that takes a picture, uses imagemagick to copy a scaled down version of it to a special folder, and then build a string that allows me to just middle click paste the image into Rednotebook so it appears correctly.

• I have bash scripts light and dark that make dbus calls to set my global theme to light or dark mode. I switch between them regularly, and opening system settings and pressing a button is too inconvenient.

Your first one sounds similar to me though - I use activity-aware Firefox to separate my personal and work accounts on my personal and work plasma activities.

the ability to use two Bluetooth dongles simultaneously, each for one device. try that on Microsoft's clown os and see how pressing the gamepad triggers makes the bluetooth headphones chop up the sound 😂

I have a custom script, which changes the fan profile (in my case between two thinkfan config files) depending whether the dock is connected or not. That one gets triggered whenever it switches the power source (AC or BAT0). (AC gets plugged in -> script starts -> check if dock is connected -> if connected run different profile)

It's janky but very helpful when it works :D

I open links from different categories of websites in different firefox profiles via a bash script. For example the current one is named "memes".

Also i have a second panel at the top of my second monitor so i can always see the current date and time.

The text editor shortcut on my taskbar runs a sort of autosave script in ~/.drafts. I wanted my text editor to function more like the one on my phone so I can just jot down random thoughts without going through the whole ritual of naming and saving. It creates YYYYMMDD_text in ~/.drafts (or YYYYMMDD_text_1 etc. if it already exists) and launches Pluma, which I also have configured to autosave every 10 minutes.

The other thing extends beyond Linux itself a bit. I like to joke that I have the most secure NT 4 / Windows 95 lookalike ever put together. Aside from the encrypted and hardened Debian base (/boot is also encrypted), I was in part inspired by Apple's parts pairing (yikes!). So my coreboot is configured to only accept my boot disk. If it's swapped out or missing, or if I want to boot something else, it will ask for a password. In the unlikely event my machine gets stolen, the thief must at a minimum reflash the BIOS or replace the motherboard to make it useful again. Idk, it amuses me every time I think about it.

I have a zellij snd micro config for journaling and writing that makes a completely borderless full screen terminal with no decoration whatsoever and narrows the terminal for micro to the upper half of the middle 1/3 of my screen.

It helps me focus and limiting to the upper half and middle 1/3 makes it easier for my eyes. I get distracted easily and this helps keep my editor from being the source of that.

I created my own openSUSE splash screen for KDE because I felt all the existing ones were a bit amateur and I wanted something professional looking. I haven’t published it because I can’t be bothered creating an account. It only took about 15 minutes because I chopped up another one which had clearly chopped up another one.

I use hot mount SATA slots for backup and other media. Not that common on workstations. Sure, common on servers.

I also seperate Firefox on different workspaces, but only manually. How is the extension called? Having it automated would save me some seconds every reboot.

I type "power..." into my cli and press tab+enter to shutdown my computer. Same for reboot... 😆

I spilled a glass of scrumpy on the keyboard and a, s, and d no longer work. So I have to use a keyboard with it.

ChatGPT wrote a Python program that does select->Tesseract OCR for me, but it doesn't always work right with two monitors. I'm too stupid to correct it. How have you done yours, what are you using for selecting the area?

wait how does your clipboard shortcut work op? that sounds nifty!

Mine is probably more of a combo of things to streamline my workflow than anything else.

I use Sways multiple workspaces to segregate my apps into different workspaces for different tasks on startup of that app using the assign function in my Sway config. For example VS Code and one particular Firefox window always goes to Workspace 3.

I use the Layman Sway scripts to force all my normal workspaces to different layouts that is appropriate for that function. So workspace 3 with VS Code and a Firefox window is set in a 75/25 split with VS Code set to always take the bigger share. I can switch the two sides from largest on the left to largest on the right, or swap the apps between the two splits, or make a window full-screen with simple keyboard shortcuts.

Odd workspaces are on my left monitor, even ones on the right. This coupled with per workspace wall paper (all my windows are translucent, not for everybody I know) and particular tasks locked to predefined workspaces means I am never hunting around for something. Even if I did lose something I can use rofi to switch to it. If its an essential app I can use my keyboard shortcut that I use to launch the app, switch to it using swayr by activating the shortcut again.

I have used QMK for my keyboard to reduce the number of keys I must use to activate most of my shortcuts, and move them to my number row and home row using layers, double taps, and holds. I try to layer up the same family of functions on the same key but on different layers, so for example, the VI arrow keys move between windows, resize windows, move windows, depending on which layer I have chosen.