the linux theming rabbit hole, and how i got out

devlog · Feb 03, 2026 · 1 min read

if you have ever spent a full evening making a status bar pixel-perfect against a screenshot of someone else's status bar, this one is for you.

the pipeline went like this: dots, then a bar, then a bar with modules, then modules with rounded corners, then rounded corners with per-module transparency, then a script that generated the gradient of the modules, then a second script that generated the script.

somewhere in there i lost an entire weekend to a compositor bug that turned out to be a rounding difference between two versions of something.

what actually fixed it

i wrote down the one rule that mattered and deleted everything else:

• the bar exists to show information, not to show taste
• a module that does not change every few seconds does not need animation
• the screenshot i was chasing was made by someone who has more free time than me

this site has a theme system. it has presets, an accent colour, and a palette picker. and it does not have a single script that generates another script.

the theming on my desktop is now boring. that is not a loss. it means i stopped using my own desktop as a project.