The unfortunate answer is that "it depends". Making Unix look a certain way will depend more on your workflows and preferred tools than any one particular singular grand unified guide
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I was mainly asking for directions to a guide. I'm more tech literate than most but still not very so all the links to 8 different GitHub pages get confusing and I don't know how to implement it all
I'm only just now understand that the brackets at the beginning of every post are referring to the specific desktop environment
The easiest point to jump on is KDE-Plasma, look it up, it is a complete DE that is very customisable and it is all doable through a GUI - themes, widgets etc its all baked in. You can do a lot of customisation in plasma fairly simply, that might even be enough for you, you can really do a lot in plasma and you don’t need to know much besides getting it installed on your system.
From there, if you want to touch something a bit more complicated you could install some window manager to use alongside it and just fiddle with that, look at the configs, understand how that works, try to build your own thing from the ground up, or just copy someones dotfiles here.
E: To clarify, if you use a display manager like SDDM it will let you select the DE or WM on login.
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If you're using kde as your desktop environment I'd look at themes using kvantum Manager. You can also mix and match other themes through the default app store or whatever they call it
The GitHub pages usually have information about how to install stuff. There are also YouTube videos and articles online you can easily find with a quick google search about this. Use your brain
Just about every post has links to the github pages of the stuff they used
Pick any popular colorscheme, like dracula or catppuccin, get some good wallpapers and make a screenshot with your most-used (or just favourite) applications. Keep it simple
Alas, gnome themes is not working 😔
I'll try again when I have slept
If you are using Gnome stay with that first. You can try gnome extensions and gtk themes, there are lots of possibilities. Many of the things that people post for other window managers will not work on Gnome.
Then know your command line well https://github.com/jlevy/the-art-of-command-line
Then try to automate things, such that e.g. you can open a QR code of your clipboard with a key binding. Or whatever cool things you want your computer to do.
If you like these things and you have a lot of time, try other window managers as well. Start with something that has a good example config and good resources online, I believe sway was pretty easy to get into for me.
$ man man
$ info
Thank you
The quotes page is funny
How? Installing the right tools and changing configuration files wich are typically (but not always) located under /home/[your user]/.config/[application]
For example neofetch config is located at ~/.config/neofetch/config But i think that's not the default config. An example config would be typically (but again not always) located at /usr/share/[application)
So what you would do is
cp -r /usr/share/neofetch ~/.configvim ~/.config/neofetch/configAnd edit the file however you want. Syntax is rarely the same between apps so prepare documentation if you do more than just change values
(Replace vim with you editor of choice)
The best starting point in my experience is https://regolith-desktop.com. You install it and get a noob-friendly, pre-configured unixporn desktop out of the box.
Once you start using it, the rest of the obscure programs referenced on /r/unixporn start making sense too.
A lot of configuration is just reading documentation to figure stuff out. In the case of qtile I know python so it was easier to customize it.
You can probably just look up "configure ____ window manager" and find a few videos as an introduction.
I was mainly asking for directions to a guide. I'm more tech literate than most but still not very so all the links to 8 different GitHub pages get confusing and I don't know how to implement it all
Have you ever tried theming before ? Like changing gtk themes and cursor themes
