Definitely! The only “good” 3rd-party themes are the ones from Jomada (Edna, Moe, Itchy, etc.) and from Vinceliuice (Graphite, Canta, Layan, etc.).
Those are well thought out, coherent and look professional.
If you scroll through the top ones, then you almost exclusively find ones that got their last update years ago, and now look extremely incoherent or buggy.
And even if you find newer ones, then they often lack the polish.
Man, it just sucks…
But hey, maybe there is just not that much demand anymore, because the defaults look great nowadays?
I sadly, and I don’t say this lightly, have to agree.
When first using KDE, I was totally baffled by the amount of themes you can download.
But I quickly learned, that most of them are either more than 5 years old, look ugly/ incoherent, or cause this blurriness issue OP mentioned.
For my taste, Breeze (or to a further extend, Lightly) looks phenomenal by default, especially since Plasma 6. I only change the color scheme a bit (usually just adaptive colors, based on wallpaper), but that’s it.
Great that you looked into the compatibility first. Many solvents can dissolve, or at least swell, parts of the machine.
The good thing is, solvent isn’t solvent. There are different kinds (polarities, etc.), and maybe something like alcohol might work.
Problem is, grease is hard to dissolve with those.
In the industry, you have special “laundry washing machines” (sort of) that work with hot solvent, e.g. benzyl alcohol, since you need movement and heat preferably to clean everything decently.
Even with a good solvent, degreasing with your washer alone won’t work as great.
I personally would go for an ultrasound bath. They tend to work more mechanically (phsically) instead of chemically, and with them, you can dissolve the dirt with soapy water pretty easily, without any volatile solvents or risks. You can get a decent one for 50 bucks starting price, or 100 if you want a bit better one.
I have no idea what a part washer is, but maybe consider using an ultrasonic cleaner.
You can then either load it with surfactants (e.g. SLS) in a water phase or with apolar solvents like cineol, terpentine or limonene, which have similar solving capabilities as diesel, but are bio based and not as flammable.
Using surfactants alone without ultrasound won’t work, but using solvents alone won’t keep the particles in phase, as they would just sink to the bottom.
If you tell me exactly how this washer looks like/ works and what exactly you wanna clean, I can help you more.
I’m not missing anything, they are great. I always found the separation of desktop oberview and window overview a bit weird, and now, with the newest release, they got merged as one thing with one coherent trackpad gesture, which I love.
It still has the same vibes and is the same KDE we love or hate, just better.
It definitely feels way more polished and now has some MacOS vibes to be fair.
Not as minimalist as Gnome, but the insane amount of features got “hidden” a bit user friendlier. I think that if you apply some icon themes and a top bar + dock, it will be indistinguishable from MacOS for many casual users.
Sadly, they still aren’t, but at least, the overview and grid view are now combined, just like on Gnome.
Before, they were decoupled and unintuitive, and now, they got a rework.
I think making an “usable” phone (especially one that is able to make calls, etc.) yourself is extremely hard to do, if not impossible.
Many “tinker”-phone startups/ devices, like PinePhone or Librem, who made the phones from scratch or mostly themselves afaik, had huge problems in the beginning with basic functions, like making calls.
There’s a project (mainly for kids and students) somewhere to make E-readers themselves, maybe you can start with that?
I’ll link it to you if I found it.
That might act as a base.
If you want a good phone that gives off DIY-vibes (modularity, repairability, etc.) but want something proper and modern, then check out Fairphone. Afaik, the FP4 also supports PostmarketOS and other mobile distros.
Remember to take everything I said with a huge grin of salt, since I’m not that well informed in that area of DIY- or Linux phones. A lot of what I said might be wrong, take it only as idea or starting point.
But if you really want to start this project, good luck. You’ll need it 🫠
If it should look a bit dreamy or special, then I increase the blue of the sky/ the orange of a sunset/ the tone of the subject for example. See photo 1 and 2.
Normally, I don’t amplify specific colours by default, because I have a CVD and then the pic looks very artificial. It’s more of a special style element that’s used when needed, but not otherwise.
If I want to let the viewer to look at the “contrast”, which I already decreased by a lot, to let patterns or objects pop out more, or give the pic a “depressing” mood, then I decrease the brilliance of one tone. See photo 2
Picture 1: It still looks “wintery and sad”, but the green of the twig is amplified. If the greens wouldn’t be re-compensated, the whole pic would almost be black and white. 1000013077
Pic 2: here I increased the purples a bit and amplified the shadows to fetch the mood and focus of the sunrise DSC06116
Picture 3: still not much contrast, but the almost black&white-look and increased shadows put the focus onto the ice crystals instead of the interior of the barn.
In that way, I can artificially set more contrast, even if I reduced it before. DSC05536
Very lovely, thank you for your awesome guide! I wanna see way more of those kinds, very helpful and straight to the point.
I already developed this exact style by accident and I’m using it most of the time for my pics.
I have a 1/4 or 1/2 black mist filter strapped on and do following post-processing steps:
decrease contrast
increase brilliance
add some grain
stronger filmic RGB with blacks lifted, and too strong lights
and then increase or decrease the strongest color in the color spectrum thingy (I don’t know the english name for it, sorry).
Your best bet would be PVA (Poly vinyl alcohol), which is a water soluble plastic and usually the base of wood glue or water based paper glue.
Dilute it in warm water and soak your paper in it.
Starch is too stiff and crumbly for that use case.
If you like this effect, consider buying a Black Mist diffusion filter. On a lower strength, they really take the digital edge off, and on higher ones, they give everything a moody vibe.
The ones from K&F cost only 20 bucks and are a must have for me!