i am of the sincere belief that if ur on ur computer a lot you should visually customize it to high hell and back not just for funsies but also because it has literally made me less depressed before. its kind of like how rearranging your bedroom is good for your brain, yknow. i do stuff like this every few months
and if anyone wants to follow suit
LIVE WALLPAPER: wallpaper engine. only thing on here that costs any money (its like 5 bucks on steam). im sure theres free alternatives but this one has a lot of presets and stuff so its less hassle and its what i use. might be a bad idea for lower end pcs tho
CUSTOM TASKBAR: retrobar on github (lots of different options)
CUSTOM CURSOR: theres a lot of places to find these, but rw-designer open cursor library is a good place to start
DISCORD: betterdiscord, im using the clearvision v7 theme with a custom background
EXTENSIONS (these are for firefox, might or might not exist on other browsers):
tabliss for the new tab theme
stylus for tumblr -> specifically the 'tumblr - custom dashboard pallette' theme for colors + bg, and this for the pre-twitterifcation layout
enhancer for youtube for custom youtube colors
the browser theme is just one i found on the firefox theme 'store'
I agree. A computer should feel like a place you go. Your home computer should be different from your work computer. It should feel different.
Real talk: if you're on the younger side, ask folks who are Gen X and older Millennials about the kinds of stuff you can do. There's custom icons, cursors, you can get your computer to sing you a song when you turn it on or make fun noises when you click icons. And that's just on Windows. I hereby open the floor to Linux users to tell us we're missing out, because I know there's even more stuff you can do on Linux but not what it is.
We used to do this stuff. ALL THE TIME. In the 90s and early 2000s making your computer do weird shit for personal enjoyment was just a normal part of the computer experience. BonziBuddy put a damper on that, but we know this stuff can be done because we did it, all the time.
when i was in high school our class had the computers in the morning and another class had them in the afternoon, and the two guys assigned to the same one as my friend and me kept setting it to play "help! help! i'm being repressed!" from monty python and the holy grail when booted, and leaving the volume turned all the way up, thus getting us in trouble when we turned it on.
anyway yeah theres tons of stuff you can do
....I am extremely sorry that happened to you, but at the same time I now want to set my computer to yell "look at all this lovey filth" when I open my recycle bin.
