The Rice
The major practical, build and document one complete, original, reproducible desktop setup
Due: 28 May 2027 · Weight: 40%
The central work of the course. Over the semester you build one desktop and make it yours, and at the end you hand over the whole thing.
The brief#
Build a complete, original, reproducible Linux desktop that is unmistakably yours, and stand behind every part of it.
A strong rice is not the busiest or the emptiest one in the room. It is the one whose choices hang together: a window manager, palette, typeface, and bar that argue for the same idea of what a desktop is for. Originality here does not mean inventing everything from scratch, which nobody does. It means that the sum is yours even where the parts were forked, and that a marker can tell the difference between the decisions you made and the ones you inherited.
What you submit#
A running setup, presented at the gallery in week 12, and the repository that regenerates it. The repository is marked separately as the Dotfiles Repository; here it is the desktop itself, as a whole, that is judged.
The report#
Alongside the running desktop and its repository, submit a short written report, no more than a couple of pages, that argues for the setup rather than merely describing it. Say what idea of a desktop the rice is chasing, why the window manager, palette, typeface, and bar serve that idea, and where you departed from the configurations you started from and why. The report is where a marker reads your intent, so that the desktop is judged as a set of decisions and not only as an image. Credit every borrowed and AI-assisted part here as well, in a form a marker can follow back to the original.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- submitted by the deadline as a running setup and a repository a marker can rebuild
- every layer is present and working, from compositor and window manager to bar, palette, and type
- the work is original and yours, with all borrowed and AI-assisted parts declared
- accompanied by a short written report that argues for the setup and credits its sources
How it is marked
The rice is judged as a whole, on whether the setup is complete and genuinely yours, whether its choices cohere into a point of view rather than a pile of borrowed parts, and whether it stands as a finished piece of work rather than a screenshot with nothing behind it.