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Just a few days ago, I wrote about setting up my GNOME desktop on Linux. Unfortunately, the current state of play in the GNOME world is that it’s just really hard to make the desktop look polished. While there are a lot of themes that look nice, I’ve found a minor issues with almost all of them. I just couldn’t settle on a combination that satisfied me. That may change when Ubuntu adopts GNOME as its default desktop environment; Ubuntu is one of the most-used Linux distros, and it has an active community that creates a lot of great stuff. For now, though, I’ve decided to try Elementary OS for a while.

2017 is the year of the bezel-less smartphone. Ever since the LG Prada was released in May 2007, capacitive touchscreens have become the dominant smartphone interface. Apple popularized them with the original iPhone, and now they’re ubiquitous. But the touchscreen has typically been borderd by unsightly bezels. That started to change this year.

Well, it really started last year. Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi launched the Mi Mix in November 2016. It was hard to get in the United States, but pretty much everyone thought it was beautiful, and a stunning innovation in the stale slab-like smartphone design that’s been essentially unchanged since 2007.

GNOME is a desktop environment for Linux. It’s pretty, intuitive, and feature-filled. By default, it’s not as customizable as some Linux desktop environments, but it’s extensible and has a good-sized library of extensions. After years experimenting with its own Unity desktop environment, Ubuntu has decided that GNOME will be the default desktop environment for its upcoming release, Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark. Here’s how I like to customize GNOME to make it beautiful and functional.

I’m no Android developer, but since I bought my first Android device, a Motorola Atrix 4G, I’ve always enjoyed customizing my phones and tablets with aftermarket ROMs, kernels, and themes. To this day, I’m partial to devices that are friendly to custom software, such as Google’s Nexus line and OnePlus’s phones. I love installing custom ROMs on my phone for a number of reasons: removing bloat, new features, beautiful themes, and fast updates.