Introduction:
Many reasons make Linux distros loved among all of their users, such as freedom to edit anything, privacy, security... etc. Among all these features we find customization, Linux distributions and their contributors offer a wide variety of services and programs to facilitate the process of customization, such as providing window managers (BSPWM, i3wm, xfce, Gnome... etc.). custom terminal emulators that can be customized (Alacritty. GNOME Terminal, kitty... etc.).
Blur effect on text editors and terminal emulators is one of the customization features that is highly demanded by a lot of Linux users who want to rice their Linux distribution and make it aesthetically pleasing, although this feature is preferred by a lot of people, ten years ago it was disliked by the Linux community due to the high usage of the CPU (Central processing unit).
Now, this issue is fixed, and users can have blur on their terminals without
worrying about performance.
What does Ricing mean?
The word "Ricing" in the Linux community refers to customizing the look and feel of your desktop environment by changing the appearance of windows, icons, fonts, and other graphical elements like text editors and terminal emulators.
If you are new to ricing and you want to inspire and improve your ricing skills you can join the subreddit and the community of ricers in the following link: (1) r/unixp*rn - the home for *NIX customization! (reddit.com)
Adding Blur effect to your terminal emulator is a part of ricing your Linux distribution, and in order to do it, you need to install Picom.
Installation of Picom:
So, to activate blur on your terminal, or even in other applications ( Visual Studio Code, VSCodium, or any text or code editor you want ) on Linux, you have to install picom, since we want blur effect, we need to install it from picom-tryone repository, either by the command below:
yay -S picom-tryone-git
or by getting it from the git clone URL and build the package:
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/picom-git
Next locate picom.conf.example, for locating you can use locate command (or any alternative), and if it is not locating you can update its database using updatedb by running the command:
sudo updatedb
Once you locate, run:
cp <location of picom.conf.example> ~/.config/picom/picom.conf
Note : the location the config file picom.conf.example usually is /etc/xdg/picom.conf.example.
Configurating Picom:
Let's edit the configuration, first, search in the file for blur-method, uncomment it then set it to dual_kawase, in addition, uncomment blur-size and put any number you want ( 9 is recommended ).
blur-method = "dual_kawase"
blur-size = 9
then search for backend, uncomment glx and comment xrender.
backend = "glx"
# backend = "xrender"
The last is to go to Transparency/Opacity section, search for opacity-rule, and add the programs you want to apply the blur effect on them as this form below:
opacity-rule = [
"90:class_g = 'the name of the program you want'"
]
you can get the name of the program's window with the command xprop.
Since I use Alacritty and VScodium, my settings will be like this:
opacity-rule = [
"90:class_g = 'Alacritty'",
"90:class_g = 'VSCodium'"
]
Everything is done, now you should have blur effect.