Maybe Lemmy can forcibly invent a new term for "ricing". (Good faith pls)
I'd learned about this last week, and this stuff is a bunch of Wikipedia searches so forgive me if I miss anything :]
Similar to git master and whitelist/blacklist having addressed racist origins, I've just learned that "ricing" -- i.e. way-far-from-default, colorfully souped-up *nix customizations -- came from a derogatory word for Asian "riced out" cars.
(click to enlarge spot where I came to learn about this)
Now I'm not here to start a debate on whether the term itself is bad. The arguments are done to death and predictable (old threadhopeIcanlinkhere). Rather, I posit that we could probably invent a new term if we forced it hard enough.
For example, 4chan forcibly invented the use of the ok hand for "white power", as a collective prank (Wikipedia).
Further, Tumblr invented 'then beg' as an insult response to 'I beg your pardon/to differ'. (click to enlarge)
Here are some earlier takes. (click to enlarge for source, but they are listed below anyway)
I surmise it has to be (1) somewhat unique and (2) short and nounable/verbable.
Customization doesn't fit -- it's too broad. Changing the wallpaper is a customization -- diagonalizing your screen is a rice (term to be replaced...).
Bespoke doesn't fit either. That's for a duct-tape script you hack together.
Pimping out... is not a good alternative. It preexists(citationneeded?) and has inertia but it's not any better.
Souping up... doesn't roll off the tongue so much. But it's food-related (and thus not far from "rice"). Though I can't see myself saying "Yo, check out this epic soup."
Although it's unclear what tuning is because it depends on who says it:
It does mean doing modifications to a vehicle for actual performance improvements
It's used extensively by ricers to describe themselves and their hobby and they think it's a positive term
It's used extensively by people who dislike ricing and most definitely as a derogatory term
Yet for all its faults, I believe that's the closest word to ricing you'll find that is universally understood, neutral and isn't rendered hopelessly bland and meaningless by the process of political correctness newspeak.
Originally it was a pejorative term for Japanese and East-Asian car modders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_burner Than the term moved from car modding subculture to computer UI modding subculture.
Interestingly, the place I heard it was in a completely different context, different meaning, but same derogatory connotation. In DoTA 2 esports, the Chinese pro teams were known for spending a lot of time "farming," (acquiring resources in a mostly passive way that can be a little boring to watch) so some people started calling that "ricing." "Farming", but Chinese, so "ricing."
@fool so it's racist because we of Asian descent tend to eat rice? Are other Asians asking automobile enthusiasts not to use this or is it basic white girl stuff?
No, Gentoo is alive! I can catch up to upstream Firefox's LTO+Clang+PGO optimizations and use my own version of Debian alternatives and save 3MB by removing iso9660 support from REFind!
I removed this because it has nothing to do with linux specifically, and as expected, it brought out a lot of people defending the use of this historically racist term, and /asablackman'ing it.
I've reinstated it and removed the offending comments for now.
Also I don't know why this needs a discussion at all. There's hundreds of words in english for something that looks good, and you can be more specific about it : snazzy, sleek, cool, streamlined, nifty, retro
An stranger on the internet just gave you license to say a historically racist term, how convenient for you. Next they'll be some /r/asablackman posters saying its okay for you to use the n-word, because it doesn't bother them.