Linux

Spice/spiced could work. But it's still an allusion, not sure if that defeats the point.

For example, 4chan forcibly invented the use of the ok hand for “white power”, as a collective prank

Which, outside of specific contexts where you're already confident someone is a WN, was quickly forgotten and never really took off. It's not a great example of a social shift.

Is "ricing" not originally related to customised cars from street racing or something? I personally don't see an issue with it.

The activity itself is quite good for making people aware of how a desktop linux OS is working but doing it excessively is a bit silly so makes sense for jt to have a silly name.

This is a tough one, because to me "ricing" or "riced out" carries additional negative undertones (racism aside). I have always heard it used in a way implying that it was referencing enhancements done in a cheap or gaudy/classless way. Think of the most Razer-like LED adorned gaming PC setup, that could have easily been described as being "riced up".

I think the phrase "decked out" works OK, and seems to also lack the negative connotation, which may or not be in line with the goal here.

Also, seeing your example ideas you shot down, I am not sure you full understand "souping up" phrase. The term "souped up" has been in use for over a century and I still hear people use it pretty frequently. It is generally meant to imply something has been made faster or more powerful, frequently with cars, and probably why some people argue it is a shortened version of supercharged. I agree that it probably isn't a good fit here, but not being of how it sounds.

maybe something derived from dekotora? it has most of the same associations as the term we're looking to replace while not having racist or pejorative origins. deko?

Saw the .de domain and my first thought was this was about using a potato ricer to make spätzle. I may not be normal.

rizzing?

We need to make it offensive to white people instead. So colonising.

Maybe we shouldn't invent new terms for races?

I've always used decked regarding to it.

Pocking

Pocked up

I.e. peacocking, making it awesome and flashy and sharing with others

Quick reach a consensus before the yungins start posting rizzed out setups

Noodles - it's a mess of dotfiles

Can't people refer to it as their personalized setups? Or is that too hard to write?

Pixel polishing. A term we use for frontend code at work (all backend developers).

eye-rolling

Maybe call it a 'ride'? It would still be a car reference, think about how people talk about cars as their 'rides'. At least to my understanding, calling a car a 'ride' also implies some level of the car being special. 'ride' is also only 4 letters, and isn't any harder to type, some of the other comments have really long terms which are a bit annoying to type.

On the negative side it is also 1 letter away from 'rice', so that might not be ideal.

Can't rice our Linux distros or cars because of woke

Jokes aside, RICE means "Race-inspired cosmetic enhancement" apparently

Isn't it the same as tuning?

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.