dotfiles/dotfiles/linux/arch/readme.md

Arch Linux

ughhhhhh had to reinstall the test vm like 5 times. finally got lxqt with virtualbox driver to load the desktop but networking is not working. Perf is kinda shitty. UI is shitty. QT sucks. I hate linux.

Setup

• Installation guide https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide

  • Can go through manually or use the new guided installer: archinstall

• use btrfs file system

  • I guess I should enable compression but I'm not sure how it affects perf.

• I tried Luks disk encryption in a VirtualBox VM and I couldn't get into the desktop. Locks up on login. Not sure if it's related to this...can try encryption on a real install.

• desktop environment VM Test * lxqt, vmware graphics driver, lightdm-slick-greeter

  • lxqt - X11 based. I was using lxde in the past but it was abandoned by the original team. They made lxqt. It's QT based which is lame but might be fine. This is lightweight and I have my old configs (for LXDE and OpenBox) which might still be usable.

  • sway - Wayland based. Martins uses this. I want to try it but it lacks nvidia driver support and requires something called wlroots? I don't want to mess with this in my testing vm. Maybe later if I do a proper Arch install.

    • https://github.com/tyqualters/sway-nvidia-guide
    • https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/yuu7ra/whats_the_difference_between_nvidia_and_nvidiaopen/
    • using seatd for hardware device collection

Graphics

• card family https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/CodeNames.html
• nvidia driver install guide https://github.com/korvahannu/arch-nvidia-drivers-installation-guide?tab=readme-ov-file

Martins — 06/17/2024 2:59 PM if you don't want upstream releases then obviously arch is not for you, but they have simple solution for that - aur, you can keep managing your dependencies separately from system packages

Martins uses Sway: Martins — 04/08/2024 10:41 PM no, .bashrc I have autologin on tty1 so whenever .bashrc executes on tty1, it starts sway:

if [ -z "${WAYLAND_DISPLAY}" ] && [ "${XDG_VTNR}" -eq 1 ]; then
  export _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1
  export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland
  export GDK_BACKEND=wayland
  export CLUTTER_BACKEND=wayland
  export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland
  export BEMENU_BACKEND=wayland
  export TERMINAL=foot
  export BROWSER=firefox
  export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
  export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland
  export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway
  exec systemd-cat -- sway
fi

Saw this on reddit: sudo pacman -S wayland xorg-xwayland xorg-xlsclients sway swaybg swaylock waybar wofi -y What is wofi ?

• config/ -> map contents to ~/.config.

• home/ -> map contents to ~/.

• Store /tmp in RAM

  • 2024: looks like it's done by default. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Tmpfs

• Move browser cache directories to /tmp as a means of reducing file writes on SSD

• Fix fonts by placing the following XML into /etc/fonts/conf.avail/29-prettify.conf and then symlinking: ln -s /etc/fonts/conf.avail/29-prettify.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/29-prettify.conf

  <?xml version="1.0"?>
   <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
   <fontconfig>
   <match target="font" >
     <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
       <const>rgb</const>
     </edit>
   </match>
   <match target="font" >
     <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
       <bool>true</bool>
     </edit>
   </match>
   <match target="font" >
     <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
       <const>hintslight</const>
     </edit>
   </match>
   <match target="font" >
     <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
       <bool>true</bool>
     </edit>
   </match>
   <match target="font">
     <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
       <const>lcddefault</const>
     </edit>
   </match>
  </fontconfig>
  

Map caps to left-ctrl

• Most promising method

  • Install xorg-xmodmap
  • Map linux/home/Xmodmap to ~/
  • The above taken from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xmodmap

• Second method: map caps key to left-ctrl (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Map_scancodes_to_keycodes for details)

  • edit /etc/udev/hwdb.d/10-my-modifiers.hwdb
  • add:

  evdev:atkbd:dmi:*            # built-in keyboard: match all AT keyboards for now
   KEYBOARD_KEY_3a=leftctrl     # bind capslock to leftctrl
  

  • run udevadm hwdb --update then reboot

Install clipboard getter

• pi xsel
• Now we can grab clipboard content in vim using :read !xsel --clipboard --output