Hi there! Welcome to my dotfiles

Quick Links

• Install
  • One command
  • Starting with a fresh Arch based installation
• Software I use

Table of Contents

• Install
  • My configuration
    • Overview
  • Starting with a fresh Arch based installation
    • Overview
    • Arch installation
    • Login and window manager
    • Basic i3 configuration
    • Basic system utilities
      • Wallpaper
      • Fonts
      • Audio
      • Monitors
      • Network
      • Systray
      • Notifications
      • Xprofile
    • Further configuration and tools
      • AUR helper
      • Media Transfer Protocol
      • File Manager
      • Trash
      • GTK Theming
      • Lightdm theming
      • Multimedia
      • Images
      • Video and audio
    • Start Hacking
• Software
  • Basic utilities
  • Fonts, theming and GTK
  • Apps

🚀 My configuration

📖 Overview

• My configurations are heavily documented to make it as clear as possible. While you can clone the whole repository and use it, it is not recommended though. Good configurations are personal. Everyone should have his or her unique config file. You are encouraged to copy from this repo the part you want and add it to your own config.

• I have to guide how to rice here

• This way download is automatic. Only use when you have successfully installed and set up linux distro

⛔ DO NOT RUN WITH ROOT

Copy and paste on terminal

with bash, zsh, ...

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Dominic-github/dotfiles/main/bin/install.sh)

with fish

bash (curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Dominic-github/dotfiles/main/bin/install.sh | psub)

🚀 Starting with a fresh Arch based installation

📖 Overview

This guide will walk you through the process of building a desktop environment starting with a fresh Arch based installation. I will assume that you are comfortable with Linux based operating systems and command line interfaces. Because you are reading this, I will also assume that you've looked through some "tiling window manager" videos on Youtube, because that's where the rabbit hole starts. You can pick any window managers you want, but I'm going to use i3 as a first tiling window manager because that's what I started with. This is basically a description of how I made my desktop environment from scratch.

🖊️ Arch installation

Installation guide and basic configurations for Arch Linux

📝 Verify the boot mode

Check if the directory exists:

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

📝 Connect to the internet

Connect to Wi-Fi network:

iwctl

device list
ex: wlan0

station 'name of device' get-networks
ex: station wlan0 get-networks

station wlan0 connect 'name of networks'

Check if internet connectivity is available:

ping -c 3 archlinux.org

📝 Select the mirrors

Make a list of mirrors sorted by their speed then remove those from the list that are out of sync according to their status.

Backup the existing mirrorlist:

cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

Edit the mirror list, bring the fastest mirrors to the top (you can use nano instead of vim or nvim). For example this is my top 3 mirrors:

vim /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

##
## Arch Linux repository mirrorlist
## Filtered by mirror score from mirror status page
## Generated on 2019-03-01
##

## Singapore
Server = http://mirror.0x.sg/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
## Vietnam
Server = http://f.archlinuxvn.org/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
## Netherlands
Server = http://archlinux.mirror.pcextreme.nl/$repo/os/$arch

📝 Update the system clock

Ensure the system clock is accurate:

timedatectl set-ntp true

Check the service status:

timedatectl status

📝 Partition the disks

Identify disks:

lsblk

Disks are assigned to a block device such as /dev/sda.

Create boot partition and root partition:

• # cfdisk /dev/sda
• Select gpt
• Hit [ New ] to create a new patition
• Give the boot partition 1G and let the rest for the root partition
• Select the boot partition and hit [ Type ] to choose EFI System
• Hit [ Write ] then type yes to save, then hit [ Quit ]

• sda1 || 600Mb: EFI System |
• sda2 || 4GB : Linux swap (= Ram / 2)
• sda3 || X GB : Linux filesystem ( 30GB < X < 60GB)
• sda4 || else : Linux filesystem

📝 Format the partitions

Format the boot partition to FAT32:

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

Format the root partition to ext4:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

📝 Create swap file

mkswap /dev/sda2

swapon /dev/sda2

📝 Mount the file systems

Mount root partition first:

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt

Home folder

mkdir /mnt/home

mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/home

Then create mount point for boot partition and mount it accordingly:

mkdir /mnt/boot

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

📝 Install the base and base-devel packages

Use the pacstrap script:

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware base-devel neovim

📝 Generate an fstab file

Use -U or -L to define by UUID or labels:

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

📝 Chroot

Change root to the new system:

arch-chroot /mnt

📝 Configure time zone

Set your time zone by region:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh /etc/localtime

Generate /etc/adjtime:

hwclock --systohc

📝 Configure locale

Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen, then generate it:

sed -i 's/^#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/g' /etc/locale.gen && locale-gen

Set LANG variable in /etc/locale.conf:

echo 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' > /etc/locale.conf

📝 Change host name

Create hostname file at /etc/hostname contain the host name, for example:

• arch-pc is host name

echo 'arch-pc' > /etc/hostname

nvim /etc/hosts


# Static table lookup for hostnames.
# See hosts(5) for details.
127.0.0.1     localhost
::1           localhost
127.0.1.1     arch-pc.localdomain       arch-pc

📝 Set your root password

passwd

Enter your password then confirm it.

📝 Add new user

Add a new user named your-name:

useradd -m your-name

Protect the newly created user your-name with a password:

passwd your-name

Grant permissions to users

usermod -aG wheel,audio,video,optical,storage,power your-name

Establish nvim as the visudo editor:

EDITOR=nvim visudo

Then uncomment %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL to allow members of group wheel sudo access, uncomment Defaults targetpw and change it to Defaults rootpw to ask for the root password instead of the user password (then change the comment beside it accordingly).

📝 Install optional packages

pacman -S efibootmgr intel-ucode

pacman -S networkmanager

📝 Install boot loader

There are many ways to boot but I prefer these method

Boot with systemd-boot

Install systemd-boot to the /boot partition:

bootctl --path=/boot install

Edit systemd-boot options:

nvim /boot/loader/loader.conf

default arch
timeout 0
editor  0

Add Arch boot entry:

nvim /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

title   Arch Linux
linux   /vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /intel-ucode.img
initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
options root=/dev/sda3

📝 Enable network services

systemctl enable NetworkManager

📝 Reboot

Exit the chroot environment by typing:

exit

Optionally manually unmount all the partitions with:

umount -R /mnt

Restart the machine:

reboot

After logging in, your internet should be working just fine, but that's only if your computer is plugged in. If you're on a laptop with no Ethernet ports, you might have used iwctl during installation, but that program is not available anymore unless you have installed it explicitly. However, we've installed NetworkManager, so no problem, this is how you connect to a wireless LAN with this software:

# List all available networks
nmcli device wifi list
# Connect to your network
nmcli device wifi connect YOUR_SSID password YOUR_PASSWORD

Check this page for other options provided by nmcli. The last thing we need to do before thinking about desktop environments is installing Xorg:

sudo pacman -S xorg

🖊️ Login and Window Manager

• If you want get my config you can come back here.

First, we need to be able to login and open some programs like a browser and a terminal, so we'll start by installing lighdm and i3. Lightdm will not work unless we install a greeter. Then, a text editor is necessary for editing config files, you can use vscode or jump straight into neovim if you have previous experience, otherwise I wouldn't suggest it. Last but not least, we need a browser.

sudo pacman -S lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter i3 code firefox

Enable lightdm service and restart your computer, you should be able to log into I3 through lightdm.

sudo systemctl enable lightdm
reboot

🖊️ Basic I3 configuration

Now that you're in I3, you should know some of the default keybindings.

Key	Action
mod + return	launch xterm
mod + j	focus left window
mod + k	focus down window
mod + l	focus up window
mod + ;	focus right window
mod + d	dmenu
mod + Shift + q	kill window
mod + Shift + r	reset i3
mod + Shift + e	Exit i3 come back lightdm

See more on i3-tutorial

Before doing anything else, if you don't have a US keyboard, you should change it using setxkbmap. To open xterm use mod + return. For example to change your layout to vietnamese:

setxkbmap vn

Note that this change is not permanent, if you reboot you have to type that command again. See this section for making it permanent, or follow the natural order of this guide if you have enough time.

There is no menu by default, you have to launch programs through xterm. At this point, you can pick your terminal emulator of choice and install a program launcher.

📝 Install a terminal

# Install another terminal emulator if you want
sudo pacman -S alacritty

Normally i3 will automatically get the terminal. If it doesn't work Now open the config file:

code ~/.config/i3/config

At the beginning, after imports, you should find an array called keys, and it contains the following line:

bindsym $mod+Return exec i3-sensible-terminal

Change that line to launch your terminal emulator:

# Change another terminal emulator if you want
bindsym $mod+Return exec alacritty

📝 Install a program launcher lies dmenu or rofi:

sudo pacman -S rofi

Then add keybindings for that program.

find line :

# start dmenu (a program launcher)
bindsym $mod+d exec dmenu_run

Change that line to launch your terminal emulator:

# start dmenu (a program launcher)
bindsym $mod+d exec [program launcher]
# ex with rofi:
bindsym $mod+d exec rofi -run --show-icons
## Can change run = drun or something

Now restart i3 with mod + Shift+ r. You should be able to open your menu and terminal emulator with keybindings. If you picked rofi, you can change its theme like so:

rofi-theme-selector

Go here for my config

📝 A utility to show the full path of commands

sudo pacman -S which

That's it for i3 , now you can start hacking on it and make it your own. Checkout my custom i3 config here. But before that I would recommend configuring basic utilities like audio, battery, mounting drives, etc.

🖊️ Basic system utilities

In this section we will cover some software that almost everybody needs on their system. Keep in mind though that the changes we are going to make will not be permanent. This subsection describes how to accomplish that.

📝 Wallpaper

First things first, your screen looks empty and black, so you might want to have a wallpaper not to feel so depressed. You can open firefox through rofi using mod + d and download one. Then install feh or nitrogen and and set your wallpaper:

sudo pacman -S feh
feh --bg-scale path/to/wallpaper

📝 Fonts

Fonts in Arch Linux are basically a meme, before you run into any problems you can just use the simple approach of installing these packages:

sudo pacman -S ttf-dejavu ttf-liberation noto-fonts

To list all available fonts:

fc-list

📝 Audio

There is no audio at this point, we need pulseaudio. I suggest also installing a graphical program to control audio like pavucontrol, because we don't have keybindings for that yet:

sudo pacman -S pulseaudio pavucontrol

On Arch, pulseaudio is enabled by default, but you might need to reboot in order for it to actually start. After rebooting, you can open pavucontrol through rofi, unmute the audio, and you should be just fine.

Now you can set up keybindings for pulseaudio, open file ~/.config/i3/config and add these keys:

# volume
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +10%
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -10%
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggle

For a better CLI experience though, I recommend using pamixer:

sudo pacman -S pamixer

Now you can turn your keybindings into:

# volume
bindsym XF86AudioMute        exec pamixer -t
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec pamixer -i 5
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec pamixer -d 5

Now you can turn your keybindings into:

Restart i3 with mod + Shift+ r and your keybindings should work. If you're on a laptop, you might also want to control the brightness of your screen, and for that I recommend brightnessctl:

sudo pacman -S brightnessctl

You can add these keybindings and restart i3 after:

# Brightness
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec --no-startup-id brightnessctl set +5%
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec --no-startup-id brightnessctl set 5%-

📝 Monitors

If you have a multi-monitor system, you surely want to use all your screens. Here's how xrandr CLI works:

# List all available outputs and resolutions
xrandr
# Common setup for a laptop and a monitor
xrandr --output eDP-1 --primary --mode 1920x1080 --pos 0x1080 --output HDMI-1 --mode 1920x1080 --pos 0x0

We need to specify the position for each output, otherwise it will default to 0x0, and all your outputs will be overlapped. Now if you don't want to calculate pixels and stuff you need a GUI like arandr:

sudo pacman -S arandr

Open it with rofi, arrange your screens however you want, and then you can save that layout, which will basically give you a shell script with the exact xrandr command that you need. Save that script, but don't click "apply" just yet.

For a multi-monitor system, it's recommended to create an instance of a Screen object for each monitor in your i3 config.

You'll find an array called screens which contains only one object initialized with a bar at the bottom. Inside that bar you can see the default widgets that come with it.

Add as many screens as you have and copy-paste all widgets, later you can customize them. Now you can go back to arandr, click apply, and then restart i3.

Now your multi-monitor system should work.

📝 Network

We have configured the network through nmcli, but a graphical frontend is more friendly. I use nm-applet:

sudo pacman -S network-manager-applet

📝 Systray

By default, you have a system tray in i3 You can add them on .config/i3/config with

#===========================EXECUTABLES===================================

# Syntax:  exec + conmand
# --no-startup-id is flag

#feh
exec_always --no-startup-id feh --bg-fill path/to/image

#picom
exec_always --no-startup-id picom

# network manage applet
exec_always --no-startup-id nm-applet

#==========================================================================

Now you should see icons that you can click to configure drives and networking. Optionally, you can install tray icons for volume and battery. If you want using polybar you can go to Polybar

sudo pacman -S volumeicon cbatticon
volumeicon &
cbatticon &

📝 Notifications

I like having desktop notifications as well, for that you need to install dunst

sudo pacman -S dunst

Test it like so:

notify-send "Hello World"

📝 Status bar

It will be difficult for a novice to configure the polybar. But think it's simple when you just put the module together. Go Here for more details

sudo pacman -S polybar

Add on i3/config

exec_always --no-startup-id polybar

Don't exec on xrofile because polybar need reading module after started

📝 Xprofile

As I have mentioned before, all these changes are not permanent. In order to make them permanent, we need a couple things. First, install xinit:

sudo pacman -S xorg-xinit

Now you can use ~/.xprofile to run programs before your window manager starts:

touch ~/.xprofile

For example, if you place this in ~.xprofile:

nm-applet &
udiskie -t &
volumeicon &
cbatticon &
feh --bg-fill path/to/image &

Every time you login you will have all systray utilities, your keyboard layout and monitors set.

🖊️ Further configuration and tools

📝 AUR helper

Now that you have some software that allows you tu use your computer without losing your patience, it's time to do more interesting stuff. First, install an AUR helper, I use yay:

sudo pacman -S base-devel git
cd /opt/
sudo git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay-git.git
sudo chown -R username:username yay-git/
cd yay-git
makepkg -si
cd $HOME

With an Arch User Repository helper, you can basically install any piece of software on this planet that was meant to run on Linux.

📝 Media Transfer Protocol

If you want to connect your phone to your computer using a USB port, you'll need MTP implementation and some CLI to use it, like this one:

sudo pacman -S libmtp
yay -S simple-mtpfs

# List connected devices
simple-mtpfs -l
# Mount first device in the previous list
simple-mtpfs --device 1 /mount/point

📝 File Manager

We've done all files stuff through a terminal up to this point, but you can install graphical or terminal based file managers. For a graphical one, I suggest nemo and for a terminal based one, ranger, although this one is very vim-like, only use it if you know how to move in vim.

sudo pacman -S nemo ranger

📝 Trash

If you don't want to rm all the time and potentially lose files, you need a trashing system. Luckily, that's pretty easy to do, using some of these tools such as glib2, and for GUIs like thunar you need gvfs:

sudo pacman -S glib2 gvfs
# CLI usage
gio trash path/to/file
# Empty trash
gio trash --empty

With nemo you can open the trash clicking on the left panel, but on the command line you can use:

ls ~/.local/share/Trash/files

📝 GTK Theming

The moment you have been wating for has arrived, you are finally going to install a dark theme. I use Material Black Colors, so go grab a flavor here and the matching icons here.

I suggest starting with Material-Black-Blueberry and Material-Black-Blueberry-Suru. You can find other GTK themes on this page. Once you have your theme folders downloaded, this is what you do:

• Automatic

yay -S material-black-colors-theme

• Manual install

## Assuming you have downloaded Material-Black-Blueberry
cd Downloads/
sudo pacman -S unzip
unzip Material-Black-Blueberry.zip
unzip Material-Black-Blueberry-Suru.zip
rm Material-Black*.zip

## Make your themes available
sudo mv Material-Black-Blueberry /usr/share/themes
sudo mv Material-Black-Blueberry-Suru /usr/share/icons

Now edit ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini by adding these lines:

# ~/.gtkrc-2.0
gtk-theme-name = "Material-Black-Blueberry"
gtk-icon-theme-name = "Material-Black-Blueberry-Suru"

# ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
gtk-theme-name = Material-Black-Blueberry
gtk-icon-theme-name = Material-Black-Blueberry-Suru

Next time you log in, these changes will be visible. You can also install a different cursor theme, for that you need xcb-util-cursor. The theme I use is Sweet Cursor,:

• Automatic

yay -S xcb-util-cursor sweet-cursors-theme-git

• Manual install

sudo pacman -S xcb-util-cursor
cd Downloads/
tar -xf Sweet-cursors.tar.gz
sudo mv Sweet-cursors /usr/share/icons

Edit /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme by adding this:

[Icon Theme]
Inherits = Sweet-cursors

Now, again, edit ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini:

# ~/.gtkrc-2.0
gtk-cursor-theme-name = "Sweet-cursors"

# ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
gtk-cursor-theme-name = Sweet-cursors

Make sure not to mistype the names of your themes and icons, they should match the names of the directories where they are located, the ones you can see in this output:

ls /usr/share/themes
ls /usr/share/icons

Remember that you will only see the new theme if you log in again. There are also graphical frontends for changing themes, I just prefer the traditional way of editing files though, but you can use lxappearance and qt5ct, which is a desktop environment independent GUI for this task, and it lets you preview themes.

sudo pacman -S lxappearance qt5ct

Finally, if you want tranparency and fancy looking things, install a compositor:

sudo pacman -S picom

# Recomen run in i3 configs
exec_always --no-startup-id picom

# or in ~/.xrofile (Have some bugs)
picom &

📝 Lightdm theming

We can also change the theme of lightdm and make it look cooler, because why not? We need another greeter, and some theme, namely lightdm-webkit2-greeter and lightdm-webkit-theme-aether:

sudo pacman -S lightdm-webkit2-greeter
yay -S lightdm-webkit-theme-aether

These are the configs you need to make:

# /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
[Seat:*]
# ...
# Uncomment this line and set this value
greeter-session = lightdm-webkit2-greeter
# ...

# /etc/lightdm/lightdm-webkit2-greeter.conf
[greeter]
# ...
webkit_theme = lightdm-webkit-theme-aether

Ready to go.

📝 Multimedia

There are dozens of programs for multimedia stuff, check this page.

✒️ Images

For image previews, one of the best that I could find is sxiv and feh.

sudo pacman -S sxiv feh

✒️ Video and audio

No doubt vlc is exactly what you need:

sudo pacman -S vlc

🖊️ Start Hacking

With all you've done so far, you got all the tools to start playing with configs and make your desktop environment, well, yours. What I recommend is hacking on i3 to adding keybindings for common programs like firefox, a text editor, file manager, etc.

Once you feel comfortable with i3, you can install other tiling window managers, and you will have more sessions available when logging in through lightdm.

🛠️ Software

📝 Basic utilities

Software	Utility
Networkmanager	Self explanatory
Network-manager-applet	NetworkManager systray
Pulseaudio	Self explanatory
Pavucontrol	pulseaudio GUI
Pamixer	pulseaudio CLI
Arandr	GUI for xrandr
Brightnessctl	Laptop screen brightness
StarShip	The cross-shell prompt
Dunst	Desktop notifications
Xidlehook	System suspend

📝 Fonts, theming and GTK

Software	Utility
Picom	Compositor for Xorg
Roboto Mono Nerd Font	Nerd Font for icons
Fira Code Nerd Font	Nerd Font for icons
Material Desgin Icons	Font, Theme and icons
Material Black Theme	Theme
Candy Icons	Icons
Unifont	Icons
Sweet Cursor Theme	Cursor Theme
Lxappearance	GUI for changing themes
Nitrogen	GUI for setting wallpapers
Feh	CLI for setting wallpapers
Sxiv	CLI for setting wallpapers

📝 Apps

Software	Utility
Fish	Commandline Shell
Kitty	Terminal emulator
Polybar	Status Bar
Nemo	Graphical file explorer
Ranger	Terminal based explorer
Neovim	Terminal based editor
Rofi	Menu and window switcher
Vlc	Video player
Rhythmbox	Audio player
Brave-nightly	Web browse