These are my configuration files for making a base Arch Linux installation a usable system for day-to-day work. For programs that allow color customization, I synchronized its config files to look alike by working under the same color palette. The GTK theme that applies to most of the programs is called Dark Minimalist, a dark theme that looks good, but it's simple enough to appear elegant. These config files have only been tested on Arch Linux. If you use another OS, some files might not work well or not work at all.
Most of these files are modifications of owl4ce's dotfiles. I did not create many files you'll see and there will be modified files from other sources that may or may not be referenced to the original author.
The installation begins right after a clean installation of Arch Linux, concretely, after setting the root password. Here I like to follow some steps of Antonio Sarosi's dotfiles.
First, while still in the chroot environment, you have to make sure to have working internet:
pacman -S networkmanager
systemctl enable NetworkManagerNow you can install a bootloader and test it "safely", this is how to do it on modern hardware, assuming you've mounted the efi partition on /boot:
pacman -S grub efibootmgr os-prober
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot
os-prober
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfgNow you can create your user:
useradd -m username
passwd username
usermod -aG wheel,video,audio,storage usernameIn order to have root privileges we need sudo:
pacman -S sudoEdit /etc/sudoers with nano or vim by uncommenting this line:
## Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALLNow you can reboot:
# Exit out of ISO image, unmount it and remove it
exit
umount -R /mnt
rebootAfter 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_PASSWORDCheck 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 xorgIf you are in a clean Arch environment, you can use the install-script file included in this repo. This will install all the packages, its dependencies and the configuration files. If you do not want to use this script, you can get to the next section, which is a guide for a manual installation.
The first thing you have to do is install git and clone this repository:
sudo pacman -S git base-devel
git clone https://github.com/LeonN534/My-Dotfiles.gitNow, get inside the "My-Dotfiles" folder and execute the install-script.sh:
cd My-Dotfiles
./install-script.shAfter running the script, you will be asked to type your password sometimes. This is needed to copy some files, install some packages and change some stuff. Once the execution has finished, you'll have to restart your systems and you'll be done.
As we already installed Xorg, we will install a session manager: lightdm. Lightdm will not work unless we install a greeter. I use openbox as window manager. Openbox has a menu for some applications when you right-click on the desktop, unfortunately, the terminal we will install is not present in that list. That's why we will have to install xterm, which is one of the terminals Openbox allows out of the box.
sudo pacman -S lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter lightdm-webkit2-greeter openboxEnable lightdm service and restart your computer, you should be able to log into Openbox through lightdm.
sudo systemctl enable lightdm
rebootOnce you have rebooted your system, you will be in the basic openbox desktop. Right-click on any part of that black screen and you will see a menu, search for Terminals and then Xterm. We will use this terminal to install another terminal: alacritty.
sudo pacman -S alacrittyAfter installing Alacritty, type in the Xterm terminal "alacritty" (without the quotation marks) and another terminal will appear. From now on, we will use this method to open Alacritty and we will continue this guide assuming all the commands you type are being typed in Alacritty.
You might be wondering, why not use the Xterm terminal for the rest of the tutorial? Well, the last time I used Xterm I wasn't able to paste stuff in it without installing plugins. This is not the case with Alacritty, which has all these functionalities out of the box. If for some reason this changed and Xterm allows that stuff by default, feel free to use it or use any terminal to continue this guide.
To be able to continue this guide just copying and pasting the commands instead of typing them individually, you will need a web browser, which in this case is Firefox.
sudo pacman -S firefoxTo edit small files in Windows, I used to use the notepad provided by Windows because it was a lightweight text editor for quick editions. Now, in Arch, I work under the same philosophy: for quick and small text edition I use Vim. Now, since these dotfiles don't have config files for Vim, you can replace it with something like Nano.
sudo pacman -S vim
#or
sudo pacman -S nanoNow, for code edition I use something more appropiate: Visual Studio Code.
sudo pacman -S codeI use Thunar as file manager. You also need the other packages below in other to be able to add some funcionalities for the file manager. you can read more about them in the Thunar link.
sudo pacman -S thunar thunar-archive-plugin ffmpegthumbnailer tumblerAs a task bar I use a light and customizable panel whicih comes with an integrated system tray: Tint2.
sudo pacman -S tint2Until now, you won't be able to listen to anything. In order to get sound from our system, we need to install an audio server, like Pulse audio, and a graphical program to control it, Pavucontrol.
sudo pacman -S pulseaudio pavucontrol pulseaudio-alsa alsa-utilsIf you're on a laptop, you probably want to control the brightness of the screen. In order to achieve that, we must install a package that allow us to do that, like brightnessctl
sudo pacman -S brightnessctlWe also need an utility to automount external devices, like USB flash drives, whenever we connect them. In order to achieve this, we need to install udiskie and also ntfs-3g to read and write NTFS formatted drives:
sudo pacman -S udiskie ntfs-3gWe already configured the network through nmcli, but a graphical frontend is more friendly. I use nm-applet:
In order to display notifications about the system volume, screen brightness, actions made by the user, etc. we need Dunst.
sudo pacman -S dunstIn order to turn the screen off, suspend the system after a certain amount of time or, if you are on a laptop, suspend the system after closing the lid, we need a package that allows us to control these events and set a response for them. We are going to use xfce-power-manager:
sudo pacman -S xfce-power-managerTo be able to lock our screen when a certain amount of time passes, or after suspending the system, we will use light-locker:
sudo pacman -S light-lockerTo be able to use a copy stuff to the clipboard via CLI, we will use xclip, and as a clipboard manager, which let us access to a clipboard history, we'll be using parcellite:
sudo pacman -S xclip parcelliteTo open images and visualize them, I like to use viewnior. And to reproduceboth audio and video, I like to use vlc:
sudo pacman -S viewnior vlcFor capturing an image of the screen I use scrot. As in my dotfiles I included three ways to take screenshots(instant ss, selection ss and delayed ss), other packages are needed. Like imagemagick and xclip, which we already installed.
sudo pacman -S scrot imagemagick The AUR is a repository where users upload any piece of software available for Linux. It is different from the official repo since any user can upload anything and, hardly ever, this can contain a malicious script. There are a lot of AUR helpers like yay, paru, etc. but we will be using yay. I recommend watching these videos from Eric Murphy in order to be familiarized with AUR helpers:
sudo pacman -S git base-devel
cd /opt/
sudo git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay-git.git
sudo chown -R username:username yay-git/ # replace both "username" with your username
cd yay-git
makepkg -siTo be able to compress and decompresses files we will be using p7zip as a CLI tool, and p7zip-gui as a GUI tool.
sudo pacman -S pzip
yay -S p7zip-guiFirst, you have to clone this repository, preferably, in your home directory:
cd
git clone https://github.com/LeonN534/dotfiles.git
cd dotfilesThen, copy the .folders to your home directory. The .scripts folder contains the sh scripts for changing the system volume, brightness, taking screenshots, etc. The .wallpapers folder contains images that can be used as wallpaper for the desktop. The .themes folder contains the GTK dark theme used to change the appereance of most GTK applications. The .config folder contains configuration files for the Alacritty terminal, the Dunst notification manager, the Openbox window manager, the rofi application launcher, the Thunar file manager, the tint2 panel, etc.
If a folder or a file does not exist, just create it with mkdir or touch.
You can copy the whole .config folder to get all the config files, or you can individually copy just the subfolders for the programs you need.
cp -R .scripts .wallpapers .themes ../
cd .config
cp -R alacritty dunst openbox rofi Thunar tin2 xfce4 ../../.config/
cd ..
sudo mkdir /usr/lib/xfce4/thunar-archive-plugin