My Arch

Here are some notes to myself on how to get back to where I am now with Arch.

I installed Arh using the Arch Linux Gui installer for BSPMW. I was attracted by a tiling wm I'd not used before, the beautiful screenshot, and kitty/picom/rofi combo.

I loved it, so decided to install the traditional Arch way. But I copied my .config folder first.

So, of you wanted to repeat this, you need the .config files from the ALG BSPWM install.

Getting started (nothing new)

Boot the official arch media, then...

iwctl device list # wlan0
iwctl station wlan0 scan
iwctl station wlan0 get-networks # optional
iwctl station wlan0 connect tinternet
# and enter passphrase, OR:
iwctl --passphrase ... station wlan0 connect...

loadkeys uk
timedatectl set-ntp true
timedatectl status

If you want...

systemctl start gpm

Then you can login on a 2nd tty (user root; no passwd reqd) and copy commands from these notes into tty1.

OR You can view it in vim and copy them to the ! command.

OR you could use screen...

screen

Then

• Ctrl-a S to split horizontally, or Ctrl-a | to split vertically.
• Ctrl-a Tab to switch to the new region and Ctrl-a c to create a new window there.
• Ctrl-a Ctrl-a to switch between windows within a region,
• but Ctrl-a Tab to switch to the other region.

So, switch to the region containing zsh and then select in the notes region the text to be copied and right-click to paste it. it'll paste into the selected region, obviously! So remember.

Drive setup

Then set up the drive with fdisk ... mkfs....

For this laptop I have

so

mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1
mkswap /dev/sda2
# mkfs.vfat /dev/sda3 # *
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

* don't do this if you're using it already!

swapon /dev/sda2
mount /dev/sda4 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

and if you want access to these notes and stuff...

mkdir /mnt/resources
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/resources

Now we can install stuff!

reflector
pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware

Some basic configs and chroot!

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

arch-chroot /mnt
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localime
hwclock --systohc

pacman -Syu archlinux-keyring
pacman -Sy openresolv
pacman -Sy iwd
pacman -Sy ModemManager # ??
pacman -Sy dhcpcd

systemctl enable iwd
systemctl enable dhcpcd
resolvectl

pacman -Sy vi sudo
vi /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen

echo "LANG=en_GB.UTF8" >> /etc/locale.conf
echo "KEYMAP=uk" >> /etc/vconsole.conf
echo "tosh" >> /etc/hostname

passwd

pacman -Sy grub
grub-install /dev/sda
grub-mkconfig > /boot/grub/grub.cfg

# if you want  to carry on with screen...
pacman -Sy screen

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

Then setup a user and add them to wheel,video,audio

useradd -G wheel,video,audio -s /usr/bin/zsh -m jimi
passwd jimi

Install more stuff...

iwctl ...

pacman -Sy picom polybar bspwm kitty sxhkd
pacman -Sy mandoc scrot
pacman -Sy xorg-server zsh alsa-tools alsa-utils
pacman -Sy awesome-terminal-fonts noto-fonts
pacman -Sy terminus-font ttf-font-awesome
pacman -Sy ttf-hack ttf-roboto 
pacman -Sy firefox # (jack2)
pacman -Sy pulseaudio
pacman -Sy pulseaudio-alsa

Use visudo to uncomment *wheel*NOPASS*

Login with the new user and start hacking...

create /etc/asound.conf with following:

defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1

Maybe yay installs a lot quicker than paru? But I have the paru dir saved on /dev/sda3...

sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
tar xzvf /mnt/paru.tgz
pacman -U paru/paru*.pkg.tar.zst
sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel

This was previously made on the Toshiba, so should work fine without having to rebuild it all, which really did take flipping ages! That last line adds stuff required by paru.

Now we have AUR...

we can (when logged in as user, not root):

paru -Syu siji-git

... which takes care of the polybar icons.

paru -S betterlockscreen
paru -S ttf-nerd-fonts-symbols

Also, with AUR, we can install ly!

paru -S ly-git
paru -S rofi dmenu
sudo systemctl enable ly

Desktop Config

Consider the default contents of .config and either

1. tweak them using contents of /mnt/dot-config.tgz as a guide
2. or just unzip the tgz and overwrite the defaults

The dot-config.tgz also contains a couple jpgs for wallpaper.

bspwm now includes:

setxkbmap gb
sudo chgrp video /sys/class/backlight/radeon_bl0/brightness
sudo chmod g+w /sys/class/backlight/radeon_bl0/brightness

polybar/config includes

battery = BAT1
adapter = ADAC

BUT ADAC is wrong and should be ACAD! Change it.

xhkd/sxhkdrc includes

# printscreen
Print
        scrot -s -f

ctrl + Print
        scrot

And finally:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Reboot into paradise!

Honestly, this is just lovely. I prefer BSPWM/SXHKD to i3... it's mostly the gaps and how easy it is to add/change shortcuts I think.

I love the look of this desktop. The wallpaper cave Wallpaper Cave