Personal Arch Linux Setup

Quick rundown of system essentials:

• Using Pulseaudio (on Pipewire). This is confirmed by running pactl info.
  • Frontends like pulsemixer (TUI) or pavucontrol (GUI) let me select input/output devices.
• Using redshift as my red light filter.
• Using yazi (TUI) and nemo (GUI) as file manager.
• Using ly display manager.
• Using rofi app menu.
• Using dunst for notifications. The dunst daemon is started in my i3 config.
• Using picom as my compositor. The config is at ~/.config/picom/picom.conf. Can make inactive windows transparent,lac for example.
• Apps like pavucontrol, nemo, etc. can use GTK themes. To use a GTK theme, install one (it ends up in /usr/share/themes), then in .config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini, set gtk-theme-name as the name of the theme.
• Using autotiling to automatically alternate between splitting horizontally or vertically.
  • Only using this on odd numbered workspaces because I’m more likely to tab/stack windows in my central monitor (workspace 2).
• Using greenclip clipboard manager which has great integration with rofi.
• Using Alacritty as my main terminal emulator.
  • It allows for Vi-like keybindings which can be toggled into with Ctrl+Shift+Space.
  • Alacritty Vi features.

i3

My noteworthy keybindings are:

• mod + g — Launch browser.
• mod + o — Launch note-taking app (Obsidian).
• … TODO Add rest.

xborders

Using xborders which gives me true rounded corners (i3 has ugly rounded corners).

• The xborders script is located at ~/Scripts/xborders/.

Yazi

Yazi is a TUI file manager that is very fast and customisable. See https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/quick-start/#filedirectory-operations for quick start guide on all the default keybinds.

• Navigate using hjkl.
  • Can also use other Vim-like keybinds, such as Ctrl+u to navigate half a up up.
• ; to run a Shell command in the current directory.
• D to delete.
• X to cut.
• P to paste.
• … So many more.
• Enter to start a file editor on that file.

Setup notes:

• I’m using Alacritty. Image preview didn’t work out of the box, I needed to install the ueberzugpp AUR package, which also depends on libquantimage.

Obsidian

I’m using rclone to mount Google Drive on my local filesystem.

1. Install rclone: sudo -v ; curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | sudo bash

2. rclone config New remote > “GoogleDriveWiki” > Select Google Drive’s ID > Authorise Rclone to access your Google Drive.

   1. Follow https://rclone.org/drive/#making-your-own-client-id to get a Google Drive client ID, which allows for better performance.

3. rclone mount GoogleDriveWiki:wiki ~/Wiki/. This mounts the path wiki on the filesystem path, ~/Wiki/.

4. You’d want to run the previous command automatically in the background on startup. I’m doing this by writing a service file, .config/systemd/user/obsidian-rclone-mount.service, then enabling it to run in the background on startup by running systemctl --user start obsidqian-rclone-mount.service.

   See https://github.com/Tymotex/unix-dotfiles/blob/master/home-config/.config/systemd/user/obsidian-rclone-mount.service.

Notes on how to use rclone:

• rclone config to run interactive config.
• rclone mount $REMOTE_NAME:$PATH_IN_REMOTE $PATH_IN_LOCAL_FS will mount to a given path in your filesystem.

Installing Obsidian:

1. mkdir -p ~/AppImages

2. Download latest AppImage from https://obsidian.md/download and move to ~/AppImages.

3. Add a desktop entry fo Obsidian. I added one to .local/share/applications/Obsidian.desktop

   TODO: Add GitHub Link here.

4. Symlink Obsidian to /usr/local/bin/obsidian: sudo ln -s $HOME/AppImages/Obsidian.AppImage /usr/local/bin/obsidian.

Updating Obsidian is just a matter of downloading a new AppImage to replace the old one (and setting chmod +x on it)

VSCode

TODO.

1. yay -S visual-studio-code-bin.