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Things I use

  • Distributions

  • 🪟 Window Managers / 🖥 Desktop Environments

    • AwesomeWM
    • KDE
    • GNOME
    • XFCE
    • MATE
    • LxQt

  • Programs

    • Rofi: App launcher/Command Runner
    • Redshift: Color temperature for night time (f.lux but for Linux)
    • Solaar: Logitech Device Support
    • LXAppearance: Lighweight GTK Configurator
    • OpenTabletDriver: Pen Tablet Driver support (for osu! and art 😃)
    • Thunar: Graphical file manager
    • qBittorrent: GUI torrent client
    • kitty: Pretty cool terminal with good display capabilities
    • Samba: Nice SMB file sharing service
    • Flameshot: Powerful screen-shot tool
    • NeoVim: Great text editing
    • Emacs: Great text editing
    • CopyQ: Clipboard manager
    • Obsidian: Great note taking app
    • wpgtk: Great way to have changing color themes based on wallpaper

Nice things to know

  • Discord requires pulseaudio to work

    • Most machines from what I researched have ALSA it is recommended to install pulseaudio and pulseaudio-alsa
    • I also used pulsemixer to mix the sounds
    • pavucontrol is a nice GUI for pulseaudio

  • When using lightdm, it also requires some type of greeter like lightdm-gtk-greeter or lightdm-webkit2-greeter

  • If you use a custom kernel (i.e. linux-zen) remember to use nvidia-dkms rather than just nvidia!!! Also get nvidia-utils and nvidia-settings while you're at it

  • You cannot partition nested partitions (Useful when splitting drive between Windows and Linux)

    • Instead partition the lowermost parent drive

  • Use cfdisk to partition rather than fdisk

    • cfdisk is a bit easier to use and understand (especially for noobs like me)

  • If stranded in an Arch install without Ethernet, use iwctl

    • To ensure your wifi adapter isn't blocked use rfkill unblock all
      • If you don't want to unblock all, I believe it can be replaced with wifi
    • If you don't know your wifi adapter's name you can use device list after getting into the iwctl shell
    • To actually connect, go into iwctl and type station <Device Name> connect <Network Name>
      • To scan for networks you can use station <Device Name> scan
      • The password will be prompted from you if needed

  • lsblk is a lot cleaner to see partitions compared to fsdisk -l

  • To remove mouse acceleration, configure your xorg files according to this Arch wiki page

    • It seems that the first option disables acceleration but also is a bit slower than Windows. Use the second option with libinput for a more Window's like sensitivity

  • pacman -Rs $(pacman -Qtdq) Removes all unneeded* dependencies. pacman -Rs <package> removes the package and it's unneeded dependencies

    • Be sure to check the list using just pacman -Qtdq
    • pacman -Qe lists the packages that you have (usually) installed manually

  • Using the alt keys as a Window Manager's Mod keys is so much more ergonomic for me. You can use it on both sides and it strains a lot less than the Super (Windows) Key

  • Great Xresources color theme maker can be found here

    • Xresources (.Xresources) is a file in the ~ directory that is a common place that programs "pick" their colors from

  • Easy way to find window class: xprop WM_CLASS in the console lets you click on any window and retrieve's its window class

  • .xinitrc and .xprofile are great places for autostart stuff

  • Forget to do sudo on a command? Just type sudo !! after your mistake. !! repeats the immediately preceeding command

  • To allow a script (usually .sh files) to execute, you must give them the proper flags with chmod u+x <File Name>

  • When using kitty, leave TERM=xterm-kitty. Changing this seems to make things go wack

  • You can sync Linux and Windows time with timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock on Linux

  • Fonts are important! If you see a lot of missing symbols within your linux install remember to get font packages that support the symbols you'll be using.

  • picom seems to have VSync enabled by default. Make sure you disable that if you have a dual monitor setup. (Or launch on a per monitor basis)

  • react-scripts seems to not work natively on Arch. You can fix this by doing npm i -g react-scripts but that is seems very jank b/c it requires sudo. You can also redirect the react-scripts to go into ./node_modules/react-scripts/bin/react-scripts.js <COMMAND-NAME>. I will need to research why this behavior exists b/c it seems common given the stack overflow posts. No one really ever solves the problem though

    • Found out the problem. My projects were on a different NTFS drive and so when attempted to use react-scripts it doesn't work due to pathing erros. This also seems to be the case for things like java and other command line tools that are in your PATH. A way to fix this is to bind mount your NTFS drives onto your main one and this solves that issue

  • Remember to setup your new SSH keys for any git services you use. (Github)

  • pgrep is to retrieve the process ID of a program. REALLY useful to run programs dependent on if it is already running or not

  • If you want to use the settings sync in VSCode on Arch, you should install gnome-keyring for secret storing

  • xev is a beautiful command that outputs any button you press, which you can then map using some type of key manager

  • xset -q | grep "Caps Lock:[ ]\+on" -c && xdotool key Caps_Lock; setxkbmap -option caps:escape

    • This shell command will disable your Caps Lock and then remap it to Escape
    • This works wonders with things like vim 😆

  • rmmod hid_uclogic and echo "blacklist echo "blacklist hid_uclogic" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

    • Disable default drivers for XP-Pen Tablets (To work with Open Tablet Driver)

  • Want transparent and blurry discord? Check out Glasscord!

    • A personal favorite theme that takes advantage of it is Nord Glasscord

  • You can edit your .desktop file to make it so it opens a specific terminal. (Used to get Thunar to always open with kitty)

  • Use GNU Stow to easily manage all your dotfiles!

  • Use NoiseTorch to automagically remove background noise from your microphone. It actually is insane how well it works

  • Steam for some reason keeps your screen awake when you use an external storage solution for your library

  • Documentation is key!

  • I use Arch btw XD