ArchSway

Archlinux on river/sway from scratch with the most minimal dependencies. DIY is awesome

Standard Installation Steps

Arch Linux Installation Guide

Filesystem Setup

• ESP /efi should be 2GiB if you plan on installing efi applications like arch rescue else 512MiB otherwise
• ROOT should be a (xfs for hdd | f2fs for nvme) with a size of 30GiB - 60GiB
• HOME & FILES (btrfs | ext4) partition with HOME between 60-120GiB and FILES of arbitrary size for multimedia content
• ROOT is mounted on / with the dedicated HOME &| FILES subvolume | partition mounted to /home and /home/${username}/files repectively.
• Setup zram 3x RAM size to allow running more memory hungry tasks .eg compiling llvm, clang, clang-tools, lldb.
• Use a ZRAM backing device equal to RAM size 12GiB and a swap partition for hibernation also of size equal to RAM 12Gib

NOTE:

• make sure to create and mount Btrfs with Zstd compression on first mount during installation
• format & mount all drives with a logical sector or block size of 4096

needed base system modules

• Configure mkinitcpio linux-zen.preset to generate a efi uki image
• Use /efi as ESP partition and set systemd-boot loader.conf to your efi uki (unified kernel image) image
• Extend mkinitcpio image generation with zstd compression and add kernel cmdline parameters
• Enable systemd-boot as boot manager (bootctl install)
• Enable iwd, systemd-networkd, systemd-resolved system services
• Enabling systemd-boot-update service to update systemd-boot on systemd upgrade
• river/sway as window manager with swayidle and waylock for idle and lock management and levee/yambar for bar management
  • base
  • xfsprogs | f2fs-tools | btrfs-progs | dosfstools | exfatprogs
  • intel-ucode microcode
  • iwd for wifi
  • ghostty/kitty/foot terminal
  • Install only needed linux-firmware, check firmwares you might need with lspci and use dynamic debug to know more details about the exact firmwares loaded at kernel startup
  • linux-zen
  • intel-media-driver for hardware video acceleration
  • polkit for seat and privileged access management
  • man-db and man-pages and enable man-db.timer service
  • Set up GPG with SSH authentication enabled
  • helix/neovim for config clone awesome-helix to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/helix or awesome-neovim to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim
  • sudo
  • elvish/fish (set default shell with chsh -s $(which shellname))

basic configuration

• iwd for wifi and enable its builtin dhcp client
• symlink /run/systemd/resolve/stub-resolv.conf to /etc/resolv.conf for DNS resolution
• setup reflector for choosing the fastest Pacman mirror list
• Configure network using systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved
• Setup vconsole terminal fonts
• On the freshly installed system, use the following fonts
  • use fonts with great unicode support, like ttf-dejavu or noto-fonts as the system default font
  • ttf-jetbrains-mono or ttc-iosevka for monospace,
  • ttf-nerd-fonts-symbols-mono for nerd font symbols and noto-font-emoji for emoji

  NOTE: don't forget to ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/10-nerd-font-symbols.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

• configure Intel_graphics hardware acceleration
• setup laptop, zram, disk, network and power management options using udev rules, sysctl and modprobe config
• Configure hibernation by adding resume kernel parameter, resume hook to mkinitcpio, and rebuilding kernel
• Enable Active State Power Management if supported and add or remove powersave > /sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy from udev powersave rules based on the results
• Configure sudo for current user using sudo -E visudo -sf /etc/sudoers.d/${username}. Example sudoers file
• Configure logind, journald and sleep
• For extra Performance Improvements
• For pacman, enable the following options under the option section in /etc/pacman.conf

[options]
Color
CheckSpace
VerbosePkgLists
ParallelDownloads = 5

• Set up makepkg.conf and Increase /tmp tmpfs size to 90% of RAM by copying and changing the Options field of Mount from the default size of 50% to 90% in the drop-in config file. This helps to prevent OOM when compiling clang on /tmp sudo -E systemctl edit tmp.mount --drop-in=hugetmp.mount

[Mount]
Options=
Options=mode=1777,strictatime,nosuid,nodev,size=90%%,nr_inodes=1m

NOTE: This is to be used in conjunction with zram

INSTALLS

• base-devel for Basic c/c++ build tools to build Arch Linux packages
• mold as linker for C, Rust and C++
• lldb/gdb for debugging Zig, C, and C++
• clang/gcc for C++ development with clangd
• zig with zls for zig development
• rustup with default profile and rust-analyzer component for Rust development
• luajit for lua development
• iptables-nft and nftable(automatically installed as a dependency of iptables-nft) for firewall configuration (enable the nftables service)
• nmap and tcpdump for network analysis and auditing
• yay for AUR package management
• android-file-transfer with libmtp for connecting Android phones mtp management
• aria2 as download manager
• bat is a Cat clone with syntax highlighting and git integration
• bluez and bluez-utils for Bluetooth
• brightnessctl for controlling backlight
• carapace-bin for completions in elvish
• fzf for fuzzy search
• vivid for LS_COLORS
• starship for prompt
• Helix and Neovim awesomely set up with the relevant LSPs and static analyzers for Zig, C, Rust, C++, Luajit, Python, Shell, and Web-Development.
• dictd server with dict client and some dictionary sources for yay like dict-wikt-en-all, dict-freedict-eng-spa, dict-freedict-spa-eng, dict-foldoc, dict-gcide, dict-wn.
  • NOTE: to disable online mode, comment out server dict.org in /etc/dict/dict.conf
  • Make sure locale is properly configured in DICTD_ARGS of /etc/conf.d/dictd else, the service unit will fail
  • Since dict uses en_US.UTF-8 by default, make sure to comment it out in /etc/locale.gen and compile it along side your locale of choice es_MX.UTF-8
• ffmpegthumbnailer & gnome-epub-thumbnailer for thumbnails
• firefox with speech-dispatcher (for Text-to-Speech) as pdf reader or zathura and firefox-ublock-origin as adblocker and foliate/fbreader as epub reader
• wlsunset for controlling screen blue light
• git for version control
• grim and slurp for screenshot
• mako as a lightweight notification daemon for Wayland
• docker for containerization of apps
• scrcpy for mirroring android device (with adb for copying to Android)
• libreoffice-fresh for working with openoffice documents and hunspell-en_us for spellcheck, for help setting up spellcheck
• mpd for music daemon, ncmpcpp for ui interface, and mpc for controlling playing
• mpv as multimedia player
• sound-theme-freedesktop for standard sounds and tones used in Linux
• pipewire and pipewire-audio for audio/video routing and processing, pipewire-pulse as pulseaudio replacement and WirePlumber as pipewire session manager
• lf as file manager
• fastfetch for displaying system information
• openssh and rsync for syncing files with a remote over ssh
• remmina as remote desktop client with a plugin like freerdp|libvncserver
• usb_modeswitch for enabling modem mode for zero-cd based modems
• wl-clipboard for wayland clipboard
• batsignal for battery status notifications
• kanshi for wayland output management
• fuzzel as the application launcher
• cliphist as clipboard history manager
• qt5-wayland for runing qt5 apps under wayland
• xdg-desktop-portal-wrl for WebRTC screen sharing
• xdg-utils to assist applications with desktop integration tasks
• yt-dlp YouTube downloader
• zoxide for efficient directory movement

Configuring Firefox

• Enable Firefox Hardware video acceleration by setting media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled to true and Hardware WebRender by setting gfx.webrender.all to true and media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled to true
• Enable insert new tabs after current by setting browser.tabs.insertAfterCurrent to true
• Enable Firefox Profile on Ram when using zram/nvme/ssd
• Move Firefox disk cache to ram by setting browser.cache.disk.parent_directory to /run/user/1000/firefox
• Increase session save interval from the default of 15 seconds (15000 milliseconds) to 30 minutes (1,800,000 milliseconds) by setting browser.sessionstore.interval to 1800000
• Enable auto unloading of inactive tabs

OPTIONAL

• configure /etc/motd with the Message Of The Day Eg. WELCOME MASTER MALPHA! WE ARE READY TO SERVE YOU!!!
• Checkout Archlinux General Recommendation
• enable DNSOverTLS for resolved
• Enable synchronizing the system clock across the network by enabling systemd-timesyncd.service
• Disable journaling to persistent storage by setting Storage in journal.conf to volatile and masking systemd-journal-flush.service
• link kitty to xterm
• Enable DNS over HTTPS in Firefox
• modify relector configuration in /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf to sort based on download rate with --sort rate

WSL

Install ArchLinux WSL on Windows 11 using wsl --install archlinux. After installing, follow these instructions to set up ArchLinux on WSL 2.

• Download and install a Nerd Font of your choosing, like IosevkaTerm and use it as your default font for Windows Terminal
• Install starship winget install -e --id Starship.Starship and add Invoke-Expression (&starship init powershell) to your $PROFILE as in Microsoft.PowerShell_profile
• Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser in PowerShell to enable running of scripts
• Add the wheel group groupadd -f wheel as it isn't available by default in Archlinux WSL
• create a non-root user and add him to the wheel group useradd -mG wheel -s /bin/elvish username
• Set a password for your new user with passwd username
• To set a different host name, disable hostname generation, and set a static hostname in wsl.conf
• Configure sudoers file at /etc/sudoers.d/username
• clone this repo to ~/.config/dotfiles and symlink ~/.config/dotfiles/config/elvish to ~/.config/elvish to activate the elvish shell configuration
• Configure makepkg and pacman
• Install yay for AUR management with mkdir ~/aur ; cd ~/aur ; sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel ; git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay-bin.git ; cd yay-bin ; makepkg -si
• Install essential utilities like man-db, man-pages', carapace-bin, batandfzf`

Using a custom build WSL kernel

• To compile the WSL kernel, you need base-devel, bc, cpio, pahole, python, and rsync.
• Then set swap=32GB in .wslconfig to ensure you can compile the kernel without running out of memory
• Run zcat /proc/config.gz | /bin/sed '/is not set/d' > .config to get a copy of all the set config used by the current WSL kernel
• Run env KCONFIG_CONFIG=Microsoft/config-wsl ./scripts/kconfig/merge_config.sh .config to merge .config with Microsoft/config-wsl, overriding options in Microsoft/config-wsl.
• Then env KCONFIG_CONFIG=Microsoft/config-wsl make olddefconfig or env KCONFIG_CONFIG=Microsoft/config-wsl make oldconfig to use default values for new kernel configs not in $E:KCONFIG_CONFIG.
• ensure CONFIG_TUN=y and CONFIG_TAP=y are set in Microsoft/config-wsl to enable userspace networking used by podman and VPNs
• Use mold set-env LD mold to link faster, this reduced the whole compile/link phase from about 1hr30min to 30min for me
• follow instructions at updating wsl kernel
• At the end, you should have a .wslconfig like mine

TERMUX

To use pacman as the package manager for Termux follow these instructions If you want to compile AUR packages follow these instructions

• openssl-tool
• openssh
• zig
• rust
• golang
• python
• bsdtar
• fzf
• bat
• starship
• fastfetch
• git
• helix
• man