ArchSway

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

Standard Installation Steps

Filesystem Setup

For new setup home should be a subvolume/partition mounted on the /root which is preferably btrfs/f2fs/xfs and FILES partition mounted to home/{data,/files} FILES should be 120-140GiB and root should have a max of 60GiB NOTE: make sure to mount btrfs with compression zstd on first mount on live iso

export ZDOTDIR in /etc/zsh/zshenv to $HOME/.config/dotfiles

needed base system modules

systemd-boot as boot manager
enabling systemd-boot-update service to update systemd-boot on systemd upgrade
sway/river as window manager with swayidle and swaylock for idle and lock management and waybar/yambar for bar management
- base
- btrfs-progs
- dosfstools
- exfatprogs
- f2fs-tools
- intel-ucode
- iwd
- kitty
- linux-firmware
- linux-zen
- man-db man-pages
- neovim (for config clone awesome-neovim to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim)
- sudo
- nushell or fish or zsh (set default shell with chsh -s $(which shellname))

basic configuration

since networking bits are already setup in the iso , You can just copy them .ie /etc/systemd/network/* to the mounted partition and start the necessary services iwd,systemd-networkd,systemd-resolvd Or use configuration in networking/resolve.conf and networking/network
Enable synchronizing the system clock across the network by enabling systemd-timesyncd.service
On the freshly installed system use the following fonts
- use fonts with great unicode support like ttf-dejavu or noto-fonts or gnu-free-fonts as system default font
- ttc-iosevka or ttf-jetbrains-mono 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 dns for 1.1.1.1 but this might not be needed since it's the default on arch linux
enable DNSOverTLS for resolved
iwd for wifi and enable it dhcp client
symlink /run/systemd/resolve/stub-resolv.con to /etc/resolv.conf for dns resolution TODO: review the usefullness of the lines below
disable unneeded services that run at boot like man-db.timer and mask ldconfig.service,systemd-rfkill*
disable journaling to persistent storage by setting Storage in journal.conf to volatile and masking systemd-journal-flush.service
link kitty to xterm
configure hardware acceleration and Intel_graphics and Intel_GVT-g
manual powermangement with udev rules and modprobe config files in powersaving .udev rules go to /etc/udev/rules.d
and modprobe configs in /etc/modprobe.d
add resume kernel parameter to the boot loader and resume hook to mkinitcpio
add resume to HOOKS in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and rebuild kernel for hibernation and it variant to work
enable powersaving options power management laptop
cpu frequency scaling and udev rules
Active State Power Management check if asmp is supported and add or remove powersave > /sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy from udev powersave rules based on that
modify relector configuration in /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf to sort based on download rate with --sort rate
modify sudoers with visudo using example in suders file
configure what powerbutton and lidclose does with /etc/systemd/logind.conf
For pacman enable the following options under option section in /etc/pacman.conf

[options]
Color
CheckSpace
VerbosePkgLists
ParallelDownloads = 5

configure /etc/motd with the Message Of The Day Eg.WELCOME MASTER MALPHA! WE ARE READY TO SERVE YOU!!!
after installation make sure to go through Archlinux General Recommendation

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
move disk cache to ram by setting browser.cache.disk.parent_directory to /run/user/UID/firefox
where UID is your user's ID which can be obtained by running id -u
increase session save interval to 6 minutes (360000 milliseconds) by setting browser.sessionstore.interval to 360000
Enable DNS over HTTPS in firefox

INSTALLS

base-devel for Basic c/c++ build tools to build Arch Linux packages
yay for AUR packagem mangement
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 controling backlight
carapace-bin for completions in nushell
pueue for process management in nushell
clang/gcc for c++ development
rustup with default profile and rust-analyzer component for rust development
zig with zls for zig development
language servers for
- cpp development
  - cppcheck
- web development
  - vscode-langservers-extracted
  - @tailwindcss/language-server
  - typescript
  - typescript-language-server
  - @volar/server
  - eslint
- lau development
  - lua-language-server
  - stylua
  - selene
- python development
  - jedi-language-server
  - ruff
  - mypy
  - python-pylint
  - python-black
  - python-poetry
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
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
fzf for fuzzy search
gammastep for controlling nightlight
git for version control
grim and slurp for screenshot
imagemagick for use by kitty for terminal image preview
imv as image viewer
mako as a lightweight notification daemon for wayland
install mesa for opengl and as dri userspace driver and intel-media-driver as va-api for intel
jq a Command-line JSON processor
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
docker for containerization of apps
ripgrep to recursively searches directories for a regex pattern while respecting your gitignore
fd as a simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to find
sd as an intuitive find & replace cli alternative to sed
libreoffice-fresh for working with openoffice documents and hunspell-en_us for spellcheck, for help setting up spellcheck
lldb for debugging zig c and c++
mpd for music daemon and ncmpcpp for ui interface and mpc for controlling playing
mpv as multimedia player
fastfetch for displaying system information
lf as filemanger
openssh and rsync for syncing file with remote over ssh
pipewire and pipewire-audio for audio/video routing and processing, pipewire-pulse as pulseaudio replacement and WirePlumber as pipewire session manager
remmina as remote desktop client with plugin like freerdp|libvncserver
reflector for choosing fastest pacman server list
usb_modeswitch for enabling modem mode for zero-cd based modems
wl-clipboard for wayland clipboard
sound-theme-freedesktop for standard sounds and tone used in linux
fuzzy as the application launcher
wlr-randr for wayland output management
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
zig zls-bin for zig development
zoxide for efficient directory movement
zsh-autosuggestions zsh-completions zsh-fast-syntax-highlighting zsh-theme-powerlevel10k-bin-git zsh-history-substring-search complements zsh