ArchSway

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

Standard Installation Steps

Arch Linux Installation Guide

Filesystem Setup

For a new setup, ROOT & HOME should be a f2fs | Bcachefs | btrfs | xfs partition. ROOT is mounted on / with the dedicated HOME |& FILES subvolume | partition mounted to /home and /home/${username}/files repectively. ROOT should have a max size of 60-120GiB with HOME between 120-240GiB and FILES of arbitrary size for multimedia content. 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 bcachefs/btrfs with zstd compression on first mount during installation
• format & mount all drive with a logical sector or block size of 4096

needed base system modules

• configure mkinitcpio and kernel cmdline parameters
• Enable systemd-boot as boot manager (bootctl install)
• Start 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
  • btrfs-progs
  • bcachefs-tools
  • dosfstools
  • exfatprogs
  • f2fs-tools
  • intel-ucode microcode
  • iwd for wifi
  • kitty/foot terminal
  • linux-firmware
  • linux-zen
  • mesa for opengl
  • intel-media-driver for hardware video acceleration
  • polkit for seat and privileged access management
  • man-db man-pages
  • Setup 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 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 option section in /etc/pacman.conf

[options]
Color
CheckSpace
VerbosePkgLists
ParallelDownloads = 5

• Setup 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 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 elvish
• fzf for fuzzy search
• vivid for LS_COLORS
• starship for prompt
• Helix and Neovim awesomely setup 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
• libreoffice-fresh for working with openoffice documents and hunspell-en_us for spellcheck, for help setting up spellcheck
• mpd for music daemon and ncmpcpp for ui interface and mpc for controlling playing
• mpv as multimedia player
• sound-theme-freedesktop for standard sounds and tone 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 filemanger
• fastfetch for displaying system information
• openssh and rsync for syncing file with remote over ssh
• remmina as remote desktop client with 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
• 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/UID/firefox
• where UID is your user's ID which can be obtained by running id -u
• if not using Firefox Profile on Ram then increase session save interval from the default of 15 seconds (15000 milliseconds) to 10 minutes (600000 milliseconds) by setting browser.sessionstore.interval to 600000

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 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
• Enable DNS over HTTPS in firefox
• modify relector configuration in /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf to sort based on download rate with --sort rate