After the contest for archlinux-wallpaper, there are a lot of high
quality backgrounds that one can choose from. Instead of worrying
about choosing an appropriate background for a desktop environment,
one can simply use archlinux-wallpaper instead.
$hostname is now defined by default so we don't need to do anything
here. I assume it wasn't always like this since otherwise I wouldn't
have needed to call `hostname` in the first place.
This admittedly makes our tmux slightly boring in comparison to those
that customize it, but having a consistent layout makes it easier to
work with tmux across different environments.
"dog" was an alternative I used to cat for syntax highlighting. Now that
bat exists (which is written in rust, by the way), there is no need to
use "dog" and I highly recommend anyone interested to use bat instead.
It turns out that I don't actually *need* image output in the terminal
(besides being cool). With that aside, I can safely use alacritty
knowing that it's written in Rust and is apparently the fastest terminal
emulator in existence.
Note that I need to update the script later or simply provide a series
of instructions so everything isn't dependant on one script.
In the past it was nice to install Arch Linux with minimal if any
console intervention, but the practicality of this is questionable
since you only have to install Arch once. A more specialized script
could be useful for mass installations, although in this case I assume
one would create such a script on-the-spot.
For those of you reading this: If possible, you should invest in neo(vim)
instead of (vs)code, as I believe there is a significant difference in
productivity when it comes to not worrying about the user interface that
(vs)code provides.
I may want to use this in the future and even if I don't use it it's not
going to have a significant impact on the computer, so I might as well
keep it here just in case.
I don't actually need to get rid of my old config files if I ever want
to have easy access to them in the future. Although I intend on using
Wayland, having a nice interface for traditional X applications may not
be a bad idea (some graphically intensive programs also run better there,
apparently).
Some nice changes here, although I may stick to alacritty for now since
it seems to be faster and I can focus on using tmux instead of having
multiple ways to manage windows.
It's the end of an era and I no longer use bspwm. Although the tiling of
bspwm was admittedly cool, at the end of the day most of my time isn't
spent opening new windows so working with the i3-like sway instead works
just fine.
Having a meta package was cool and it got the job done, but it's
inconvenient to use when adding and removing a lot of packages.
One alternative I'm looking at is simply keeping track of all the
explicitly installed packages and storing that in a text file. This
makes it easy to keep track of all the installed packages without
introducing downsides, and new machines that don't need certain
packages can simply delete those lines.
As of now I am largely uninterested in customizing neofetch to look
completely different, although time will tell if I stay true to this
stance. As of now, however, showing an image is enough.
Over time compton became unmaintained and a replacement package picom
took its place. After trying out sway for a bit, I realized that it
doesn't need a separate compositor at all like bspwm does, so I might
just switch to it. Note that there is a performance penalty on sway
that I haven't figured out how to solve yet.
evince actually uses less memory than zathura and seems to be more
efficient overall, although it isn't as customizable as zathura and
not as minimal in terms of UI.
Overall, I'd rather just use zathura, which also lets me be more
consistent in my bspwm setup.
Apparently gnome-books and sushi depend on evince, the first of which
is a GUI for djvu/epub files and the second of which lets you preview files
with the spacebar in the file explorer. Ironically, I've never used this
feature until I read about it, and although it seems cool, I don't think
I have a use for it as I've been opening my files normally for years now.
Some of these settings, specifically the window-status ones, produced
error messages in more recent versions of tmux. I've gone ahead and
simplified everything to the default colors since they work pretty well
already.
These packages aren't included by default anymore so adding them here
makes sense. Note that maintaining a large meta package is actually
difficult since one error means the whole thing doesn't work.
I am looking for an alternative solution to keep things somewhat
automated while at the same time increase flexibility when it comes
to the initial setup.