My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

Arch Linux is a general purpose GNU/Linux distribution that provides most up-to-date software by following the rolling-release model. Arch Linux allows you to use updated cutting-edge software and packages as soon as the developers released them.

Plasma 5 is the current generation of the desktop environment created by KDE primarily for Linux systems.

In this post, we will do a complete installation of Arch Linux with Plasma 5 as the desktop environment. Our setup will also involve encryption of the root partition that will be formatted in btrfs. This post is an updated and a more complete version of my previous posts on Arch Linux and Plasma 5 Installation.

Table of ContentsSection titled Table of Contents

System DetailsSection titled System Details

For reference, my installation system is a slightly upgraded form of my original desktop:

• i7 4790 3.6 GHz (Haswell)
• ASRock Z97 Extreme6 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA USB 3.0
• ADATA XPG V1.0 DDR3 1866 4x4 GB RAM
• OCZ Vertex 460A Series 2.5” 240 GB
• WD Blue 1TB 3.5” 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache
• WD Blue 3TB 3.5” 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache
• Ultra LSP V2 650 Watt PSU
• Cooler Master - MasterCase Pro 5
• Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blue Ray Burner
• Samsung U28E590D 28-Inch UHD LED-Lit 4K Monitor
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti GPU

Base InstallationSection titled Base Installation

Before beginning this guide, I would assume that you have a bootable USB of the latest Arch Linux Installer. If not, please follow the Arch wiki guide to create one for you.

Once you login in the installer disk, You will be logged in on the first virtual console as the root user, and presented with a zsh shell prompt. I will assume you have an Ethernet connection and hence will be connected to Internet by default. If you have to rely on wifi, please refer to the Wireless Network Configuration wiki page for the detailed setup. You must have Internet connection at this stage before proceeding any further.

You should boot into UEFI mode if you have a UEFI motherboard and UEFI mode enabled.

To verify you have booted in UEFI mode, run:

efivar -l

This should give you a list of set UEFI variables. Please look at the Arch Installation Guide in case you do not get any list of UEFI variables.

The very first thing that annoys me in the virtual console is how tiny all the fonts are. We will fix that by running the following commands:

pacman -Sy
pacman -S terminus-font
setfont ter-132n

We are all set to get started with the actual installation process.

HDDs PartitioningSection titled HDDs Partitioning

First find the hard drive that you will be using as the main/root disk.

$ cat /proc/partitions

# OUTPUT eg.
# major minor  #blocks  name

# 8        0  268435456 sda
# 9        0  268435456 sdb
# 19       0  268435456 sdc
# 11       0     759808 sr0
# 7        0     328616 loop0

Say, we will be using /dev/sda as the main disk and /dev/sdb as /data and /dev/sdc as /media .

Because we are creating an encrypted file system it’s a good idea to overwrite it with random data.

We will use badblocks for this. Another method is to use dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/xxx, the dd method is probably the best method, but is a lot slower. The following step should take about 20 minutes on a 240 GB SSD.

badblocks -c 10240 -s -w -t random -v /dev/sda

Next, we will create GPT partitions on all disks using gdisk command.

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=5000
$ gdisk /dev/sda
Found invalid MBR and corrupt GPT. What do you want to do? (Using the
GPT MAY permit recovery of GPT data.)
 1 - Use current GPT
 2 - Create blank GPT

Then press 2 to create a blank GPT and start fresh

ZAP:
$ press x - to go to extended menu
$ press z - to zap
$ press Y - to confirm
$ press Y - to delete MBR

It might now kick us out of gdisk, so get back into it:

$ gdisk /dev/sda

Command (? for help): m
Command (? for help): n

Partition number (1-128, default 1):
First sector (34-500118158, default = 2048) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (2048-500118, default = 500118) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: 512M
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300): ef00
Changed type of partition to 'EFI System'

Partition number (2-128, default 2):
First sector (34-500118, default = 16779264) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (16779264-500118, default = 500118) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300):
Changed type of partition to 'Linux filesystem'

Command (? for help): p
Press w to write to disk
Press Y to confirm

Repeat the above procedure for /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc, but create just one partition with all values as default. At the end we will have three partitions: /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc1.

Setup Disk EncryptionSection titled Setup Disk Encryption

Our /boot partition will be on /dev/sda1, while the main installation will be on /dev/sda2. In this setup, we will be enabling full encryption on /dev/sda2 only.

In order to enable disk encryption, we will first create a root luks volume, open it and then format it.

# first, we need to prepare the encrypted (outer) volume
$ cryptsetup --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --hash sha512 --use-random --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/sda2

# I really hope I don't have to lecture you on NOT LOSING this
# password, lest all of your data will be forever inaccessible,
# right?

# then, we actually open it as a block device, and format the
# inner volume later
$ cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda2 root

Automatic Key Login from an USB/SD CardSection titled Automatic Key Login from an USB/SD Card

If you want to automatically login the encrypted disk password from an externally attached USB or SD card, you will first need to create a key file.

dd bs=512 count=4 if=/dev/urandom of=KEYFILE

Then, add this key to the luks container, so that it can be later used to open the encrypted drive.

cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sda2 KEYFILE

The recommended way of using such a disk would be as follows:

# assuming our USB of interest is /dev/sdd  and can be format
#
# Format the drive
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd bs=1M
# Create partitions using gdisk
#
$ gdisk /dev/sdd
#
# Follow along to create one partition (/dev/sdd1) of type 0700
#
# format /dev/sdd1
$ mkfs.fat /dev/sdd1

# mount the newly format disk on /mnt and then copy the KEYFILE
$ mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt
$ mv KEYFILE /mnt/KEYFILE
$ umount /mnt

We will be later using this KEYFILE in boot loader setup.

Format HDDsSection titled Format HDDs

At this point, we have following drives ready for format: /dev/sda1, /dev/mapper/root, /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc1.

These can be format as follows:

mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.btrfs -L arch /dev/mapper/root
mkfs.btrfs -L data /dev/sdb1
mkfs.btrfs -L media /dev/sdc1

Now, we will create btrfs subvolumes and mount them properly for installation and final setup.

mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/ROOT
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/home
umount /mnt

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/data
umount /mnt

mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/media
umount /mnt

Now, once the sub-volumes have been created, we will mount them in appropriate locations with optimal flags.

SSD_MOUNTS="rw,noatime,nodev,compress=lzo,ssd,discard,space_cache,autodefrag,inode_cache"
HDD_MOUNTS="rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,space_cache"
EFI_MOUNTS="rw,noatime,discard,nodev,nosuid,noexec"
mount -o $SSD_MOUNTS,subvol=ROOT /dev/mapper/root /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/home
mkdir -p /mnt/data
mkdir -p /mnt/media
mount -o $SSD_MOUNTS,nosuid,subvol=home /dev/mapper/root /mnt/home
mount -o $HDD_MOUNTS,subvol=data /dev/sdb1 /mnt/data
mount -o $HDD_MOUNTS,subvol=media /dev/sdc1 /mnt/media

mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount -o $EFI_MOUNTS /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf

Base System InstallationSection titled Base System Installation

Now, we will do the actually installation of base packages.

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel btrfs-progs
genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Initial System SetupSection titled Initial System Setup

Edit the /mnt/ect/fstab file to add following /tmp mounts.

tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,nodev,nosuid 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nodev,nosuid,noexec 0 0

Finally bind root for installation.

arch-chroot /mnt "bash"
pacman -Syy
pacman -Syu
pacman -S sudo vim
$ vim /etc/locale.gen

...
# en_SG ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
# en_US ISO-8859-1
...

locale-gen
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ls -l /usr/share/zoneinfo
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Zone/SubZone /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc --utc
sed -i "s/# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL/%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL/" /etc/sudoers
HOSTNAME=euler
echo $HOSTNAME > /etc/hostname
passwd

We will also add hostname to our /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
::1             localhost.localdomain   localhost
127.0.0.1       $HOSTNAME.localdomain   $HOSTNAME

We also need to fix the mkinitcpio.conf to contain what we actually need.

$ vi /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
# on the MODULES section, add "vfat aes_x86_64 crc32c-intel"
# (and whatever else you know your hardware needs. Mine needs i915 too)
# on the BINARIES section, add "/usr/bin/btrfsck", since it's useful
# to have in case your filesystem has troubles
# on the HOOKS section:
#  - add "encrypt" before "filesystems"
#  - remove "fsck" and
#  - add "btrfs" at the end
#
# re-generate your initrd images
mkinitcpio -p linux

Boot Manager SetupSection titled Boot Manager Setup

systemd-boot, previously called gummiboot, is a simple UEFI boot manager which executes configured EFI images. The default entry is selected by a configured pattern (glob) or an on-screen menu. It is included with the systemd, which is installed on an Arch systems by default.

Assuming /boot is your boot drive, first run the following command to get started:

bootctl --path=/boot install

It will copy the systemd-boot binary to your EFI System Partition ( /boot/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi and /boot/EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.EFI - both of which are identical - on x64 systems ) and add systemd-boot itself as the default EFI application (default boot entry) loaded by the EFI Boot Manager.

Finally to configure out boot loader, we will need the UUID of some of our hard drives. These can be easily done using the blkid command.

$ blkid /dev/sda1 > /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
$ blkid /dev/sda2 >> /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
$ blkid /dev/mapper/root >> /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
$ blkid /dev/sdd1 >> /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

# for this example, I'm going to mark them like this:
# /dev/sda1 LABEL="EFI"                 UUID=11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111
# /dev/sda2 LABEL="arch"      UUID=33333333-3333-3333-3333-333333333333
# /dev/mapper/root LABEL="Arch Linux"   UUID=44444444-4444-4444-4444-444444444444
# /dev/sdd1 LABEL="USB"     UUID=0000-0000  # this is the drive where KEYFILE exists

Now, make sure that the following two files look as follows, where UUIDs is the value obtained from above commands.

timeout 3
default arch

title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options ro cryptdevice=UUID=33333333-3333-3333-3333-333333333333:luks-33333333-3333-3333-3333-333333333333 root=UUID=44444444-4444-4444-4444-444444444444 rootfstype=btrfs rootflags=subvol=ROOT cryptkey=UUID=0000-0000:vfat:KEYFILE

Network SetupSection titled Network Setup

At first we will need to figure out the Ethernet controller on which cable is connected.

$ networkctl
#
# IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP
#   1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged
#   2 enp3s0           ether              no-carrier  unmanaged
#   3 wlp6s0           wlan               no-carrier  unmanaged
#   4 enp0s25          ether              routable    configured
#

In my case, the name of the device is enp0s25.

Using this name of the device, we need to configure, and enable the systemd-networkd.service service.

Note that we will using the resolv.conf that we saved from this session.

Network configurations are stored as *.network in /etc/systemd/network. We need to create ours as follows.:

[Match]
Name=enp0s25

[Network]
DHCP=ipv4

Now enable the networkd services:

systemctl enable systemd-networkd.service

Your network should be ready for the first use!

Sync time automatically using the systemd service:

[Time]
NTP=0.arch.pool.ntp.org 1.arch.pool.ntp.org 2.arch.pool.ntp.org 3.arch.pool.ntp.org
FallbackNTP=0.pool.ntp.org 1.pool.ntp.org 0.fr.pool.ntp.org

Now run the following:

$ timedatectl set-ntp true

$ timedatectl status
...
      Local time: Tue 2016-09-20 16:40:44 PDT
  Universal time: Tue 2016-09-20 23:40:44 UTC
        RTC time: Tue 2016-09-20 23:40:44
       Time zone: US/Pacific (PDT, -0700)
 Network time on: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
 RTC in local TZ: no
 ...

Avahi is a tool that allows programs to publish and discover services and hosts running on a local network with no specific configuration. For example you can plug into a network and instantly find printers to print to, files to look at and people to talk to.

We can easily set it up it as follows:

pacman -S avahi nss-mdns
systemctl enable avahi-daemon.service

We will also install terminus-font on our system to work with proper fonts on first boot.

pacman -S terminus-font

First Boot InstallationsSection titled First Boot Installations

Now we are ready for the first boot! Run the following command:

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

After your new system boots, Network should be setup at the start. Check the status of network using:

# Set readable font first!
setfont ter-132n
ping google.com -c 2

#
# PING google.com (10.38.24.84) 56(84) bytes of data.
# 64 bytes from google.com (10.38.24.84): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.022 ms
# 64 bytes from google.com (10.38.24.84): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.023 ms
#
# --- google.com ping statistics ---
# 2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 999ms
# rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.022/0.022/0.023/0.004 ms
#

If you do not get this output, please follow the troubleshooting links at Arch Wiki on setting up network.

Adding New UserSection titled Adding New User

Choose $USERNAME per your liking. I chose ssingh, so in future commands whenever you see ssingh please replace it with your $USERNAME.

pacman -S zsh
useradd -m -G wheel -s usr/bin/zsh $USERNAME
chfn --full-name "$FULL_NAME" $USERNAME
passwd $USERNAME

GUI Installation with nvidiaSection titled GUI Installation with nvidia

I will be assuming you have an NVIDIA card for graphics installation.

To setup a graphical desktop, first we need to install some basic X related packages, and some essential packages (including fonts):

pacman -S xorg-server nvidia nvidia-libgl nvidia-settings mesa

To avoid the possibility of forgetting to update your initramfs after an nvidia upgrade, you have to use a pacman hook like this:

[Trigger]
Operation=Install
Operation=Upgrade
Operation=Remove
Type=Package
Target=nvidia

[Action]
Depends=mkinitcpio
When=PostTransaction
Exec=/usr/bin/mkinitcpio -p linux

Nvidia has a daemon that is to be run at boot. To start the persistence daemon at boot, enable the nvidia-persistenced.service.

systemctl enable nvidia-persistenced.service
systemctl start nvidia-persistenced.service

...
MODULES="vfat aes_x86_64 crc32c-intel nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm"
...

...
options ro cryptdevice=UUID=:luks- root=UUID= rootfstype=btrfs rootflags=subvol=ROOT cryptkey=UUID=:vfat:deepmind20170602 nvidia-drm.modeset=1
...

$ mkinitcpio -p linux

Plasma 5 Installation and SetupSection titled Plasma 5 Installation and Setup

We can now proceed with the installation of Plasma 5. In the process, we will also install some useful fonts.

pacman -S ttf-hack ttf-anonymous-pro
pacman -S ttf-dejavu ttf-freefont ttf-liberation
pacman -S plasma-meta dolphin kdialog kfind
pacman -S konsole gwenview okular spectacle kio-extras
pacman -S kompare dolphin-plugins kwallet kwalletmanager
pacman -S ark yakuake flite

We will also need to select proper themes for the Plasma 5 display manager sddm and then enable its systemd service.

....
[Theme]
# Current theme name
Current=breeze

# Cursor theme used in the greeter
CursorTheme=breeze_cursors
...

Now run:

$ systemctl enable sddm
$ reboot

Once, we boot into the new system, we should have a basic Plasma 5 desktop waiting for you. In the following section, we will be do installation and modifications to the system that I prefer.

Post Installation SetupSection titled Post Installation Setup

Plasma 5 provides a handy network manager applet. However, in order to use it properly we will need the NetworkManager service to be enabled. This applet allows user specific enabling of wifi, ethernet or even VPN connections.

sudo pacman -S networkmanager
systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
systemctl start NetworkManager.service

We can also automate the hostname setup using the following systemd command:

hostnamectl set-hostname $HOSTNAME

Selecting pacman MirrorsSection titled Selecting pacman Mirrors

The pacman package provides a “bash” script, /usr/bin/rankmirrors, which can be used to rank the mirrors according to their connection and opening speeds to take advantage of using the fastest local mirror.

We will do this only on the US based mirrors. First make a copy of the mirrors list file and then delete all non-US mirrors. We will then rankmirrors script on the modified list to get the top 6 mirrors for our regular use.

$ cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup
$ cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.us
$ vim /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.us
....
# Delete all non-US servers
....
$ rankmirrors -n 6 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.us > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Setup AURSection titled Setup AUR

AUR is a community-driven repository for Arch users. This allows you to install many popular packages that are otherwise not available through core repositories.

In order to make all types of installations uniform, I use pacaur as the preferred tool for installing all packages. One the biggest advantages of pacaur is that is uses exactly the same options that regular pacman uses.

In order to install pacuar, first install dependencies.

sudo pacman -S expac yajl curl gnupg --noconfirm

Create a temp directory for building packages:

mkdir ~/temp
cp ~ temp

Install cower first and then pacaur:

gpg --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu 1EB2638FF56C0C53
curl -o PKGBUILD https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/plain/PKGBUILD?h=cower
makepkg -i PKGBUILD --noconfirm

curl -o PKGBUILD https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/plain/PKGBUILD?h=pacaur
makepkg -i PKGBUILD --noconfirm

# Finally cleanup and remove the temp directory
cd ~
rm -r ~/temp

Audio SetupSection titled Audio Setup

This is pretty simple. Install following packages and you should be done:

sudo pacaur -S alsa-utils pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa mpv
sudo pacaur -S libcanberra-pulse libcanberra-gstreamer
sudo pacaur -S vlc-qt5

Now start the pulseaudio service.

systemctl --user enable pulseaudio.socket

Web BrowsersSection titled Web Browsers

My preferred choice of browsers is google chrome. However, it is also good to have the KDE native qupzilla.

sudo pacaur -S google-chrome qupzilla

Profile-sync-daemon (psd) is a tiny pseudo-daemon designed to manage browser profile(s) in tmpfs and to periodically sync back to the physical disc (HDD/SSD). This is accomplished by an innovative use of rsync to maintain synchronization between a tmpfs copy and media-bound backup of the browser profile(s). These features of psd leads to following benefits:

• Transparent user experience
• Reduced wear to physical drives, and
• Speed

To setup. first install the profile-sync-daemon package.

sudo pacaur -S profile-sync-daemon

Run psd the first time which will create a configuration file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/psd/psd.conf which contains all settings.

$ psd
# First time running psd so please edit
# /home/$USERNAME/.config/psd/psd.conf to your liking and run again.

In the config file change the BROWSERS variables to google-chrome qupzilla. Also, enable the use of overlayfs to improve sync speed and to use a smaller memory footprint. Do this in the USE_OVERLAYFS=“yes” variable.

In order to use the OVERLAYFS feature, you will also need to give sudo permissions to psd-helper as follows (replace $USERNAME accordingly):

...
$USERNAME ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/psd-overlay-helper
...

Verify the working of configuration using the preview mode of psd:

psd p

Google Chrome by default uses kdewallet to manage passwords, where as Qupzilla does not. You can change that in its settings.

git SetupSection titled git Setup

Install git and setup some global options as below:

$ sudo pacaur -S git

and setup gitconfig as:

[user]
    name = Sadanand Singh
    email = EMAIL_ADDRESS
[color]
    ui = auto
[status]
    showuntrackedfiles = no
[alias]
    gist = log --graph --oneline --all --decorate --date-order
    find = log --graph --oneline --all --decorate --date-order --regexp-ignore-case --extended-regexp --grep
    rfind = log --graph --oneline --all --decorate --date-order --regexp-ignore-case --extended-regexp --invert-grep --grep
    search = grep --line-number --ignore-case -E -I
[pager]
    status = true
[push]
    default = matching
[merge]
    tool = meld
[diff]
    tool = meld

[help]
    autocorrect = 1

ssh SetupSection titled ssh Setup

To get started first install the openssh package.

sudo pacaur -S openssh

The ssh server can be started using the systemd service. Before starting the service, however, we want to generate ssh keys and setup the server for login based only on keys.

$ ssh-keygen -t ed25519

Now create ssh config as:

# Create a .ssh/config file for rmate usage in sublime text
...
RemoteForward 52698 localhost:52698
...

# Create ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file with list of machines that
# are allowed to login to this machine.
$ touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

# Finally edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config

# file to disable Password based logins
$ sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
...
PasswordAuthentication no
...

Furthermore, before enabling the sshd service, please also ensure to copy your keys to all your relevant other servers and places like github.

We can now use systemd to start the ssh service.

systemctl enable sshd.socket
systemctl start sshd.socket

zsh SetupSection titled zsh Setup

During the user creation, we already installed the zsh shell. We have also activated a basic setup at first login by the user.

In this section, we will be installing my variation of zprezto package to manage zsh configurations.

First install the main zprezto package:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto.git "${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zprezto"

setopt EXTENDED_GLOB
for rcfile in "${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}"/.zprezto/runcoms/^README.md(.N);
do
    ln -sf "$rcfile" "${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.${rcfile:t}"
done

Now, We will add my version of prezto to the same git repo.

cd ~/.zprezto
git remote add personal [email protected]:sadanand-singh/My-Zprezto.git
git pull personal arch
git checkout arch
git merge master

And we are all setup for using zsh!

gpg SetupSection titled gpg Setup

We have already installed the gnupg package during the pacaur installation. We will first either import our already existing private keys(s) or create one.

Once We have our keys setup, edit keys to change trust level.

Once all keys are setup, we need to gpg-agent configuration file:

..
enable-ssh-support
default-cache-ttl-ssh 10800
default-cache-ttl 10800
max-cache-ttl-ssh 10800
...

Also, add following to your .zshrc or .“bash”rc file. If you are using my zprezto setup, you already have this!

$ vim ~/.zshrc
...
# set GPG TTY
export GPG_TTY=$(tty)

# Refresh gpg-agent tty in case user switches into an X Session
gpg-connect-agent updatestartuptty /bye >/dev/null

# Set SSH to use gpg-agent
unset SSH_AGENT_PID
if [ "${gnupg_SSH_AUTH_SOCK_by:-0}" -ne $$ ]; then
  export SSH_AUTH_SOCK="/run/user/$UID/gnupg/S.gpg-agent.ssh"
fi
...

Now, simply start the following systemd sockets as user:

systemctl --user enable gpg-agent.socket
systemctl --user enable gpg-agent-ssh.socket
systemctl --user enable dirmngr.socket
systemctl --user enable gpg-agent-browser.socket

systemctl --user start gpg-agent.socket
systemctl --user start gpg-agent-ssh.socket
systemctl --user start dirmngr.socket
systemctl --user start gpg-agent-browser.socket

Finally add your ssh key to ssh agent.

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

User WallpapersSection titled User Wallpapers

You can store your own wallpapers at the following location. A good place to get some good wallpapers are KaOS Wallpapers.

mkdir -p $ $HOME/.local/wallpapers
cp SOME_JPEG $HOME/.local/wallpapers/

conky SetupSection titled conky Setup

First installed the conky package with lua and nvidia support:

paci conky-lua-nv

Then, copy your conky configuration at $HOME/.config/conky/conky.conf.

mkdir -p $HOME/.config/conky

# Generate sample conky config file
conky -C > $HOME/.config/conky/conky.conf

# start conky in background
conky &

Here, I have also put my simple configuration file:

conky.config = {
        background = true,
        use_xft = true,
        xftalpha = 0.2,
        update_interval = 1,
        total_run_times = 0,
        own_window_argb_visual = true,
        own_window = true,
        own_window_type = 'dock',
        own_window_transparent = true,
        own_window_hints = 'undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
        double_buffer = true,
        draw_shades = false,
        draw_outline = false,
        draw_borders = false,
        draw_graph_borders = false,
        stippled_borders = 0,
        border_width = 0,
        default_color = 'white',
        default_shade_color = '#000000',
        default_outline_color = '#000000',
        minimum_width = 2500, minimum_height = 3500,
        maximum_width = 2500,
        gap_x = 2980,
        gap_y = 0,
        alignment = 'top_left',
        no_buffers = true,
        uppercase = false,
        cpu_avg_samples = 2,
        net_avg_samples = 2,
        --short_units = true,
        text_buffer_size = 2048,
        use_spacer = 'none',
        override_utf8_locale = true,
        color1 = '#424240',
        color2 = '2a2b2f',
        color3 = '#FF4B4C',--0E87E4
        color4 = '#73bcca',
        own_window_argb_value = 0,
        --own_window_colour = '#000000',
--lua_load rings-v1.2.1.lua
        lua_draw_hook_pre = 'ring_stats',

--lua_load lilas_rings.lua
        lua_draw_hook_post = 'main',
};

conky.text = [[
${goto 200}${voffset 100}${color2}${font Nothing You Could Do:size=50}${time %I:%M}${font Nothing You Could Do:size=20}${time %p}
${goto 185}${voffset 10}${color4}${font Bad Script:size=30}${time %A}
${goto 185}${voffset -35}${font Bad Script:size=18}${time  %d %B, %Y}

${goto -80}${voffset -35}${font Pompiere:size=11}${color 3eafe8}//${color4} CPU: ${execi 1000 cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'model name' | sed -e 's/model name.*: //'| uniq | cut -c 19-25} ${color ff3d3d}${hwmon 0 temp 1}°C ${color 3eafe8}//${color4} Load: ${color ff3d3d} ${cpu cpu0}% ${color 3eafe8}// RAM:${color ff3d3d} ${memperc}% / $memmax ${color 3eafe8}//

${goto -80}${voffset -35}${font Pompiere:size=11}${color 3eafe8}//${color4} GPU: ${execi 1000000 nvidia-smi --query-gpu="name,driver_version" --format="csv,noheader" | cut -c 9-18} ${color ff3d3d} ${nvidia temp}°C ${color 3eafe8}//${color4} Load: ${color ff3d3d}${exec nvidia-smi --query-gpu="utilization.gpu" --format="csv,noheader"} ${color 3eafe8}// Free: ${color ff3d3d} ${exec nvidia-smi --query-gpu="memory.free" --format="csv,noheader"} ${color 3eafe8}//

]];

Software InstallationsSection titled Software Installations

Here is a running list of other common softwares that I install.

paci spotify tmux tree dropbox thesilver_searcher
paci digikam imagemagick

I also add the following repository to install the Sublime Text editor. Refer to my previous post on sublimetext for details on setting up Sublime Text.

curl -O https://download.sublimetext.com/sublimehq-pub.gpg
sudo pacman-key --add sublimehq-pub.gpg
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key 8A8F901A
rm sublimehq-pub.gpg

echo -e "\n[sublime-text]\nServer = https://download.sublimetext.com/arch/dev/x86_64" | sudo tee -a /etc/pacman.conf

Now we can install sublime-text as:

paci sublime-text/sublime-text

This brings us to the conclusion of this installation guide. Hope many of you find it useful. Please drop your comments below if you have any suggestions for improvements etc.