A dotfile is a commonly misused word to talk about configuration files, because
configuration files often begin with a dot (.), e.g., .bashrc
.
~/Repositories/Tina-otoge/Dotfiles
.~/.config
directory.ln -sf ../Repositories/skielred/Dotfiles/i3 .
(maybe do backups first)~/.config
.
cd
ln -sf .config/bash/bashrc .bashrc
ln -sf .config/zsh/zshrc .zshrc
ln -sf .config/x11/Xresources .Xresources
# etc...
The -f
flag for ln
will overwrite files with the same name.
Default Fedora packages policy is to authorize strictly free software. There are softwares which are free (doesn't cost money) but don't release all of their source code publicly. And you may want some of those softwares directly from your package manager.
RPMFusion is a very popular repository (made of multiple big user-maintained repositories). You will find a lot of softwares in it such as Steam. Installing RPMFusion
Fedora also has a user-maintained repositories system called copr. This is similar to ArchLinux's AUR. You have to enable a user's repository, then you can install a package from it as if you were trying to install it normally.
Example:
dnf copr enable user/repo
dnf install package
Notable copr repositories I have enabled:
dnf copr enable fuhrmann/i3-gaps # i3 fork with sexy gaps between windows
The Fedora repo is so complete that I haven't touched any copr in a long time.
If you want to build up knowledge about the softwares you use, and master them,
avoid things like oh-my-zsh
, oh-my-fish
or SpaceVim
. Even though they can
seem appealing, you'll most likely be able to achieve the same features they
have by manually picking up and installing plugins or adding a few lines of
configuration. But with the benefit of knowing what changes you made from the
default configuration and what they do exactly.
Flatpak is freedesktop's solution to standardized app distribution for Linux, and is endorsed and fairly integrated in Entreprise Linux' family of distros.
Compared to the alternatives (AppImage, snap, manually installing tarballs), it has major benefits and no apparent drawbacks. One of its core features is to containerize apps and using a permission system to only allow what the app actually needs (restrict filesystem access, network access, etc, similar to Android). It also has a working dependency system, mitigating duplication of libraries.
I recommend using it for userland applications, things such as Steam, Discord, GIMP, Slack, make sense as a Flatpak.
The list will grow as more useful tips comes to my mind.
Software | Purpose | Dotfile? | Do I use it? | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Alacritty | Terminal emulator | ✔️ | ✔️ | A GPU-accelerated terminal. | |
Kitty | Terminal emulator | ✔️ | :x: | A GPU-accelerated terminal, dropped it because of an issue that causes it to pause when not in the active monitor. | |
urxvt | Terminal emulator | ✔️ | :x: | Fastest terminal emulator I've tried. Only emulator I know of which runs at this speed, noticeable on programs with lots of frame updates such as music visualizers. It can be configured through Perl extensions. Stopped using it because it relies on xrdb and I wanted to stop using it. | |
Bash | Shell | ✔️ | :x: | You should learn it at least for scripting purpose, as it is present in a lot of systems, it's a reliable way to write portable scripts. | |
Zsh | Shell | ✔️ | ✔️ | Similar and compatible to Bash but with a lot of very useful improvements. | |
Vim | Text or code editor | ✔️ | ✔️ | I use it for everything. I live in Vim 24h/7j. Btw do Escape then type :q! to force quit it, hope I saved your day. |
|
Git | Version control software | ✔️ | ✔️ | I use Git to version control everything I do, from small coding projects to my phone's contacts address book. Way too powerful and simple to use. | It also hides very cool features such as being able to display images, faking transparency, or even tabs. |
neofetch | Flexing tool | ✔️ | ✔️ | The mandatory script to run in a terminal window before taking a screenshot of your desktop. | |
htop | Process manager | ✔️ | ✔️ | Equivalent of Windows' Task Manager. Use it to track down which applications use a lot of resources with the ability to kill them from the manager. | |
ranger | CLI file browser | ✔️ | :x: | Used to use it, but I started to do a lot of complicating file browsing tasks such as using network locations, I needed a GUI tool. Still dope and very sexy to browse from your terminal, I highly recommend giving it a try. |
Software | Purpose | Dotfile? | Do I use it? | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
GNOME | Desktop environment | :x: | ✔️ | After using i3/sway for almost 4 years I decided that I wanted my desktop to look like an actual OS. Significantly bigger RAM usage though. |
PaperWM | Tiling-like workflow for GNOME | :x: | ✔️ | When migrating to GNOME I wanted to keep a tiling-based workflow. PaperWM's workflow is very close to tiling wms'. |
Vimix | Icon theme | :x: | ✔️ | Sleek looking icons. |
Orchis (light-compact) | GTK theme | :x: | ✔️ | Sleek looking GTK theme. |
i3 | Tiling window manager | ✔️ (i3-gaps) | :x: | The perfect window manager. Fast, simple to learn and configure. Lots of possibilities. |
i3-gaps | i3 fork | ✔️ | :x: | i3 but with the ability to configure gaps between windows. Makes everything 100 times sexier. |
sway | i3 clone for Wayland | ✔️ | :x: | Wayland is the newest, more secure, display protocol for Linux desktops. |
polybar | Status bar | ✔️ | ✔️ | Easy to configure and to make pretty status bar. |
i3bar | Status bar | :x: | ✔️ | i3's natively supported status bar. |
rofi | Application launcher | ✔️ | :x: | |
Ulauncher | Application launcher | :x: | ✔️ | Good looking application launcher with a web-based settings interface. I wrote an extension to run terminal commands from it, with auto-complete support. |
LightDM | Display manager | ✔️ | :x: | Lightweight display manager. The display manager is the program that greets you and ask you to log in, with the possibity to pick between the different desktop softwares installed. |
Aether | A theme for LightDM Webkit2 | ✔️ | :x: | An amazing looking theme for LightDM. |
compton | Compositor | ✔️ | :x: | A compositor is a program that adds shadows, transparency and effects to the desktop windows. Think shader but for your desktop. |
Software | Purpose | Dotfile? | Do I use it? | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
GNOME Tweaks | Advanced configuration for GNOME | :x: | ✔️ | Allow customizing GNOME beyond what's intended. Useful to control some advanced options and manage themes and extensions. |
maim | Screenshot tool | ✔️ (i3 keybinds) | :x: | Simple and efficient screenshot tool. I had less problems with it than with scrot. See my i3 config to see how I use it (Print key and Shift+Print bindings). |
youtube-dl | Websites wrapper/CLI tool | :x: | ✔️ | Download or stream media from almost any video service existing on Earth. From, of course, YouTube, to many less known sites and even music sites such as SoundCloud. youtube-dl "$playlist_url" -x --audio-format=mp3 . |
Fusuma | Touchpad gestures | ✔️ | :x: | Must have if you use a laptop and a desktop environment without touch gestures. Bind gestures such as swiping with 3 fingers to commands. Most common use case is previous/next page by swiping left/right. |
Crescent | Application entries generator | ✔️ | ✔️ | A program I made to generate Desktrop Entries easily. |
ImageMagick | Image editing library/CLI tool | :x: | ✔️ | You must learn to use it. It's very useful and powerful. The simplest tasks you'll want to learn is converting between formats. It's as simple as convert from_image.png to_image.jpg . |
ffmpeg | Video processing library/CLI tool | :x: | ✔️ | Same reasons. You'll be doing ffmpeg -i from_video.flv to_video.mp4 quite often. |
peerflix | Torrent streaming CLI tool | :x: | ✔️ | A tool to download a torrent in order and stream it to your video player. |
Software | Purpose | Dotfile? | Do I use it? | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
feh | Image viewer | :x: | ✔️ | Stupid and simple image viewer. No actual GUI. Just opens media in a window, controls can be done through keyboard. Can also be used to set a wallpaper. |
mpv | Media player | ✔️ | ✔️ | Stupid and simple media player. No actual GUI. Just opens media in a window, controls can be done through keyboard. Can integrate with youtube-dl mpv --no-video https://twitch.tv/monstercat . |
Nemo | File browser | :x: | :x: | Nemo is the file browser made for and by the guys of Linux Mint. It's a fork of the file browser called Nautilus, it's slightly prettier. |
Firefox | Internet browser | :x: | ✔️ | Fast. Containers support (separate history/data per site). Sync. Add-ons support on mobile. |
Chrome/Chromium | Internet browser | :x: | ✔️ | Smooth performances. Fake app mode (launch any website without titlebar/buttons), perfect to create pseudo-webapps for Twitter, TweetDeck, or other sites. |
The list will grow as more softwares that deserve to be recommended comes to my mind.
Maybe open an issue or ask me on Twitter @Tina_otoge or Discord Tina#1998.