This guide will walk you through how to take a barebones Arch Linux installation and customize it to your liking. It'll also go over a bit of kernel compilation.
Before we begin, you must have at least 6-7 GB of free disk space available.
The first step is to download the OVA file for the VirtualBox. This is basically just a compressed version of the virtual hard drive along with some metadata. It's a 2GB file, so the download might take some time.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DQkchIvSY1LtLQvotqh9c_qjU5Nw3Dqf
After you've acquired the OVA file, you can open VirtualBox. Go to the top left of the corner and click on "Import Applicance". It should prompt you to look for the OVA file you just downloaded. Just follow the steps as it walks you through the import process.
Once you've imported and started the virtual machine successfully, you can go ahead and delete the OVA file because it won't be needed anymore.
The login credentials are listed below:
- Username: tse
- Password: .
Note that the password is literally just a period. This should make it easy to switch to superuser access.
After you login, you should be greeted with a bash shell. Type in
echo $SHELL
It should print "/bin/bash". Try $XDG_SESSION_TYPE too; it should be "tty".
The following packages should already be present on your system. Most of this guide will focus on how to set them up.
- xorg
- xorg-xinit
- i3
- rxvt-unicode
- zsh
- polybar
- asp
If, for some reason, you find that one of these packages isn't installed, you can do so with:
yay -S <PACKAGE NAME>
For reference, you can update the entire system using:
yay -Syu
However, I wouldn't recommend doing this, because it could take a long time, depending on how many packages have been updated since I last ran the command.
This step is intended to teach you about how Arch Linux handles kernel compilation.
The Arch Build System (ABS) is a system for taking source code and compiling it into
binary packages that yay or pacman can install. Most packages will provide a PKGBUILD
file that specifies how their source code is compiled into a package (similar to a Makefile).
For packages in the official Arch Linux repositories, you can find Git repositories containing
their PKGBUILDs using a tool called asp. We're going to look at the Git repository for Arch's
linux package, which, as you might imagine, contains the Linux PKGBUILD.
First, log in and run:
asp update linux
This will cause asp to pull the Linux PKGBUILD repository from the Internet and store it
somewhere on your computer (in some file cache).
Now, run:
cd ~
asp checkout linux
You should see the linux directory if you run ls. Try running tree linux. You should get:
linux
├── repos
│ ├── core-i686
│ │ ├── 90-linux.hook
│ │ ├── config.i686
│ │ ├── config.x86_64
│ │ ├── linux.install
│ │ ├── linux.preset
│ │ └── PKGBUILD
│ ├── core-x86_64
│ │ ├── config
│ │ ├── PKGBUILD
│ │ └── sphinx-workaround.patch
│ └── testing-x86_64
│ ├── config
│ ├── PKGBUILD
│ └── sphinx-workaround.patch
└── trunk
├── config
├── PKGBUILD
└── sphinx-workaround.patch
5 directories, 15 files
There are two main subdirectories of note, repos and trunk.
- repos contains the PKGBUILD for Linux, separated by assembly language. Arch Linux suports i686 and x86_64, which is why you see core-1686 and core-x86_64. Your machine is running x86_64, so we're going to use linux/repos/core-x86_64.
- The trunk is used by developers for staging/testing purposes. It's not super relevant to our needs.
Now, let's inspect the x86_64 PKGBUILD. Run:
cd linux/repos/core-x86_64
vim PKGBUILD
At the top, you'll see a couple of variables. PKGBUILD's are really just retextured bash scripts, so all of the syntax is the same. Some variables of note:
- pkgbase=linux The name of the package
- pkgver=5.6.11.arch1 The version of Linux we're using
- makedepends=(...) The packages that the Linux package depends on
- validpgpkeys=(...) Used to verify the integrity of source files
- sha256sums=(...) The checksums for all of the files we're compiling.
Scrolling down, there are two functions of note, standardized by the PKGBUILD system:
- prepare() { ... } Applies patches to Linux, generates a default config
- build() { ... } Runs Linux Makefile build commands
Now, let's actually use the PKGBUILD to compile Linux. Inside linux/repos/core-x86_64, run:
MAKEFLAGS="-j1" makepkg -sc
The -s flag tells makepkg to install any missing dependencies (syncdeps), and the -c flag tells makepkg to clean up after producing a valid binary package. The MAKEFLAGS option is passed to the Linux Makefile, and in turn, "-j1" specifies that Linux should use 1 processor in the compilation phase.
Linux takes a long time to compile, and it will take even longer running on a virtual machine with only one thread compiling. The PKGBUILD will also clone the entire Linux source tree (which is huge), so it's probably not going to finish in your lifetime. Exit out using CTRL-C.
The next steps will cover basic customization for Linux. We'll start by changing shells, and then we'll move on to setting up a tiling window manager and status bar, and we'll end with improving the display of the terminal emulator.
First, let's stop using the bash shell. Instead, let's try switching to the fish shell. fish should already be installed on your machine, so try running it with:
fish
You should notice some immediate improvements. There is now color highlighting, and there is also tab-based autocompletion for both commands and directories. Try typing in "bas" and pressing TAB. It should allow you to cycle through the various commands prefixed with "bas" including "bash". If you press ENTER
Now, let's replace bash with fish for our default shell. Type in:
chsh
When it prompts for the location of your new shell, use /bin/fish.
Now, log out by pressing CTRL-D twice. The first CTRL-D will log you out of fish and back into your original bash shell. The second CTRL-D will log you out of your bash shell back into the login screen. When you relog, you should spawn a fish shell instead of a bash shell.
In order for any window manager to work, you first need to do two things:
- You need to tell the X server what window manager to run.
- You need to start the X server.
Let's address the first point. To do that, we need to create something
called an xinitrc file. Type in the following command to get a default
xinitrc:
cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
Let's modify the xinitrc file to tell it to open i3. Open the file in vim via
vim ~/.xinitrc. Go to the bottom of the xinitrc file and you should see
the following text:
twm &
xclock ...
xterm ...
xterm ...
xterm ...
exec xterm ...
Delete all of those lines and replace it with this:
exec i3
xinitrc is a shell script that the X server will run on start. The default script tells the X server to first load some configuration files (your .Xresources file notably, more on this later), and then to start up a window managed called twm and then open up some xterm terminals. We won't be using either twm or xterm, so on our machine if you ran the default commands, the X server would just crash because those aren't valid. Instead, we want to run the i3 command, which starts the i3 window manager and connects it to the X server.
Exit out of vim. Now, we need to start the X server (and the i3 window manager). Type in the following command:
startx
You'll notice some immediate changes.
Since it's your first time starting i3wm, you'll get a prompt to generate a configuration file. Press 'yes' to this question.
Then, you're going to want to select a modifier key. A good choice for this is a Windows key. If this isn't suitable for you, then press the down arrow to select the ALT key as your modifier. Your modifier key is very important, so choose this wisely (but it is configurable).
After that, you should see just a black screen with a status bar at the bottom. From left to right, this displays your workspaces, Internet connection, memory, disk usage, and current time.
Now, let's open a terminal or two! Press the following key combination:
$MOD + $ENTER
where $MOD is the modifier key you selected earlier. Also, don't type the '+', just press ENTER with your MOD key.
You should see a white terminal open up. Press $MOD + $ENTER a few more times and a few more terminals should pop up. They're all going to fold out horizontally.
Let's try opening a terminal vertically. Press:
$MOD + $ENTER + v
You should notice that, now, all your terminals will open up vertically, even when you leave out the v from your subsequent $MOD + $ENTER commands. Let's try switching back to horizontal mode. Use:
$MOD + $ENTER + h
Now, let's try switching which terminals are in focus. Use:
$MOD + {j,k,l,;}
You'll notice that these are the vim keys shifted over to the right by one. This is intentional. A lot of people, however, myself included, prefer to use the direct vim keys + the modifier key for changing focus. It's possible to rebind your keys to accomplish this purpose, and we'll do that in the next section.
Finally, let's try quitting out all of your terminals. Press:
$MOD + $SHIFT + q
This will exit out of the window currently in focus. Do so repeatedly until all your windows close.
In the next section, we'll explore the i3 configuration file, so we can edit both how it looks and what keys we use to perform actions. For a more detailed list of what keybindings you can use, go here: https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_default_keybindings/
The next step is to edit the i3 configuration file. We're going to do things:
- Swap out {j, k, l, ;} movement keys with {h, j, k, l}
- Remove the default i3status bar (because it's ugly)
Open .config/i3/config in vim and find the section with these commands:
# change focus
bindsym $mod+j focus left
bindsym $mod+k focus down
bindsym $mod+l focus up
bindsym $mod+semicolon focus right
Change this to:
# change focus
bindsym $mod+h focus left
bindsym $mod+j focus down
bindsym $mod+k focus up
bindsym $mod+l focus right
Next, scroll down and find the section with these commands:
# move focused window
bindsym $mod+Shift+j move left
bindsym $mod+Shift+k move down
bindsym $mod+Shift+l move up
bindsym $mod+Shift+semicolon move right
Change this to:
# move focused window
bindsym $mod+Shift+h move left
bindsym $mod+Shift+j move down
bindsym $mod+Shift+k move up
bindsym $mod+Shift+l move right
Lastly, scroll down even more to find this section:
bar {
status_command i3status
}
Comment this out, so you would get:
# bar {
# status_command i3status
# }
Press the following keys to refresh i3:
$MOD + $SHIFT + r
i3 will now use your updated keybindings. Additionally, the status bar will have been disabled. Exit out of vim now. We'll come back to .config/i3/config in the near future to enable polybar.
In the last section, we disabled i3's default status bar. We're now going to enable polybar, which is an improved version of the status bar.
First, change into the home directory and copy over the default polybar config like so:
cd ~
mkdir .config/polybar
cp /usr/share/doc/polybar/config .config/polybar
This will place polybar's default config in the .config/polybar folder.
Unlike i3's status bar, polybar must be enabled via a shell script. This shell script will kill all previous instances of polybar before starting any new instances. Using vim, open .config/polybar/launch.sh (a new file) and paste in:
#!/bin/bash
killall -q polybar
polybar example &Then, save and exit out of vim. Mark the launch script as executable using:
chmod u+x .config/polybar/launch.sh
The final step is telling i3 that it should load polybar on startup. To do that, open the .config/i3/config file and paste in the following line at the end of the file:
exec_always --no-startup-id $HOME/.config/polybar/launch.sh
Then, restart i3 using $MOD + $SHIFT + R. If all goes well, you should notice a much prettier status bar at the top.
The one thing we have left to configure is urxvt. Right now, you'll notice it looks quite ugly: it uses a low-resolution monospace font, the background's entirely white, the colors don't look right, etc.
We're going to fix that. Unlike i3 and polybar, urxvt doesn't actually have its own configuration file. Instead, it borrows file called .Xresources to set its color scheme. Right now, your .Xresources file does not exist, so urxvt just defaults to its most primitive settings.
Let's give urxvt some better colors and a font overhaul. We'll also remove the ugly vertical scrollbar on the left and fix up some other scrolling properties.
Run the following command to fetch a better .Xresources for URxvt:
curl -sL https://bit.ly/2WULIEs > .Xresources
Then, instruct the X server to reload its copy of Xresources:
xrdb .Xresources
This will give URxvt the Source Code Pro font as well as the jellybeans colorscheme. You must exit and re-open your terminal to see the new changes.
Lastly, let's inspect the .Xresources. You'll notice a few things:
- Lines starting with ! are comments.
- Lines starting with URxvt. are URxvt-specific changes. Only URxvt will recognize these settings.
- Lines starting with *. are recognized by all programs using the .Xresources file.
URxvt is not the only program that uses .Xresources files. polybar and vim can both use the .Xresources file to fetch colors, and other terminal emulators like xterm use it as well.
There is a lot more you can do in terms of customization; we've really just covered the basics. The hope is that this tutorial will provide you with a starting point from which it is possible to build off of.
The following links go more in detail about each utility and how to customize them even more:
The Arch Linux wiki is also a good place to refer to. It's saved my life on multiple occasions.
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/I3
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Rxvt-unicode
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/polybar
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fish
Lastly, I would encourage you to check out these YouTube videos/channels.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1I63wGcvU4 (ricing guide)
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA (Luke Smith)
For inspiration, see /r/unixporn on Reddit.
Have fun!