WIP:

• Archon Linux has been tested from github repositories and in a virtual machine as of this commit.
• Will update when I install on my hardware.

Archon Linux ISO

1. Why?
2. Building the ISO
3. How?
4. Archon core packages
5. Archon dotfiles
6. Manual and tricks
7. Archon Linux packages list
8. TODO / Need help
9. Update archiso

TL/DR:

• clone this repository.
• run ./build.sh
• install system with the iso. btrfs and no swap are your only automated options. zram is used on real hardware installs.
• run all tasks at first reboot and relog when done.
• Super + / to show hotkeys, it's also the ? key, rip non-qwerty...

1. Why?

I figured might as well buid an ISO rather than have install scripts into dotfiles, and maybe learn a thing or two along the way.

ALCI has been my goto to start figuring this out, and I highly suggest checking out all of the arcolinux projects.

So do not look at Archon Linux as a distribution, but more of a vanilla arch install with my default settings and configs to have a sane graphical environment. Most configs are heavily commented and can represent a solid starting base for any user.

This readme will be a sort of logbook of my progress, choices and fails as I build my dream vanilla arch linux!

2. Building the ISO

I made it so /etc/skel for the Archon Linux ISO is a basic dotfiles system, handled by a bare git repository.

A bare repository dissociates the git directory from the working tree, allowing a pretty seamless integration. Here is a good article about such a setup.

Run ./build.sh inside of the archon-iso folder to build your first ISO.

If it is your first run the build will run get_dotfiles.sh to setup the git bare repository and clone archon-dotfiles.

./build.sh --clear will clear the pacman cache and download the latest packages. Build with this flag after any sort of update on your build system.

If you plan to use Archon Linux as your daily driver, which you really should not so far, best would be to use the archon-dotfiles repository as a template on github, not a fork, as you want to be able to make it private.

Now edit get_dotfiles.sh to match your repository git_url at the top of the file. Delete the current dotfiles directory if you already built once and run ./build.sh again. You may also want to use your local repository folder when developing, check the comments in archiso/pacman.conf

More information in the #dotfiles section.

The iso will be over 2Gb as the installer will not download anything so the install can be done fully offline.

3. How?

Here are the main ways to modify the airootfs folder:

• Add changes directly into the folder. The most straightforward way to go about it. The drawback is that if you do everything that way it gets harder to compare your current airootfs with the vanilla archiso from /usr/share/archiso/configs/releng. You might also want a more UNIX way to go about it and just keep a clean airootfs while using external packages to bring in your changes.

• Using the iso ./build.sh script add changes inside of the temp folder before the iso gets built. That's when we copy over the dotfiles into the skel folder.

• Using custom packages along with a custom repository. This should be the preferred way but it comes with its problems as well, mainly conflicts with default config files.

List of changes made directly to the airootfs folder, This is also roughly what ALCI does to make it's base images:

1. Add a liveuser user for the live boot.

   Add:

   • airootfs/etc/group
   • airootfs/etc/gshadow
   • airootfs/etc/polkit-1
   • airootfs/etc/systemd/journald.conf
   • airootfs/etc/systemd/logind.conf
   • airootfs/etc/sudoers.d/g_wheel

   Edit:

   • airootfs/etc/passwd
   • airootfs/etc/shadow

2. Change our linux kernel to the linux-zen version and the iso branding.

   • Replace airootfs/etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset by airootfs/etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux-zen.preset
   • Edit airootfs/etc/mkinitcpio.conf.
   • Edit all entries in efiboot/loader/entries and syslinux according to our new kernel and system name. These folders are in the archiso folder.
   • Edit profiledef.sh for iso branding.
   • Edit packages.x86_64 with our added packages.
   • Edit pacman.conf to add our custom repository and others such as chaotic-aur for build time.

3. Add airootfs/etc/systemd/system/default.target that symlinks to /usr/lib/systemd/system/graphical.target since we want a graphical environment for calamares on iso boot.

   Also add airootfs/etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service that symlinks to our display manager /usr/lib/systemd/system/lightdm.service.

4. Replace systemd network services by networkmanager.

   Remove:

   • airootfs/etc/systemd/system/dbus-org.freedesktop.network1.service
   • airootfs/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/systemd-networkd.service
   • airootfs/etc/systemd/system/network-online.target.wants/systemd-networkd-wait-online.service.

   Add:

   • airootfs/etc/systemd/system/dbus-org.freedesktop.nm-dispatcher.service that symlinks to /usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager-dispatcher.service
   • airootfs/etc/systemd/system/network-online.target.wants/NetworkManager-wait-online.service that symlinks to /usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager-wait-online.service

I know this all does not look so minimal, but remember we only added a new user, switched the kernel to linuz-zen with iso branding, made sure we would have a display manager with a graphical session and moved from systemd networking to networkmanager. Small stuff compared to whats ahead!

These changes happened in the first few commits of this repository if you want to check more details.

Now comes in the custome packages to finish setting up the system.

4. Archon core packages

How the base system is further customized. Check the archon-core repository for more details on how I tried different ways to get things done. This is an interesting read if you plan on doing your own customized iso.

5. Archon dotfiles (aka default home directory)

dotfiles

As mentioned in the Building the ISO section you should be forking the archon-dotfiles repository. I suggest using the get_dotfiles.sh to clone your dotfiles repository locally inside of this repository folder, it will be ignored by the .gitignore life.

Make sure you add the archondots alias offered by the script to manage your dotfiles changes. Simply replace git by archondots in all of your commands.

Then push your changes to your fork to save them. For example one of the first thing I would add is my .gitconfig.

The iso is built with the local files, it does not pull from the repository before each build.

This is as good as any a place to lay out the use of the various profile files:

• .bash_profile has things that could either be in .profile or .bashrc, so we just don't have one.
• .bashrc is run for every bash shell we start, it is meant to setup aliases and other shell options. Ours is used to load the pywal colorscheme that would not work in fish and then start fish. config.fish then takes over and sets up aliases and various functions.
• .inputrc has some hidden jutsu such as ignore case for completion and other things. Found a reddit post about it suggesting some settings.
• .profile is basically like .bash_profile but gets run for any bourne shell, not just bash. This is where I set all of my environment variables by sourcing all *.conf files located in ~/.config/environment.d.
• .xprofile has all of our startup applications to help support the window manager. Keeping the window manager's autostart mechanism for applications specific to it.

ansible

Until you run one task, at each login the archon script will autostart. It will offer to run a few diffetrent tasks, run them all, the option to select them one by one is just to help debug, or to run a single task after you made changes.

Remember that unlike a bash script, an ansible task, if properly setup, can run more than once and will only make changes when needed. It is idempotent!

You might have noticed that there is another playbook in .ansible/playbooks called vault in your dotfiles. This in charge of setting up everything that has some sort of secrets you need to absolutely keep private but still want versioned in your dotfiles for simplicty.

Ansible has a vault system that can encrypt a file with reasonably strong encryption. Make sur you use a long (32+) passphrase. This can be seen as a security issue to some but having your dotfiles in a private repo and have the sensitive data in an ansible encrypted vault should be safe enough...

Check the .ansible/playbooks/vault/vault.yml.example file. Now you understand how critical it is to keep this vault secure with a strong password, it contains your gpg and ssh private keys! Now these two keys should also have different strong passwords.

Of course it is up to you to use this, the archon script will not run the vault playbook if it can not find a vault.yml file.

Once edited properly, encrypt it using ansible-vault encrypt .ansible/playbooks/vault/vault.yml. You can edit it later with ansible-vault edit .ansible/playbooks/vault/vault.yml, warning it opens it in vi. Or simply decrypt it for easy editing: ansible-vault decrypt .ansible/playbooks/vault/vault.yml, don't forget to encrypt it again once done.

What the vault playbook does: - Set the environment variable values for openweathermap api, requires a relog. - Import your password store gpg key. - Import your github gpg signing key. - Import your ssh key. - Adds the ssh key to the agent and clones your pass password store from a private repository.

You can add more secrets in that file and modify/add roles to .ansible/playbooks/vault/playbook.yml.

The same can be done with .ansible/playbooks/archon/playbook.yml and the .local/bin/archon bash script.

I plan on keeping the Archon Linux project up to date with major changes I would make, but things I feel are personal tweaks I will add to my own version of those playbooks in my private dotfiles and so should you.

When ever you change something that would not be tracked by your dotfiles or can not be part of the iso you should add it as an ansible task as well. This way you will always have an iso that brings you right back to where you are.

6. Manual and tricks

wip....

polybar

Don't hesitate to left click and right click things, most do something.

no file manager needed

Using zoxide and some smart fish aliases and functions you really don't need a file manager anymore, gui or cli.

First cd is aliased to z. This means any time you cd into a folder it remembers it's path and you can now cd to that path using a fraction of it's name. If more than one path matches it offers a list to choose from.

For example:

~
❯ cd .config/fish/functions

.config/fish/functions via 🐍 v3.10.1
❯ cd

~
❯ cd fun

.config/fish/functions via 🐍 v3.10.1
❯

Now we can also replace the initial cd .config/fish/functions using fuzzy find.

fcd and hit enter, you can now fuzzy type to find the directory.

You can do the same with open that will use xdg-open on the file you pick, so be sure to set your mimetypes properly. We got lxsession for that but I haven't configured that yet.

7. Archon Linux packages list

Many choices, a single opinion.

I tried explaining what some more obscure packages did, if you have any questions about a package choice, please submit a new issue so I know to add information about it.

Changes to releng

Removed

linux
virtualbox-guest-utils-nox

Kernel

base-devel
linux-zen
linux-zen-headers

Archon

archon-grub-theme
archon-gtk3-themes
archon-system
archon-wallpapers

Networking & internet

brave
dnsutils
inetutils
networkmanager
network-manager-applet
ntp
wget

Repositories

chaotic-keyring
chaotic-mirrorlist

Virtual machines

spice-vdagent
virtualbox-guest-utils

Display manager

lightdm
lightdm-slick-greeter

Calamares

calamares
calamares-config

Grub & btrfs

grub-btrfs
os-prober
snapper
snapper-gui-git

GPU drivers

nvidia
nvidia-settings
nvidia-utils
xf86-video-amdgpu
xf86-video-ati
xf86-video-fbdev
xf86-video-intel
xf86-video-nouveau
xf86-video-vesa

Xorg

xorg-server     => Most other xorg packages are installed as dependencies.
xorg-xrdb       => For loading .Xresources, but most wm do it, not sure how needed it is yet...
xorg-xev        => Dependency to get keypress codes
xorg-xwininfo   => Is used by polybar scripts to display opened window names.
xorg-xinput     => Next two are for inputs such as mouse and touchpads.
xf86-input-libinput

X compositer

picom-ibhagwan-git

Many picom forks, seems this one had all I needed. Grabbed my config from DT dotfiles and made a couple changes.

Terminals & related

alacritty
bash-completion
dash
dashbinsh
fish
lolcat
neofetch
shell-color-scripts
sl
starship
tty-clock-git
xterm

xterm is still here as a fallback but alacritty is our default. Setting it as the TERMINAL environment variable seems to do the trick.

As mentioned fish is our shell using starship for the prompt and lolcat and sl for the memes, of course.

We also link /bin/sh to dash, a proper POSIX compliant shell, instead of bash, what a silly thing to do in the first place...

Rest is mostly lulz and memes.

General utilities

ansible
arandr
browserpass
browserpass-chromium
dateutils
dconf-editor
dialog
expac
expect
fzf
git
gnupg
gparted
imagemagick
jq
pass
ripasso-cursive
logrotate
make
moreutils
p7zip
qrencode
rsync
scrot
shellcheck
sxiv
unclutter
unrar
unzip
virtualfish
xarchiver
xclip
xsettingsd
zbar
zip
zramd

Most of those are very standard and some are dependencies of scripts we will be running.

ripasso-cursive is a great terminal based pass manager. You will need to have a properly setup .gitconfig. Run ripasso-cursive to get help on how to properly set it up. rofi-pass (super + p) works with no configuration. Both require pass to be properly setup. Check the #dotfiles section for how to get it setup with ansible.

scrot dependency for powermenu

zramd is just a painless way to deal with swap so I wanted to give it a shot.

xarchiver is a great lightweight archive GTK3 gui, always good to have the option.

I can make a note of qrencode and zbar that I use along with a script asc2gif.sh to make qrcodes out of gpg and ssh keys. You can find that script in ~/.config/gnupg.

pass is the password manager system, you should really be using this...

virtualfish is an awesome wrapper for fish to hangle python virtual environments, amazing!

Rust utilities

bandwhich
bat
dust
exa
fd
procs
ripgrep
sd
tealdeer
zoxide

I had been using a couple of those but discovered mor with this article. Some of those are amazing such as zoxide and tealdeer and should become parts of your workflow, cd is aliased to zoxide in the fish config.

bat should replace your cat when using the terminal. Again, a really cool little utility.

LXDE

lxappearance-gtk3
lxinput-gtk3
lxrandr-gtk3
lxsession-gtk3

We already covered lxsession but note that you want it started before the window manager, so .xprofile is again a good match for such autostart.

The other apps are just nice gui for setting gtk themes, input settings and display size.

XDG utilities

xdg-utils
xdg-user-dirs
xdg-user-dirs-gtk

xdg-user-dirs with a custom configuration set by ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs will ensure we have the proper base folders such as desktop, documents, downloads, etc... We also have a slew of environment variables for XDG set by .profile. We also install the xdg-user-dirs-gtk package, it sets the GTK bookmark file (the file manager bookmarks).

Check XDG_Base_Directory#Support for more information on what application has an XDG config path option.

Libs & extras

gnome-themes-extra
gtk-engine-murrine      => Both are missing libs some gtk apps complained about.
perl-file-desktopentry  => gives locale support to `obmenu-generator`.
python-pexpect          => dependency of `ansible`.
python-pillow
python-numpy            => both are dependencies for a script to generate png.
qt5-x11extras           => dependency of `zbar` (qrcode script).

Openbox

obconf
obkey
obmenu-generator
obmenu2-git
openbox

I am planning for more window managers such as maybe herbstluftwm or xmonad later on but really like the flexibility of openbox.

I honestly use only obmenu-generator for it's dynamic pipe but figured having the gui configuration apps could not hurt (theme, hotkeys and menu editing).

openbox also has a global environment file but I am not using it as I dont need anything openbox specific.

File manager

nemo

I use the terminal to navigate files and am not a fan of terminal based file managers. It is nice to have a fallback gui for certain things so here comes nemo, it does what it needs to do.

Text editors

neovim
vscodium
vi

Sometimes things open by default in vi and it's easier to have it than hunt around for how to change the default editor for that one thing or mess with environment variables.

neovim, maybe just because haha I rarely use vim and figured if I start getting into it I'll go for neovim.

vscodium, it's my main IDE, I try to make all the references to it using the alias code so if you change the alias for it in ~/config/fish/config.fish everything should mostly open with your editor of choice.

System monitors

bottom-git
glances
htop
lsof
progress
strace
sysstat

bottom is a very nice terminal system monitor, might drop glances and htop (lsof and strace both being optional dependencies for htop). systat is just a collection of perf monitoring tools.

progress allows for checking on the progress of coreutils basic commands (cp, mv, dd, tar, gzip/gunzip, cat, etc.) that might take a long time. Check the github for examples.

Package manager

pacman-contrib
pamac-aur
paru

paru is just great, feels like a drop in replacement for pacman without the silly sudo. I am keeping a GUI for it right now and pamac does a great job at it. If I can get a packgage update notification I like with polybar, pamac is also nice on the command line but teaches bad habits as you don't need to use proper pacman flags.

Bluetooth

blueman
bluez
bluez-utils
pulseaudio-bluetooth

Audio

alsa-tools
alsa-utils
pavucontrol
pulseaudio-alsa
pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa

Pretty straightforward pulseaudio setup, the 15 band equalizer is nice.

Core wm utilities

betterlockscreen
dunst
feh
polybar
rofi
rofi-calc
rofi-pass-git
slop
sxhkd
wmctrl

Pretty standard selection, I'd rather use sxhkd for my hotkeys so it can be cross window manager. wmctrl and slop are for rofi scripts.

Themes

flavours
papirus-icon-theme-git

flavours is what the scripts use to manage base16 color schemes.

Fonts

adobe-source-code-pro-fonts
font-manager
nerd-fonts-fira-code
ttf-dejavu
ttf-liberation

Some are just defaults, nerd-fonts-fira-code being the main font, much of a wip, didn't really spend more than 10 seconds on it...

8. TODO / Need help

Thats where I jot down stuff that I plan to work on or bother me...

lxsession comes with xsettings-daemon but I cant get it started as it asks for a config file and I cant find an exemple anywhere. Using xsettingsd for that job for now. I also need to figure out what lxsettings exactly does, and how it should or not be started by lightdm instead of it's default session thing? Me still confused haha...Or replace lxsettings by another polkit and dex to autostart .desktop files, not sure what I would be loosing from lxsession by doing that? Again, confused, rambling...

Finish customizing calamares with nice icons and graphics, also a custom neofetch could be nice.

9. Update archiso

When archiso gets an update you might want to merge the changes. I have a releng branch just for that

git checkout releng

cp -rf /usr/share/archiso/configs/releng/* /archiso/.

Check the changes with git status and git diff /path/file

git commit -m "Merge XX-X releng"

Create a temporary branch to rebase main from the releng branch

git checkout -b "releng-rebase"

Rebase main onto it

git rebase -i main

Resolve any issues

Go back on main and merge the rebased releng-rebase branch

git checkout main

git merge releng-rebase

Change the archiso version in ./build.sh.

git commit -m "Update archiso version"

Push your updated branches

git push origin main

git checkout releng

git push origin releng

Back to work

git checkout main

Sources / Inspiration

The main starting point for this project was https://github.com/arch-linux-calamares-installer along with many scripts and concepts from https://github.com/archcraft-os/