Notice! I am no longer updating this repo. Head on over to archlinux-adjective for my latest updates! It contains installation scripts that manage almost all of the setup.

Dotfiles

Welcome to my dotfiles!

This is the configuration I use for my laptop, which runs the i3-gaps window manager (a fork of i3) on Arch Linux.

This document was written to help anyone interested in trying out my i3 config. In all honesty, it's not a "just works" setup. It's gross and you'll probably get frustrated. If you do, I'm very sorry, but I assure you that everything in the process has a purpose, and that it will all... probably... maybe work out for you on your machine. Actually, I can't even guarantee that. But I wish I could! I have plans to write a script that brings the whole process together, but for now, if you encounter difficulties, think of it as a challenge! Unless it's easy for you. In that case, you go ahead and treat yo self!

Alright, here we go.

Dependencies

Note: I might forget something here. Open a ticket if you believe that something is missing

This setup is intended for i3-gaps by Airblader. I haven't tested it with regular i3-- you'll probably have to make a few changes if you want to use that. I've only ever installed it on Arch Linux-- I can't make any guarantees about its compatibility with other distros.

• compton -- Compositor (GPU acceleration for X, shadows, fades, all kinds spiffiness)
• conky -- System monitor, provides network, memory, and CPU usage info to lemonbar.
• feh -- Wallpaper-setting program and minimalist image viewer
• mpc -- Client for mpd, responsible for telling lemonbar about the currently playing media.
• mpd -- Music Player Daemon. Plays beautiful music for your face. I recommend ncmpcpp as a terminal client for it.
• iwconfig -- Wireless interface configuration tool, used only for wifimode
• Powerline -- Statusline framework with many plugins. Needed for vim, tmux, and shell styling.
• Powerline Fonts -- For the arrows and such.
• Siji Icon Font -- Wonderful icon font, I use it for lemonbar.
• pulseaudio -- If you don't use / like pulseaudio, that's okay. You'll just have to do a little work yourself to get the volume scripts, media key bindings, and shell aliases to work for whatever setup you have.
• python3 -- For applyxres. You probably already have it.
• ranger -- Terminal file browser. Used in bkg script to easily browse images.
• rofi -- Super-nice launcher, better than dmenu. Needed for myrofi.
• xprop -- X11 window info program, makes the window title section work.

Xfce4-terminal, xterm, and rxvt-unicode (aka urxvt) have all been tested and are supported with my color setup. Any other ~/.Xresources-compatible emulator should be fine as well. I use urxvt, if you're curious.

Installation

General

1. First, install the dependencies listed in the section above.

2. util/ contains my custom utility scripts. Place them in a directory contained within your $PATH and ensure that they are executable. I explain what all of these scripts do in the Usage section later on.

3. All of the contents of dots/ should be placed in your home directory, except for:

• compton.conf, which should be placed in ~/.config/compton (create this directory if it does not already exist)
• If you use Xfce4-terminal, place terminalrc in ~/.config/xfce4/temrinal
• If you use Sublime Text 3, place ApplyXres.template in ~/.config/sublime-text-3/Packages/User and read the "Sublime Text theme" section.
• If you use systemd, place bkg.service and bkg.timer in one of your installation's unit directories and enable the timer. If you don't use systemd, don't sweat it.

4. Special step for Powerline. Locate your Powerline installation (it will be located in the site-packages directory of your Python installation, either in ~/.local for user-only installs, or in /lib for global installs). Go into the config_files directory. Make a copy of colors.json and call it colors.json.default. Then, change the ownership of colors.json to yourself (or whatever you have to do so that you have write privileges on it). Also, make a symlink in your home directory to the config_files directory, and call it pl-conf. (ie, ln -s /path/to/powerline/config_files/ ~/pl-conf)

Wallpaper

Run the wallpaper.init script to set up your ~/.wallpapers directory. You will need to supply the path for a default background image. To cancel, press Ctrl+c.

My setup has three modes for wallpaper display:

1. NORMAL -- One wallpaper is displayed all of the time.
2. DAY -- A series of wallpapers cycle through the day, according to the output of the timeofday utility script.
3. RANDOM -- Will select a random wallpaper from the directory linked by ~/.wallpapers/random-src.

The latter two require a scheduled job to trigger the update-wallpaper script (described below). If you use systemd, you may simply review and install the included bkg.service and bkg.timer units. If you do not use systemd, you will have to schedule the job yourself.

One of the three modes should be the sole contents of the ~/.wallpapers/mode file. This mode will be an indicator for the wallpaper management scripts, of which there are two:

1. bkg -- This script modifies which images are selected for use as wallpapers, one per run. If the mode is DAY, it will change the wallpaper for the current time of day. You may pass this script a single argument if you want to modify a different time of day. Ex: bkg "Late Afternoon" will modify the background selected for late afternoon, regardless of the current time. ranger is required for this script to function properly.

2. update-wallpaper -- This script applies the appropriate wallpaper according to the contents of ~/.wallpapers/mode and any other external factors (eg, the current time). Your scheduled job should run this script on a regular interval. It is also run by ~/.xinitrc (ie, on X11 startup)

Note: If the contents of the ~/.wallpapers/mode file are not recognized, NORMAL is assumed.

Take care that if you move or remove a background image referenced by your wallpaper setup, the scripts will not function properly. You will have to restore the symlinks in your ~/.wallpapers directory manually.

Sublime Text Theme

To use the Sublime Text theme, install the colorsublime plugin. Run the included applyxres utility script to generate the theme. Then, within Sublime, select "Xres-Generated" from within the "Preferences > Color Schemes > Colorsublime-Themes" menu in Sublime.

Note: If you try to open vim while Sublime Text is open, Powerline will have a dramatic freakout session. I don't know why this happens. Once you close Sublime Text, vim will open normally.

Other Notes

For my .vimrc to work, you'll need Vundle.

Usage

Scripts

I've written the following utility scripts to manage the system:

• alsa-status -- (09 Nov 2015) ALSA-compliant replacement for volume-status-2, which relied on PulseAudio.
• applyxres -- Python script that will apply the colors defined in ~/.Xresources to color configuration files throughout the system.
• batmon -- Basically useless battery monitor, but hey, maybe you'll find a reason to use it. :shrugs: Use Ctrl+c to exit.
• batpct -- Outputs battery percentage to four points of precision. I used to use this for the bar until I replaced it with batstat, and still use it as a quick way to check my battery life on startup before I start X11.
• batstat -- Outputs concise battery information, used for lemonbar.
• bkg -- Script used to manage selected background images. Described above.
• frame -- Old script from when I was using XFCE, before I learned about the wondrous power of i3-gaps. The script attempts to place the window in the center of the screen with a small amount of padding around the edges.
• gaps -- Modifies the window gaps provided by i3-gaps. Takes a descriptive string, either "pretty", "work", or "focus", or a pair of integers to manually set the outer and inner gaps for the current workspace, respectively.
• lemonvol -- (29 Oct 2015) Volume control script that changes bar immediately after changing volume.
• myres -- Terrible, rotten screen resolution script, don't use it.
• mywin -- (30 Oct 2015) Gets the id of the currently focused window, just a simple wrapper for xprop.
• myrofi -- Custom rofi launching script, one of the targets for applyxres
• timeofday -- Prints out a string describing the time of day, which can be either "Late Night", "Early Morning", "Morning", "Afternoon", "Late Afternoon" "Evening", or "Night"
• update-wallpaper -- Sets the currently appropriate wallpaper, described above.
• volume-status -- Old volume status script, superseded by volume-status-2. I don't know why I keep it around.
• volume-status-2 -- Less old (but still old) volume script, superseded by alsa-status.
• wallpaper.init -- Sets up ~/.wallpapers. See above for more details.
• wifimode -- Allows you to quickly change your wlan interface's operating mode. You'll have to change the iname variable in the script to the name of your interface if it differs from the preset one. Ex: sudo wifimode Monitor

The rest of the scripts aren't my own-- they should all have attributions written in them (except for bar, which is simply the lemonbar binary)

Colors

I wrote applyxres to streamline color theming in my system. All you have to do to change your system's color scheme is edit your ~/.Xresources file and run applyxres. Some of the changes won't be visible until their corresponding programs are restarted.

Keybindings

Refer to ~/.i3/config for keybindings-- it's mostly stock, with a few changes. Arrow keys are disabled in favor of vim-style movement.

Exit i3 with Super+Shift+e, but be advised that there is a bug in electro7's bar scripts that causes perl to explode after logging out. You should either immediately poweroff or reboot, or kill off perl (pkill perl) to save your CPU from being tortured. I hope this gets fixed one day. and don't worry about Perl throwing a conniption because those days are done-city! You will probably have to manually kill lemonbar and xargs though (pkill lemonbar; pkill xargs).