Linux

Linux-based systems have the tendency to diverge quite a bit. This makes it a non-trivial task to provide documentation that works for every system and variation. Ubuntu provides a consistent and reliable desktop experience, based on the GNOME desktop environment and the Linux kernel. We will assume a Ubuntu-based system throughout this document.

Browser

Chromium defaults to using XWayland instead of using Wayland natively. We will set the CHROMIUM_FLAGS environment variable in order to change that behavior.

Make sure that the directory ~/.config/environment.d/ exists.

mkdir -p "$HOME"/.config/environment.d/

Create the file ~/.config/environment.d/envvars.conf and add this line to it.

CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--ozone-platform-hint=auto --enable-features=TouchpadOverscrollHistoryNavigation"

Restart the Wayland session. Open chrome://gpu in Chromium and look for Ozone platform, to confirm that the browser is running natively on Wayland.

Desktop

Enable dark mode.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme prefer-dark

Hide the home folder on the desktop.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.ding show-home false

Dock

Restrict the height of the dock.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock extend-height false

Do not make the dock fixed.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock dock-fixed false

Do not intelligently hide and show the dock.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock intellihide false

Move the dock to the bottom.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock dock-position 'BOTTOM'

Move the Show Apps button to the left.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock show-apps-at-top true

Disable shortcuts for Dash to Dock extension.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock hot-keys false

Disable <Super><Number> shortcuts for GNOME shell.

for i in $(seq 1 9); do 
    gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-$i []
done

Editor

Installation

Install the vim-nox package.

sudo apt install vim-nox

Configuration

Download the ~/.vimrc file.

wget -O "$HOME"/.vimrc "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notfirefox/vim-config/main/.vimrc"

Keyboard

Enable the additional keyboard layouts.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources show-all-sources true

Change the keyboard layout to the EurKEY layout.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources "[('xkb', 'eu')]"

Use the following command to remap Caps Lock to the Escape key.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options "['caps:escape']"

Allow us to use the <Super>q shortcut for closing windows.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings close "['<Super>q']"

Allow us to use the <Super><Control>q shortcut for locking the screen.

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys screensaver "['<Control><Super>q']"

If the Super key is on the right side of your keyboard, use this command.

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter overlay-key Super_R

Pasteboard

macOS has the pbcopy and pbpaste commands to copy and paste from the clipboard. On Linux-based systems, you would use wl-copy and wl-paste instead. To make our life easier, we will create aliases, that make the interface to those basic commands uniform.

Install the alias for the pbcopy command.

sudo update-alternatives \
    --install /usr/bin/pbcopy pbcopy /usr/bin/wl-copy 90 \
    --slave /usr/share/man/man1/pbcopy.1.gz pbcopy.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/wl-copy.1.gz

Install the alias for the pbpaste command.

sudo update-alternatives \
    --install /usr/bin/pbpaste pbpaste /usr/bin/wl-paste 90 \
    --slave /usr/share/man/man1/pbpaste.1.gz pbpaste.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/wl-paste.1.gz

This allows us to use the pbcopy and pbpaste commands on Linux too.

Shell

Linux systems typically use bash, i.e. Bourne Again Shell, by default. It is an enhancement of the original sh, i.e. Bourne Shell, and also incorporates parts of ksh, i.e. the KornShell. macOS nowadays defaults to zsh, i.e. the Z shell. This is also what we will use, as it provides every feature we need and comes with completions out of the box.

Installation

The following command will install the zsh shell.

sudo apt install zsh

Change the default shell using the following command.

chsh -s /bin/zsh && exec zsh

Configuration

INFO

Our configuration enables the Korn shell emulation and takes care of the completion initialization by itself, therefore we will disable the global initialization, that is provided by default.

WARNING: This will overwrite your ~/.zshenv file.

echo 'skip_global_compinit=1' > "$HOME"/.zshenv

Download the ~/.zshrc file.

wget -O "$HOME"/.zshrc "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notfirefox/zsh-config/main/.zshrc"

Source the ~/.zshrc file for the changes to become effective.

. "$HOME"/.zshrc

Userland

The user space tools on typical Linux-based systems have non-standard extensions such as long option flags. Such non-standard extensions may or may not be available on other Unix-like operating systems. Therefore it is advised to not become dependant on such non-standard behavior. This is why we prefer user space tools from Chimera Linux.

Dependencies

Install the required packages to compile the user space tools from source.

sudo apt install autoconf automake bison build-essential cmake flex \
    libacl1-dev libbz2-dev libedit-dev liblzma-dev libncurses5-dev \
    libssl-dev libzstd-dev libtool meson ninja-build pkg-config zlib1g-dev

Preparation

We will first need to download and install the libxo library.

wget "https://github.com/Juniper/libxo/releases/download/1.7.5/libxo-1.7.5.tar.gz"

Extract the archive and change the directory.

tar xzvf libxo-1.7.5.tar.gz && cd libxo-1.7.5/

Configure the build environment, by running the configure script.

./configure --prefix="$HOME"/.local/

Compile and install the library.

make && make install

Installation

Now we can download and install the chimerautils userland tools.

wget "https://github.com/chimera-linux/chimerautils/archive/refs/tags/v14.2.2.tar.gz"

Extract the archive and change the directory.

tar xzvf v14.2.2.tar.gz && cd chimerautils-14.2.2/

Do not compile and install the nvi program.

sed -i "/subdir('nvi')/d" src.freebsd/meson.build

Configure the build environment, by running meson setup.

PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME"/.local/lib/pkgconfig meson setup \
    -Dc_link_args='-Wl,--rpath $ORIGIN/../lib' \
    --prefix="$HOME"/.local/ build/

Compile and install the tools.

meson compile -C build/ && meson install -C build/