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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at polv.cc

How do YOU customize your desktop Linux experience?

I happened to vanilla installed Arch Linux + incomplete KDE and several eye candies.

Caveat to installing

  • Remove secure boot
  • rfkill unblock wifi
  • Install btrfs, i.e. "better fs"
  • Install NetworkManager. No, there won't be iwctl or NetworkManager, if you don't install it.
  • User management and install sudo
  • Install GRUB, but switch to refind later, with cp /etc/os-release /boot/etc/os-release
  • Install yay. I know that Ubuntu / Debian do have apt search, but yay -Ss, yay -Qs searches the whole AUR and looks more powerful
  • Install missing drivers
  • Install not only plasma, but also kde-applications, just to uninstall many later. (Also installed sddm. Liked better than lightdm)
yay -Rc $(pacman -Qsq kde game) konsole dolphin konquerer kmail
yay -S terminator thunar chromium vscodium-bin vscodium-bin-marketplace
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  • Does anyone really use Konquerer / Epiphany, BTW?
  • Editing Plasma desktop (KDE) to look like GNOME / Xfce.
  • Edit SDDM with Arch theme
  • Edit icons as deem fit, by editing ~/.local/share/application/**/*.desktop and finding the icons
find /usr/share/icons -iname '*.png'
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  • Change Mail application to
[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_US]=
Comment=
Exec=xdg-open https://mail.zoho.com/zm/#compose
GenericName[en_US]=
GenericName=
Icon=internet-mail
MimeType=
Name[en_US]=Email in browser
Name=Email in browser
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=
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What about your desktop?

Doesn't have to be Arch. Might be i3wm or Openbox or something else. Care to share your customization?

(BTW, I don't know if I will survive if I tried non-systemd, like Artix.)

Arch desktop

Arch icons

Top comments (1)

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

I had two major problems with Arch.

  1. Arch in on btrfs /, not /@
  2. Mouse randomly not working at startup (it does also happen in Manjaro and Arco)

BTW, how do people usually use btrfs? I plan to use Timeshift