BSPWM .files

Dot files for my Arch Linux + bspwm setup used on my Dell XPS 15 9560.

(NOTE: These are the bspwm dotfiles, my i3wm setup is located in the i3wm branch)

Table of contents

• Screenshots
• Packages
  • Primary
  • Secondary
• Installation
• Device/hardware specific settings
  • Disabled modules
  • Disabling turbo boost
  • Enable powertop auto tune
  • Kernel parameters

Screenshots

Packages

Primary

• rofi: Application launcher
• zsh: Shell
• urxvt: Terminal emulator
• bspwm: Window manager
• sxhkd: Hotkey daemon
• dunst: Notification daemon
• vim: Editor
• vim-plug: Vim Plugin Manager
• polybar: Status bar
• firefox: Browser
• chromium: Browser
• evince: PDF reader
• betterlockscreen: Lock screen
• libinput: Touch pad driver
  • libinput-gestures: Custom touchpad gestures
• neofetch: System info
• ranger: File explorer
• lightdm: Display Manager

Secondary

• w3m: Used to display images in ranger
• imgur-screenshot: Screenclip to imgur
• maim: Screenclip to clipboard
• KeeWeb: Password manager
• redshift: F.lux alternative (tints your screen to make it easier on your eyes)
• picom: Compositor
• pulseaudio / -alsa: Audio driver
• Spicetify: Spotify theming CLI tool
• connman: Network manager
  • cmst: Front-end for connman
• pamixer: Pulseaudio manager
• gotop: Beautiful TUI activity monitor
• plug
• xcwd: Used to open a new terminal in the same directory as the current focused terminal
• Fonts:
  • Iosevka
  • noto-fonts
  • ttf-font-awesome
  • icomoon-feather

Installation

Installation and the dotfiles are to be managed with yadm, thus installation is done through cloning the repository using yadm clone, and then confirm running the bootstrapping script when prompted to. If not prompted after cloning, executing the bootstrapping script can be done at any time with yadm bootstrap.

Thus, if you have a completely fresh install of arch, do the following:

• $ curl -fLo /usr/local/bin/yadm https://github.com/TheLocehiliosan/yadm/raw/master/yadm && chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/yadm
• $ yadm clone https://github.com/4lgn/dotfiles -b bspwm
• $ yadm bootstrap

The bootstrapping script should setup and install most things, and get you a completely usable system. There are, however, still some further configuration needed for some of the applications that I use. The following sub-sections will cover these extra setups.

LightDM setup

Make sure you have the following packages installed:

pacman -S --needed lightdm lightdm-webkit2-greeter lightdm-webkit-theme-litarvan

• Edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and set greeter-session=lightdm-webkit2-greeter.
• Then edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm-webkit.conf and set theme or webkit-theme to litarvan.
• Enable the LightDM as a systemd service: systemctl enable lightdm

Vim setup

Simply open vim and it should automatically install everything the first time. If something is wrong, or nothing seemed to have been installed, run :PlugInstall from within vim.

Firefox setup

• Go to about:config
• Enable toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets
• Go to about:addons
• Enable the Dark theme if not already enabled
• Copy the contents of my firefox profile to yours, located at .mozilla/firefox/<your-profile-name>/chrome/
• Optionally remove some of the extra icons in the Customize menu

Rounded corners (bspwm fork)

To get the rounded corners in bspwm, I currently use a fork of bspwm by dylanaraps, found here.

To patch your current bspwm with these changes, do the following:

• $ git clone https://github.com/dylanaraps/bspwm
• $ cd bspwm
• $ make && sudo make install
• Restart your X session.

Now, unfortunately, as you will quickly notice with this fork, these corners are not anti-aliased and are quite jagged. There is currently some open issues and discussion on getting anti-aliased corners, especially a pull request by sdhand is quite promising, found here. As of writing, none of the solutions out there are without compromises or problems, so I choose to live with jagged corners as of the time being.

Device/hardware specific settings

These are some of the tweaks I've made for my specific setup, most of them are to optimize battery lifetime

Disabled modules

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist nouveau
blacklist nvidia
blacklist psmouse
blacklist btusb
blacklist bluetooth

Disabling turbo boost

/etc/systemd/system/disable-turbo-boost.service

[Unit]
Description=Disable Turbo Bost on Intel CPU

[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo"      
ExecStop=/bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo"      

[Install]
WantedBy=sysinit.target

Enable powertop auto tune

TLP can be used instead of this if you want a less aggressive power tuning.

/etc/systemd/system/powertop.service

[Unit]
Description=Powertop tunings

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/powertop --auto-tune
RemainAfterExit=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Kernel parameters

Below are the kernel parameters I would pass to all linux installations, mainly based upon some shortcomings and oddities that I have experienced with the Dell XPS 15.

add_efi_memmap rw quiet splash i915.modeset=1 nouveau.modeset=0 acpi_rev_override=1

• i915.modeset=1: Ensure iGPU is loaded early by using KMS. (Might fix boot loader/display manager not being shown)
• nouveau.modeset=0: Block nouveau from managing the GPU. (This bundled together with the previous parameter allows X to run entirely on my iGPU, as there are no drivers loaded for the GPU; this drastically improves battery life for obvious reasons)
• acpi_rev_override=1: This is the most important setting, as this prevents some freezing issues I had due to the nvidia card not working well with ACPI.
• quiet and splash: Personal preference to not show every boot message at boot (I'd just remove these if something seems wrong)
• add_efi_memmap and rw: Probably not needed anymore and rw are usually default anyways.