System setup - EndeavourOS/Arch
published:
by Harshvardhan J. Pandit
is part of: System
apps Arch Linux Linux system
I moved my earlier system which used Manjaro Linux to EndeavourOS. Both are "arch-based", but Manjaro was more like Ubuntu to Debian in that it controlled the packages and inserted additional stuff as its own packages. It is supposed to be beginner friendly, but I think over time it is better to figure out how stuff works and move to an actual arch distribution. I'm quite familiar with linux environments (though not too familiar), so when the system just refused to work correctly one particular update later, where I kept getting a blank screen after boot (graphics card problems?) - I thought it was the perfect time to switch. I had to install a lot of packages in an ad-hoc manner as I remembered I needed to use some software or utility. So I created this page to list all the packages that I'm installing.
Which flavour of linux?
- Definitely settled on arch - but not manjaro which holds back packages, has its own repos which cause issues with AUR, and in general doesn't seem well-liked to fit within the arch community. Of the arch distributions, endeavour and arco seemed the best fit. I went with endeavour as it looked simple and polished.
- opensuse tumbleweed is a good contender for second choice
- popOS is popular as a gaming friendly distro
- not fedora, not ubuntu, not debian, gentoo? - haha, no
Which filesystem?
- btrfs is a newer (relatively) fs that has great snapshot and backup capability
- ext4 is the default, no issues, just works
- ntfs if a drive is shared with windows and already exists, otherwise exFAT seems to be the choice to avoid permissions wrangling in linux (use ntfs-36 and ntfsfix otherwise)
Which window manager?
- i3 is the WM of choice - simple, no GUI to manage, everything is full screen or tiled, and keyboard navigations is breezy; also I have a setup built over the years that is too comfortable to change
- xfce is the logical choice to have a simple wm complementing i3 for things not provided e.g. network manager, file browser, terminal; also good as a fallback desktop
- kde plasma nice to have for ensuring everything works; also comes with additional things not in xfce like sddm (login manager), kwallet (password keychain) - which avoids having to install gnome
Which software?
System
- i3 - wm + tools i3blocks, i3lock, i3status
- xfce4 - wm group, select thunar, thunar-volman, xfce4-appfinder, xfce4-panel, xfce4-power-manager, xfce4-session, xfce4-settings, xfce4-terminal, xfconf, xfdesktop, xfwm4, xfwm4-themes
- btrfs-assistant - snapshop management for btrfs
- dmenu - i3 app launcher
- gparted - manage fs / drives
- network-manager-applet - network icon for manager for i3
- ntfs-3g - in case not installed
Apps
- aspell - spellchecker; in case not installed
- autojump - fuzzy cd to a dir
- clipit or clipit-git - clipboard manager
- cloudflare-warp-bin - use cloudflare as DNS
- emacs - text editor + orgmode
- firefox - web browser; if not installed
- flameshot - screenshot tool
- git - version control
- github-cli - manage github repos and issues
- hstr - fuzzy search cli history
- insync - manage google drive
- keepassxc - password manager
- libreoffice-still - office suite stable branch
- meld - diff viewer
- nextcloud-client - manage nextcloud
- noto-fonts - fonts
- office-code-pro - fonts
- okular - in case not installed
- otf-font-awesome - fonts
- pandoc - format converter + pandoc-crossref for papers
- peazip - manage zip, tar, 7zip
- pyenv - manage python versions + pyenv-virtualenv
- spotify - music streaming
- steam - gaming
- stow - manage dotfiles
- sublime-merge - git manager
- sublime-text-4 - text editor
- thunar-archive-plugin - zip manager for thunar
- thunderbird - email manager
- tmux - terminal multiplexer
- vim - in case not installed
- wget - in case not installed
- xclip - clipboard management cli
- zenity - cli dialogs
- zotero or zotero-bin - reference manager