for software used see software-list

the tiled window manager dwm handles the arrangement of xserver windows. desktop-example.png. with configurations to remove borders and set the font.

little "clock" in the top right corner that shows the day of the year, the day of the week and the current daytime in utc+0 kiloseconds. it is regularly updated by a background script with xsetroot -name "content"

st started with a screen session. st -e screen. with the screen functionality, ctrl+c creates new terminal buffers, ctrl+a n and ctrl+a n switch between them. using this, a terminal emulator that supports tabs is not necessary. font: "Gohu GohuFont:pixelsize=14:antialias=false"

xbindkeys to bind the most important commands to f keys. for example f1 is the web browser, f2 the file manager, f3 the terminal. f5 opens dmenu, a line appearing at the top of the screen to enter a program name to be run

~/.xbindkeysrc.scm

(xbindkey (quote (F1)) "firefox")
(xbindkey (quote (F2)) "thunar")
(xbindkey (quote (F3)) "st -e screen")
(xbindkey (quote (F5)) "dmenu_run")
(xbindkey (quote (F9)) "screenshot")

other programs are started using dmenu_run on f5

• group: move selected files into a new or existing directory whose name is entered in a dialog
• splice: move all files in selected directories to the current directory and remove the directories, automatically handling conflicting filenames
• sort files for the sake of rating into numeric directories: mv 1/artist-name/album-name to 2/artist-name/album-name
• collect-file: link selected files into $HOME/collections/yyyy-mm-dd
• add resolution tags to video files: 1080p.8ks.myvideo.mkv
• move up: move selected files one directory up
• tag-add and tag-remove: add dot separated tags to filenames before the filename extension
• delete-if-empty: delete empty selected files and directories recursively

boot goes to the tty console login with disabled cursor blinking (how to turn that off, there is an aur package for that). when logging in, a luks container for /home or /home/.{username} is decrypted and mounted to /home/{username} with the use of pam_mount. then ~/.bash_profile starts the xserver

~/.bash_profile

if [ "$(tty)" == /dev/tty1 ]
then
  exec startx
fi

~/.xinitrc

emacs --daemon
xmodmap /home/nonroot/.xmodmap
xbindkeys &
st -e screen &
restart-on-end -n 2 -- dwm

emacs is started in daemon mode so the slow startup happens only once and buffers are opened fast with emacsclient -tc which is set in $EDITOR and there is a shell script named e

#!/bin/sh
# pass all arguments to the editor program configured with the $EDITOR environment variable

$EDITOR "$@"

especially on single user systems i use a generic nonroot user. saves having to invent names, memorise them, rename them or keep them up to date on different systems

stored in a git repository with a file structure like this

data
  {hostname} ...
    {root-relative-full-paths}

symlinked to target destinations with "cp -rst / $PWD/data/hostname/*"

a simple prompt on its own line in magenta color that includes the basename of the current working directory

~
  echo test
test
~
  cd /usr/bin
bin
  ls guile
guile
bin

xmodmap to make the right shift-key work as the meta key for emacs and to disable the shift-lock key

~/.xmodmap

remove Lock = Caps_Lock
keysym Caps_Lock = Super_L
remove shift = Shift_R
add mod1 = Caps_Lock Shift_R
remove mod1 = Alt_L Alt_R
! add control = Alt_L Alt_R

a custom x11 keyboard-layout for the qgmlwb layout is used and a dead-key (a key that only modifies a subsequent key) for diaresis is on the circumflex key

qemu is free software and does not need additional kernel version dependent modules like virtualbox. such modules need to be recompiled for each kernel update, which happen every few weeks, and if a compatible version is not yet available then you are out of luck and would not be able update the kernel. the qemu instance is set up to offer a vnc interface, which also works at boot time. "remmina" is then used to connect to the virtual machines. network bridging and external hardware can be more difficult to set up, but less so in newer versions