What are standard things you do after a fresh Linux install?

Lounge
21

… open a bottle of :beer:

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22

frech cup of tea and a bag of snus. :wink:

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23

Figure out how to adjust for hi dpi screen! Easy on Cinnamon, easy on Unity, OK on XFCE, doable on KDE/Gnome, tough on MATE… :grin:

Need I mention that somehow I’ve ended up with a lot of XFCE, and 1 each of cinnamon and Unity?

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24

which Popsicle version did you install from the AUR, the Popsicle package or the git or bin package? Hard to know which one to choose, they don’t have a lot of votes and two of them haven’t been updated since last year, so I don’t know if the regular Popsicle one is best or if it’s better to have the bin or git package. Ideally in this case, I just want one that works.

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According to grep - I have popsicle. There’s a lot of good usb writers out there though. If you’re a distro hopper - I’d strongly recommend checking out ventoy.

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26

popsicle-git is the latest code from source. You can’t look at the date on *-git package, the date it was updated has no meaning since it always pulls the latest source. The thing to keep in mind with most *-git packages is that they often will pull-in untested and unreleased changes.

popsicle is the latest released version

popsicle-bin is a prebuilt binary.

My recommendation would be to go with popsicle. It doesn’t take all that long to build so why trust a binary if there is no reason to.

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27

Thanks mate, that’s a flawless answer. Still new to checking out the pkgbuilds, but after inspecting the Popsicle pkgbuild (with my limited knowledge of course), it looks like a safe package to install.
Edit: it failed to build after reporting 27 errors. That’s a bummer! Perhaps I should re-run the build or post a comment in the AUR or post another topic in a separate thread on Popsicle AUR build fail?

@fbodymechanic I like Popsicle because it’s just a simple GUI that gets the job done easily and it lets me verify checksums as well. I know EnOS comes with MultiWriter, but I haven’t yet tested that one out, I imagine it probably will perform similar to Popsicle. I checked out ventoy’s website, but I don’t know if that’s something quite what I am looking for, but I appreciate your recommendation I may test it out over the weekend just to tinker.

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You should share the full output of the build. Feel free to open another topic on it.

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29

Since I use my own Arch build, I have very little to do as my build has almost everything I need. I add virtualbox, setup my printer, and configure Thunderbird. After that, I am done. :slight_smile:

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30

it depends … if it happened to be an ubuntu setup, first thing would be just format the hd and install something else : - ) : - )

i just made up a linux joke : - )

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31

Customize it! :laughing:

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image

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

source

A little joke on a regular day - #141 by John

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33

Mainly just strip out all the applications I dislike and install the ones I do like, then play with the appearance to make it look good to my eyes. The DE and the underlying system I mainly leave alone.

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34

Deciding on which applications to open on login also. I like a clipboard manager and a screenshot app. Which ones you use are down to personal preference. I also use Dropbox as a start up but I know that is not to everyone’s taste and alternatives exist. Checking fonts is also good and also looking at your fstab file if you have lots of drives to mount. That is a whole topic in itself though, quite simple but I’m not getting into that here, there is plenty on the forum and other sources for that.

35

Also installing a LTS kernel as well as the latest one, and choosing a good backup application! :grin:

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36
  • Sort out warnings issued from mkinitcpio -P.
  • Set mitigations=off in /etc/default/grub.
  • Enable early KMS.
  • Install zsh, make it the default shell, then configure it the way I like it.
  • Install the Zen & LTS kernels, then ditch the standard kernel.
  • Work through every possible setting in the system settings.
  • Install & setup firewalld.
  • use pacman to search through the relevant DE group installs, e.g. kde-applications, kde-utilities, to find any useful components I’m missing. There’s one for dolphin that gives you the current git local repo status (dolphin-plugins), and another that shows video previews in the file icon (ffmpegthumbs), etc.
  • Install AUR helper (paru).
  • Install 1password.
  • Set up syncthing.
  • Copy across SSH key pairs & edit ~/.ssh/config.
  • Git global & system configs.
  • Copy across some fonts, e.g. Monaco, Helvetica, to ~/.fonts/ from other machines.
  • Install a few programmes (I tend to just install the rest as needed).
  • Work through all the settings for the programmes I use (kmail… aaaaaaaah!)
1 Like
37

First thing I normally do is in an Arch install is theme the damn thing, because man, default XFCE is UGLEH.

That said, Endeavour makes this a bit less painful, because the offline XFCE install is actually pretty nice looking, but that said I still do make sure to install my usual matcha-dark-azul theme, apply it to the taskbar as well, and sort out wallpapers for 2x monitors x 2x workspaces :joy:

After that I ensure I have the zen kernel installed (my normal default kernel), then install Lutris, Steam and set neofetch to run automatically in bashrc.

Beyond that? Not a lot. I install XNVIEWMP, which is my default image viewer/browser, maybe another web browser for an alternative if needed to Firefox, and generally that’s it.

I tend to keep my Linux install partitions pretty clean, and keep any data on a separate ext4 partition. It makes nuking my install (if ever required, which funnily enough it was recently when switching to Nvidia from AMD) pretty quick and efficient. I also don’t tend to install a huge amount of applications, so everything stays nice and lean :+1:

38

I usually just do a base installation, so the first order of business is a WM (usually herbstluftwm or openbox, though recently I’m playing with fluxbox), DM (ly if I can get it, lightdm if I have to), and lxpolkit. Then neovim, zsh, zoxide, firefox, ranger, htop. Then set up the SSH connection to my server. Then syncthing, which gives me access to all my files. Then whatever else: libreoffice, tmsu, android-messenger-desktop, etc.

39
  1. Prettifying the DE (Mate or Cinnamon)
  2. Initial update
  3. install language packs
  4. modding Firefox, setting my blog as start page
  5. install my most needed and beloved softwares: Thunderbird, Gimp, Warpinator, Qbittorrent, Singularity SL viewer
  6. adding some apps to the panel for quick start: Screenshot, Calculator, Libre Office, Nemo, USB Flasher, Gparted, Terminal
  7. installing add-ons for Firefox and YouTube
  8. adding my 3 million bookmarks to the browser
  9. Done! :slight_smile:
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40

What are standard things you do after a fresh Linux install?

I pat myself on the back because nobody else will do it.

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