NOTE: This repository archived as I've since moved to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for which I keep similar notes.
After having a bad experience with other distros I'm back to Kubuntu and KDE.
KDE because... XFCE was too light (and in terms of resources not much lighter than KDE). LXQt was not there yet. GNOME was better in some ways, but could not beat KDE for me.
Kubuntu because... They seem to have fixed the issues I had with it years ago. Neon was overall less stable (and I like some stability nowadays). I needed an apt based distro as I'm tired of learning the package management dance all over, and I'm done with compiling everything myself. If the Ubuntus go all in with snap I will move to a distro without it. Back to Debian? But for now I still like my distro a little more bleeding edge than Debian.
This repo contains per-topic guides (by means of a README.md file each in a directory of its own), and some generic setup stuff (in the README.md file you are reading now). I've tried lots of dotfile managers, yet they never really stuck (the dont really help for tree of configs and installing OS dependencies). Hence this repo simply contains Markdown files with copy-pastable bits and dot/config files. Maybe one day I manage to get some of my KDE settings automated, who knows.
This repro is to scratch my own itch, but feel free to copy from it. If you have tips or otherwise want to reach out (maybe you found a life saving productivity hack in here) feel free to file a issue even if you just want to say hi. There's no issue template. No code of conduct. Go for it.
NOTE: This guide assumes Kubuntu version 22.04 (LTS), it may or may not with newer versions.
First download a recent Kubuntu ISO. Then write the .iso file to a USB drive.
Find the block device of the USB drive with:
lsblk # repeat this with and without the USB drive inserted
Make sure the USB drive is not mounted.
We assume the USB drive is available as /dev/sdb and the image is kubuntu-21.10-desktop-amd64.iso.
sudo dd if=./kubuntu-22.04-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress && sync
When this is finished the USB drive is ready to be used as installation medium.
When installing choose these options:
- Keyboard layout variant: US/ Euro on 5
- What to install: Minimal installation + updates + proprietary extras
- Partitioning: Split root and home partitions without disk encryption or "Guided- use entire disk and setup encrypted LVM" if you want full disk encryption
- Timezone: US/NYC (switch it later back to my actual timezone, as setting it here will result in unwanted localization settings beyond the timezone)
If I don't do these first, doing the rest will be unnessecarily frustrating.
I'm blind without these, and the rest of the READMEs may require them.
sudo apt-get install -y git tig vim htop iotop tree build-essential net-tools
This maps CAPS to an extra CTRL, sets up R-ALT as the compose key
(allowing: R-ALT " e → ë), and maps MENU to R-CTRL, and R-CTRL to the R-WIN key.
Then I physically switch keycaps on these keys the MENU and R-CTRL key.
sudo bash -c "cat > /etc/default/keyboard" << EOL
XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT="euro"
XKBOPTIONS="compose:ralt,ctrl:nocaps,ctrl:swap_rwin_rctl,ctrl:menu_rctrl"
BACKSPACE="guess"
EOL
Then run:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
Answer the questions. It puts the keyboard config realy deep in the OS (initramfs), so it works always and everywhere. It requires a restart to be in effect.
I like to use that directory as a normal user.
sudo chown $USER:$USER /usr/local/src
I hate it. It makes my system less predictable, increases load times, makes UI stuff look ugly, obfuscates process monitoring, hogs resources, does not allow me to start applications from the command line, cannot deal with files in /tmp (and I happen to use /tmp a lot), litters my system non-standard directories, installs in $HOME what I consider system applications, creates loads of mounts, makes if hard to do audio (like connecting a mic to Chromium)... I can go on.
sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd
sudo apt remove --purge plasma-discover-backend-snap
sudo apt purge -y snapd
sudo apt purge -y libsnapd-qt1
rm -rf ~/snap
sudo rm -rf /snap
sudo rm -rf /var/snap
sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/snapd
sudo apt-mark hold snapd
sudo bash -c "cat > /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snapd.pref" << EOL
Package: snapd
Pin: origin ""
Pin-Priority: -1
EOL
The last lines are an attempt to ensure snapd will not be considered in future.
The following commands are interactive:
sudo apt remove firefox chromium chromium-browser chromium-browser-l10n chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:savoury1/chromium
sudo apt update
sudo apt install firefox-esr chromium
See the on topic READMEs in the sub directories.