ria's install party v.2023

I've been contracting as a Python backend developer for a while now, and I've been using the vim editor ever since graduating. It's enabled me to deliver good code at a decent pace for years, but lately, I've felt things to be... dissatisfactory. I've grown more conscious about the dumb stuff, like typing errors, missing imports, elusive built-in signatures, etc. Surely there's a way to bypass these tedious mistakes. Surely there's a way to ride steadily on the clever part of the job. Right?

Of course, there's already an answer to that. It's called getting an IDE with a proper programming interface. But I can't deal with the GUIs. I just can't. I won't leave my terminal.

Enters helix, a fairly recent text editor designed as a successor to vim. It's got good language server support, and it runs from the terminal. Let's give it a try then?

Except it hardly runs on Debian. Helix users live on the edge... So let's move to the edge?

Hence I found myself browsing through Linux OSes. I pondered giving in to the Arch Linux side. Then I learned about Manjaro, a mature Arch-based distribution shipping with a sensible installer and a reasonable set of seasoned utilities —most of which I was already using on Debian.

Migrating to this new OS actually simplified my system setup, with many of my previous Debian customizations made redundant by out-of-the-box Manjaro capabilities. So I took the opportunity to switch from bash to zsh, along with configuring a nice powerlevel10k prompt. In any case, changes were more than enough to justify a revamp of my 4-year-old documentation.

Last but not least, I created a Github repository to keep track of my various configuration files (or dotfiles). It still requires a bit of symlinking for deployment, but it's definitely going to feel better than the clanky self-hosted directory I've used before. I had a look at further automation tools, like Dotbot, but I've done enough tinkering for now. Next time, maybe.

Install Manjaro

• Go to the Manjaro Downloads page, and get the Full version image running the Xfce desktop.
• Flash the image on a USB stick with Etcher.
• Follow the Manjaro installer, select LibreOffice when asked.

Add packages

sudo pamac install helix vim tmux xclip bitwarden-cli telegram-desktop chromium deluge gphoto2 \
                   obs-studio darktable perl-image-exiftool python-pipenv nginx sqlite npm arduino picocom

Configure Git

git config --global user.name ria4
git config --global user.email "16877076+ria4@users.noreply.github.com"

Retrieve & deploy dotfiles

git clone https://github.com/ria4/dotfiles .dotfiles

# import terminal config
ln -s /home/ria/.dotfiles/.zshrc /home/ria/.zshrc
ln -s /home/ria/.dotfiles/.zsh_aliases /home/ria/.zsh_aliases
ln -s /home/ria/.dotfiles/.p10k.zsh /home/ria/.p10k.zsh
ln -s /home/ria/.dotfiles/.tmux.conf /home/ria/.tmux.conf

# import vim config if needed
ln -s /home/ria/.dotfiles/.vimrc /home/ria/.vimrc

# import bash config if needed
ln -s /home/ria/.dotfiles/.profile /home/ria/.profile
ln -s /home/ria/.dotfiles/.bashrc /home/ria/.bashrc
ln -s /home/ria/.dotfiles/.bash_aliases /home/ria/.bash_aliases

Deploy Xfce config

cp -rT ~/.dotfiles/xfce4/20230726/xfce4 ~/.config/xfce4
cp -rT ~/.dotfiles/xfce4/20230726/autostart ~/.config/autostart
cp -rT ~/.dotfiles/xfce4/20230726/Thunar ~/.config/Thunar

Setup tmux plugins

git clone https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm ~/.tmux/plugins/tpm
# then do a Ctrl-B followed by Shift+I in a fresh tmux session to fetch all plugins registered in .tmux.conf

Setup desktop utilities

• Sync Firefox account
• Sync Telegram account
• Setup Thunderbird (syncing is barely in beta yet)
  • Register accounts :
    • [redacted]@outlook.com
    • contact@oriane.ink
    • [redacted-android]@gmail.com
    • [redacted-junk]@gmail.com
  • Then replicate filters on contact@oriane.ink
  • And remove threaded sorting (View/Sort by/Unthreaded)
• If Firefox is slow to load, try uninstalling xdg-desktop-portal-gnome

Reminder: How to capture Canon camera

sudo modprobe v4l2loopback
gphoto2 --set-config depthoffield=1 --stdout --capture-movie \
  | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -threads 0 -f v4l2 /dev/video0