Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Speeding up AUR package installations in Arch Linux

This post can be used for Arch Linux and EndeavourOS. Recently, a change was committed that highly compresses AUR packages before the actual installation. This takes a lot of time: even on a fast machine, installing something like Chrome or Visual Studio (AUR packages) takes even minutes just for the compression phase. Since I typically […]

How I manage Neovim configuration with Chezmoi

I love to manage my dotfiles with Chezmoi, which I highly recommend! In a single Git repository, I have common dotfiles and Window Manager specific (KDE, GNOME, Hyprland, and Sway). However, I prefer to have my Neovim configuration in another Git repository, separate from my Chezmoi dotfiles. I’ve just started learning Neovim, and I’m not […]

Sway: monitor configuration for different computers

I’m using Sway (not as my daily driver) on different computers: PCs and laptops. For the PCs, I’m using an HDMI monitor. Laptops have different display sizes, e.g., small displays with low resolution and more extensive displays with retina resolution. Thus, I need to set different scaling factors for the different displays. It’s pretty easy […]

Waybar Workspaces in Hyprland

Waybar has a dedicated module for Hyprland workspaces: https://github.com/Alexays/Waybar/wiki/Module:-Hyprland#workspaces. One of its most fantastic features is the possibility of representing the application windows in each workspace. For example, here I have the workspaces with the following application windows: Kate (text editor) and terminal (Alacritty) Dolphin (file manager) A Firefox window and a Firefox window on […]

Downgrading packages in Arch Linux Arm

In Arch Linux, you can easily downgrade packages with the script https://github.com/archlinux-downgrade/downgrade, also available from AUR. I experienced problems with the new version (2:2.11.1) of wpa_supplicant in PineBook Pro, where I have EndeavourOS. WiFi does not work anymore with the new version of wpa_supplicant. I tried downgrading as suggested in the EndeavourOS forum. However, I […]

Problems with xdg-desktop-portal-kde as well

I recently blogged about some problems with UI tests in GNOME due to xdg-desktop-portal-gnome. Unfortunately, I also started to experience problems similar to those with KDE Plasma 6.1 (Linux EndeavourOS and Arch); as in the other blog post, the problem is only with Wayland. I’ll use this example project (taken from my TDD book): https://github.com/LorenzoBettini/demo-attsw. It is […]

Modifier-only shortcuts in KDE Plasma 6.1

Before KDE Plasma 6.1 (released a few days ago and already available in Arch), if you wanted to configure a “modifer-only” shortcut (e.g., SUPER key, also known as META, to activate the “Overview” effect), you had to manually modify the “~/.config/kwinrc” file and add these lines:

Another example is if you wanted the SUPER […]

Customizing Grub during the EndeavourOS installation

I typically have several EndeavourOS installations on my computers: one for KDE, one for Hyprland, etc. Thus, I want to have different UEFI entries, but they would all have “endeavouros”, each overriding the others. You can change the grub ID later by issuing a proper “grub-install” program from the running system or by booting it […]

Fixing the empty “open with” in Dolphin in Hyprland

I have already blogged about KDE applications in Hyprland. However, with the latest updates, things broke a bit especially with Dolphin, which does not recognize file associations anymore: double-clicking on a file always shows this empty menu, as if it could not find any associations for any file: On the Arch forum that has already […]

Nerd Fonts in KDE Plasma 6

As I have written, I’m using “Oh-My-Zsh” with Nerd icons and fonts. It has always worked perfectly in KDE. A few days ago, KDE Plasma 6 landed in Arch (and thus, EndeavourOS), and after upgrading, the Nerd fonts were not displayed in Konsole and Kate (and, I guess, in other KDE applications). For example, before […]

KDE Plasma 6 Desktop Cube in Arch Linux

At last, KDE Plasma 6 has landed in Arch Linux (and in EndeavourOS, of course), and you’re eager to try the return of the desktop effect “Desktop Cube”! 🙂 You try to enable that in the System Settings “Desktop Effects.” You try the default shortcut “Meta + C”, and… it doesn’t work 🙁 Oh, they […]

TLP: Limiting Battery Charge on LG Gram in Linux

I had already blogged on how to limit battery charge on LG Gram in Linux. In that post, you had to manually set the threshold “80” in the file “/sys/devices/platform/lg-laptop/battery_care_limit”. With TLP, the procedure is easier and more automatic. First, you must install tlp (remember that tlp conflicts with power-profiles-daemon, so you have to disable […]

Hyprland and the Variety wallpaper manager

I’ve just started experimenting with the Wayland compositor Hyprland and wanted to use my favorite wallpaper manager, Variety. Unfortunately, Variety does not support Hyprland out of the box. However, it’s easy to make it work also on Wayland. I’m going to use Arch Linux in this blog post. First of all, you must install “swaybg”, […]

Maven profiles that are really active by default

While working on my TDD book, I played with Maven profiles to write the chapter. If you use Maven profiles, you might want to use an activation strategy to enable the profile under certain circumstances automatically. There’s also a particular option, “<activeByDefault>”, which seems self-explanatory. This must mean that that profile will be constantly active […]

Taming KDE baloo

Quoting from https://community.kde.org/Baloo, Baloo is the file indexing and file search framework for KDE Plasma, with a focus on providing a very small memory footprint along with extremely fast searching. Unfortunately, it has a bad reputation for being a resource hog. However, it all boils down to configuring it appropriately (of course, according to your […]