Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Installing the Tmux Plugin Manager (tpm) with Chezmoi

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Similar to what I had already shown in a previous post, in this post, I show how you can install (and keep up-to-date) the “tpm” (Tmux Plugin Manager) with Chezmoi, which I highly recommend! Typically, you manually install “tpm” by cloning its GitHub repository into the proper directory:

Let’s do that automatically with Chezmoi instead. Chezmoi […]

Disabling tracker-extract in Gnome 47 and 48

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I like the tracker service in Gnome, which indexes files so that you can easily search for them from the Activity view or the file manager. However, I don’t like tracker-extract, which also indexes the file contents: I use Recoll for such a service, and tracker-extract uses too much CPU (it indexes new or modified […]

Automatically regenerating Neovim spell files

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In Neovim, when you add a new word to your spellchecking dictionary with the command “zg”, the word will be added to a “.add” file in your config directory in the subdirectory “spell”. For example, “spell/en.utf-8.add”, depending on your locale. That’s a textual file you might want to share among different machines, e.g., part of […]

Ansible tasks for installing Firefox and Thunderbird as DEB packages in Ubuntu

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Ubuntu has forced the installation of Firefox and Thunderbird as snap packages for some time. I don’t like snap packages since they’re a bit slower to start, take much more space on the disk, and store the profile files into the “.snap” directory folder, while I want them in the standard place in my home […]

Speeding up AUR package installations in Arch Linux

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 […]