dotfiles

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What are dotfiles?

In the Unix world programs are configured either via shell arguments or plain-text files known as "dotfiles". They are called "dotfiles" because the file name begings with a dot . and are therefore hidden. You might find that many of the dotfiles contain an rc such as .bashrc or .zshrc, those are runcom files that contain an application's startup instructions.

The goal of this setup is to create a minimal distraction free work environment using the least amount of hardware ressources (350 Mb memory usage at idle proves it well). Ricing and visual improvements are a secondary goal.

Preview

Nord Wallpapers

The wallpaper shown in preview images: here
The following repositories contains a multitude of Nord-themed wallpapers: [1, 2]

Dependencies

Operating System

This setup could be reproduced on any GNU/Linux distribution using Systemd. It could however not be could not be fully reproduced on macOs or Bsd systems.

An initial minimal installation of the operating system is recommended. This means an installation without a desktop environment (such as Xfce, Gnome or Kde) as the window manager and the hotkey deamon might interfere with the desktop environment (another reason why ricers use Arch BTW).

Programs

Fonts

Some fonts will need to be installed to achieve the same results as in the screenshots.
Free Sans Regular
ttf-nerd-fonts-symbols
FiraCode Nerd Font
ttf-font-awesome

• The default font used globally in GTK and qt5 applications as well as in the polybar bar is the Free Sans Regular font. This font could be found in the gnu-free-fonts package available in most distribution official repositories.

• The terminal emulator (kitty) and Vim use the following fonts for text, symbols, icons and powerline glyphs: ttf-nerd-fonts-symbolsand FiraCode Nerd Font.

• Polybar requires ttf-font-awesometo display bar glyphs.

Icons

The papirus icon theme is used in the screenshots. The color of "places" and folders have been changed using the papirus folders script.

Sxhkd key bindings

Managing dotfiles

There are many way people manage their dotfiles. A naive approach would be to create a git repository in the $HOME directory. This is obviously a bad idea because you could no longer have nested git repositories in your home directory. A second still naive approach would be to create a git repository in a directory and copy all dotfiles from the $HOME directory to it. This is again not a good idea as you will have to remember to copy all files to the created git directory at every change. After using the second approach, you might stumble upon an article about symbolic links (symlinks) and think that symlinking the files into your initialized git repositry is a good idea. This third method is a huge improvement compared to the first method but symlinks can get out of hand after a while. Soon you will realize that you are not SystemD and you don't want to bother with symlinking.

So here's what I now do to manage my dotfiles after going through all those steps:

1. create a bare git repository. Git bare repositories, contain no working or checked out copy of your source files and the revision history of your repo in the root folder of your repository instead of in a .git subfolder.

git init --bare $HOME/dotfiles

2. Set an alias for managing the bare repository we just created. You can name your alias dot or config. Let's call it dot. (change .bashrc to .zshrc if you use zsh.

echo "alias dot='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'" >> $HOME/.bashrc

3. There will be a lot of files in our $HOME directory that won't be dotfiles. So let's also ignore all those untracked files.

dot config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

Here you have it! You can now use the new git dotfiles repo like any other git repo.

dot add /path/to/file
dot commit -m "A short message"
dot push

Note: Many people use GNU Stow which is also a good option.

Installation

The best way of installing dotfiles is to copy files or part of the files that you like into their respective directories.
But if you want to install them all of once, first make sure you have all the dependencies listed above. Then:

mv ~/.config ~/.config-bak
mv ~/.bash_profile ~/.bash_profile-bak
mkdir -p ~/.config/ ~/.dotfiles/ 
echo 'alias dot="/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME"' >> $HOME/.bashrc 
source ~/.bashrc && mv ~/.bashrc ~/.bashrc-bak
echo ".dotfiles/dotfiles" >> .gitignore
git clone --bare https://github.com/yazdanz/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles/dotfiles
dot checkout
dot config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

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