🥮 dotfiles

Personal dotfiles and system configurations, just the way I like it.

These dotfiles are heavily based on CachyOS (not just Arch), specifically the various packages that Cachy ships with it's own base installation (fish, sddm, various KDE bloat etc.).

Ideally you should have installed CachyOS selecting for hyprland during the Calamares installation, or without any DE (in such case 🥮 will install Hyprland automatically).

Managed using chezmoi.

🧁 Installation

Warning

This is NOT a run-and-forget installation. The install script will prompt you at several points. Keep an eye on the terminal throughout the entire process.

1. Tweak CachyOS via the CachyOS Hello app and apply your preferred baseline system tweaks, remember to enable cachy-update;
2. Prepare your ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml configuration file with your specific variables

[data]
  name = "nMaax"
  email = "you@example.com"
  tailscale_authkey = "tskey-auth-XXXXXXXXXXXXX" # Leave "" if you want to skip tailscale
  nordvpn_token = "nvpnkey-auth-XXXXXXXXXXXXX" # Leave "" if you want to skip nordvpn
  gaming = true

3. Install chezmoi and apply the dotfiles

pacman -S chezmoi
chezmoi init --apply nMaax

Warning

ddcutil will been installed, which may cause instability with certain monitors. You can remove it via sudo pacman -Rns ddcutil if you encounter any issue.

Warning

🥮 will default on a custom sddm them which should work out of the box, if you ever modify it remind to first run ./test.sh in /usr/share/sddm/themes/silent/ to ensure SDDM works before rebooting, and avoiding being locked out at login!

Note

During log-in in SDDM choose systemd-owned Hyprland instead of the plain one, to ensure autostart scripts function correctly (e.g. cachy-update tray icon).

Handling missing polkit agent password prompt in CachyOS Hello

If CachyHello won't accept your password on a Hyprland-only installation (i.e., no Plasma), the polkit-kde-agent is likely missing from your background processes. You must ensure this agent is running so CachyHello can trigger the authentication pop-up required to apply your changes.

To fix do the following:

1. Open your hyprland.conf: vim ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf.
2. Add this line to your "exec-once" section (or anywhere at the bottom):

exec-once = /usr/lib/polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1

3. Save and restart Hyprland (Super + M or just log out).
4. Now you should be able to tweak cachy as you like, then proceed with the installation as above.

Note

If you aren't using KDE, the path might be /usr/lib/lxpolkit or similar. Cachy usually defaults to the KDE agent even on Hyprland anyway, so this should be quite rare.

🥞 Post-Installation Notes

☁️ MEGA & KeePassXC

Both megacmd-bin and keepassxc are installed by the script as regular packages.

Set them up manually after installation:

1. Log into MEGA and configure your sync:

   mega-login
   mkdir -p ~/MEGA
   mega-sync ~/MEGA/ /

2. Open KeePassXC and point it at your database once the MEGA sync completes. Remember to place the key-file as well!

🔑 Keyring, SDDM, and stability

KWallet presents some issues in non-Plasma environments, the install scripts tried to cleanly patch these issues out of the box, however some may still be present, especially with Electron apps that rely on safe-storage.

When you are prompted to create a wallet (i.e. the first time an application requests one), use exactly these settings:

• Name: kdewallet (the default; any other name will not be unlocked automatically by PAM)
• Encryption: Blowfish (required for kwallet-pam auto-unlock; GnuPG encryption is incompatible)
• Password: your current user login password (PAM unlocks the wallet by matching it against the login password)

Further information can be found at Arch Wiki: KDE Wallet and Electron Safe Storage Info.

🔐 SSH

The install script enables and starts both sshd and the user-level ssh-agent automatically. But you still need to create a key pair and distribute your public key wherever you want to authenticate. Here are some common procedures you may want to do:

Generating a key

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "axew"

Accept the default path (~/.ssh/id_ed25519) and choose a strong passphrase. The new key is picked up automatically by the running ssh-agent.

Connecting to GitHub

1. Copy your public key to the clipboard:

   cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub | wl-copy

2. Go to GitHub → Settings → SSH and GPG keys → New SSH key, paste it and save.

3. Test the connection:

   ssh -T git@github.com

   You should see: Hi <username>! You've successfully authenticated…

Note

You could be prompted to either create a new wallet, or to unlock the current one, refer to the Keyring section for details.

1. Tell Git to use SSH for GitHub remotes (optional, but recommended):

   git config --global url."git@github.com:".insteadOf "https://github.com/"

Connecting to another machine

Copy your public key to the remote host (replace user@host with your target):

ssh-copy-id user@host

Or manually append ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote.

Optionally, create or edit ~/.ssh/config to define shortcuts:

Host myserver
    HostName 192.168.1.10
    User myuser
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

Then connect simply with ssh myserver.

🎨 Theming

Noctalia presents a standard approach to sync apps colorschemes with its own theme, each app requires its own procedure, part of it can be automated via code, and some other not. Further information at docs.noctalia.dev/theming.

You can retrieve the list of apps on which automatic theming is set on the Noctalia settings themselves. Note however that part of those may still require some in-app manual intervention, here below are some steps you shall take to complete the theming:

GTK and Qt

• qt5ct (qt5ct command): Set Color scriptheme to noctalia, General font to SF Pro, Fixed-width font to CaskaydiaCove Nerd Font Mono
• qt6ct (qt6ct command): Same as above.
  • Qt theming via qt6ct with QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME has been already set in Hyprland config files for environment variables (env.conf).
• GTK (nwg-look): Set general font to SF Pro Regular, then ensure Preferences > .config/gtk-4.0 is disabled, eventually clear if you found it enabled.
  • adw-gtk3 + prefer-dark was already applied via gsettings during the install script.
• GTK apps will automatically fetch the color scheme from the above, while Qt apps must be configured separately going inside app-settings and finding the colorscheme item.

Specific apps

• Zen Browser: Open about:config → set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true; then open Settings → General → set Website Appearance to Auto; finally Restart Zen Browser.
• Discord: Open Equibop → Settings → Themes → enable one of the two Noctalia themes.
• VSCode: Install the NoctaliaTheme extension from the marketplace, then select it via Ctrl+Shift+P → Preferences: Color Theme.
• Telegram: Open Settings → Chat Settings → scroll to the bottom and enable the custom color theme.
• Steam: Install Material-Theme and add it in Millenium Settings > Theme, then click the three dots > configure > style > colors > select Matugen in the theme color dropdown.
• All others apps should not require any intervention (e.g. neovim, btop etc.), hopefully.

Note

If some apps do not properly fetch the color scheme even after having followed the noctalia guidelines, try to disable and re-enable them, as well as changing color-scheme as a whole.\

Furthermore, you can install other themes for apps yourself, have a look at:

• ZenZero
• BetterDiscord
• Millenium for Steam

🌐 Browser(s) setup

The stuff that I usually use during my browsing experience, these are completely optional and at your preference, do what you want with them:

• Extensions:
  • uBlock Origin – content & ad blocker
  • ClearURLs – strips tracking parameters from URLs
  • Tridactyl – Vim-style keyboard navigation (Firefox/Zen)
  • MarkDownload – download pages as Markdown
  • DarkReader - automatic dark theming
• Zen Mods:
  • Transparent Zen – make zen look transparent, needed for ZenZero

Eventually consider also Volume Control, Web Archives, YouTube Improved, etc.

Furthermore, here is a list of some good misc websites for assets:

• Pinterest: for propics
• Wallhaven: for static backgrounds
• MotionBGs: for animated wallpapers
• Guide on how to convert WallpaperEngine backgrounds into video files: from WallapaperEngine itself, from Steam community

🔥 Spicetify Extension

Other stuff I use on Spicetify, my advice is to use the marketplace as much as possible

• Spicy Lyrics (instead of Beautiful Lyrics, which seem to be deprecated!)
• Global Stats for songs, to fetch info on different songs.
• Lucid Theme (instead of the Confy default one, tho this one looks quite heavy, bloated and dirty, ngl.)

Warning

Disable Comfy theme via spicetify cli if you want to install a different one! Run the following:

spicetify config current_theme " "
spicetify apply

🎮 Gaming

Of course 🥮 is designed with gaming in mind too, 🥮 will apply some common installations and tweaks if cachyos gaming packages are detected. For more details, visit the CachyOS Gaming Wiki. Here are some handy notes at your disposal to complete your gaming experience:

🚀 Steam Launch Options

• NVIDIA: PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 PROTON_DLSS_UPGRADE=1 PROTON_NVIDIA_LIBS_NO_32BIT=1 PROTON_USE_NTSYNC=1 PROTON_ENABLE_HDR=1 ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 game-performance %command%
• AMD: PROTON_USE_NTSYNC=1 ENABLE_LAYER_MESA_ANTI_LAG=1 PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE=1 game-performance %command%

⚙️ Steam/Proton Settings

• Compatibility: Set proton-cachyos (slr) as your default Proton layer.
• Pre-caching: If using Proton-CachyOS, navigate to Steam -> Settings -> Downloads and UNCHECK:
  • "Enable Shader Pre-caching"
  • "Allow background processing of Vulkan shaders"

🍷 Lutris, Heroic and other Launchers Settings

• System Options: Enable "Disable Lutris Runtime" and "Prefer system libraries".
• Compatibility: Ensure the layer is set to proton-cachyos (slr). Just as in Steam.
• Launch Options: Mirror the launch options used in Steam, each launcher has its own way to do that, which usually do not differ much from Steam anyway, refer to documentation. (e.g. Heroic will provide some form entries for variables and values)

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📝 TODOs

• Once everything is finished, add screenshots and videos in this README

For the future

• Enhance assets by introducing a github CI action that autogenerates README with gallery, like dharmx
• Prepare WALLHACK Wallpapers -> Make a release for dotfiles-assets if files are too large
• Try out noctalia Polkit Agent (you must uninstall kde polking agent, maybe this is not the right choice in cachy)
• Move to fish install script (tho it would be non-POSIX!)
• Buy Wallpaper enginge and try out linux-wallpaperengine, there is also a noctalia plugin for it
• Generalize for pure arch: track what Cachy installs, including fundamentals like bluetooth, networkmanager, fish, cachyos fish setup, gpu drivers etc.
• Fix ksshaskpass Qt::font empty error
• Fix OBS Browser install to automate substitution that requires the vlc plugin variant from lua to be changed in luajit