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https://github.com/perlun/dotfiles

My .dotfiles
https://github.com/perlun/dotfiles

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My .dotfiles

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README 

        
README

======



This is a collection of my personal dotfiles. Feel free to use them in any way

you like. The `git-prompt.sh` is under the somewhat

[viral](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#.22Viral.22_nature)

GNU GPL license, but the rest of this stuff can be used freely under the terms

of the [MIT license](LICENSE). You are not obliged to contribute your changes

back to me if you don't like, but you are certainly welcome to submit PR:s if

you find things you can improve on here.



These dotfiles have served me well on both macOS and Linux (Debian and Ubuntu).

I also use them on [msys2](https://www.msys2.org/) on Windows.



## How to use



1. `cd ~/git && git clone [email protected]:perlun/dotfiles.git`

1. `./install.sh`

1. Restart your shell. You should now have a colourful prompt, among other

   nice features. If nothing seems to have been loaded, you might have to

   enable "Run command as login shell" (which is [not enabled by default](https://askubuntu.com/a/598072/305208) in e.g. the GNOME Terminal)



## Optional steps



1. **Optional**:  If you use the [`nano`](https://www.nano-editor.org)

   editor, you might find it useful to install my custom `.nanorc` which sets up syntax highlighting for certain file types:



    ```shell

    $ rm -f ~/.nanorc && ln -sf git/dotfiles/nanorc ~/.nanorc

    ```



1. **Optional**: If you have secrets in your profile that you do not wish

   to revision-control (e.g. environment variables with passwords or API

   keys), place them in a separate file named `~/.profile_secrets`. It will

   be automatically picked up and loaded if it exists.



## Recommended tools (GNU/Linux)



- Debian `testing` or `unstable`, to get good, recent versions of the software I

  need for work and play. At the moment, I'm actually using `stable` (`buster`)

  since it was released recently enough.

- [pg_hba.ctl](pg_hba.ctl) settings, to make URLs like

  `postgres://localhost/foo_database` work for any local user. **Caveat**:

  not secure for customer/multi-user environments.

- [quicktile](https://github.com/ssokolow/quicktile) for some incredibly

  nice [Spectacle](http://spectacleapp.com/)-like tiling features for

  X11.

- [CopyQ](https://hluk.github.io/CopyQ/) as clipboard manager. Very useful

  when copying an image and some text at the same time, e.g. when articulating

  a Slack message.

- Cinnamon is the desktop environment I prefer: `sudo apt-get install cinnamon`.

  See my dedicated [cinnamon](cinnamon) page for more details on my setup.

- [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/): Provides a great

  IDE-like experience for C#, JavaScript and other languages. The Ruby

  experience is also decent.

- Firefox: Because Debian only provides an LTS version (which is often quite

  old) and I'm not a big fan of Flatpak/Snap packages, I run this from upstream

  `.tar.bz2` downloaded & installed using [this script](firefox-install.sh).

  This provides some of the benefits of the Snap package (auto-updating) but

  without the potential overhead involved with sandboxing the Firefox processes.



## Recommended tools (macOS)



- [Spectacle](http://spectacleapp.com/): This one is nice since it will

  give you shortcuts for moving a window to use the "left half" or "right

  half" of the screen, and similar. I use this all the time to be able to

  run four programs on two monitors, giving them 50% each. :)

- [Karabiner Elements](https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner//): This is an

  incredibly useful tool if you're coming from a PC background, used to a

  "traditional" PC laptop keyboard. The Apple choices for the key

  placements are simply quite horrible, if you ask me. Not one single

  modifier key (Control, Fn, Option, Cmd etc) is on the same place as on my

  other PC keyboard, so some remapping is simply necessary to retain my

  mental health.

- [Parallels](http://www.parallels.com): A great virtualization app, to be

  able to run Windows 10, Debian, Visual Studio, etc.



## Stuff I don't use any more



- [SourceTree](http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/): Graphical `git` and `hg`

  (Mercurial) client for Windows and macOS. Developed by Atlassian, the

  company who provides the [Bitbucket](http://www.bitbucket.org) hosted

  Mercurial/Git services. I'm using this less and less now, preferring

  command line instead.

- [Sublime Text](http://www.sublimetext.com): Text editor. Use Atom instead

  these days, unless you get fed up with its slowness etc.

- Atom: use VS Code instead. :)

- KDE Plasma. Using Gnome instead nowadays.

- Reconfigure Klipper to sync clipboards (to avoid letting Ctrl-C and

  mouse-selection in Konsole copy to different clipboards, which can be

  annoying if mentally switching between macOS and Debian often, which have

  different semantics in this area.) Klipper is KDE-centric but I might

  end up looking for something similar for GNOME/GTK. "One clipboard to

  rule them all" is much more my melody than the GNOME/X11 default.

- _`sudo apt-get install gnome-tweaks` - this one has nice stuff like "use Caps

  Lock for switching keyboard layouts"._ No longer personally using this, but

  using a similar thing in Cinnamon instead.

- Show date in GNOME panel, next to time: `gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-show-date true`

- _`sudo apt-get install gnome` as the desktop environment of choice. Well

  polished, pretty much on-par in terms of usability with Windows 10 or macOS._

  Because of excessive memory usage (`gnome-shell` was up to 6 GiB at some

  point), I ended up scrapping this and went with `sudo apt-get install

  cinnamon` instead. It seems to use less Javascript for its UI which I consider

  a very good thing... See the references at the end of this README.md for some

  interesting reading about memory leaks that have been present in Gnome

  historically.



### Cinnamon tweaks



- Get rid of pre-defined Ctrl-Alt-Tab keybinding, to use it for "cycle trough windows of the same application". Use [this approach](https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/2539#issuecomment-435401309) to remove the `switch-panels` setting under `org.cinnamon.desktop.keybindings.wm` in `dconf-editor`



### Getting rid of annoying GPG (GnuPG) modal dialog for entering password



```shell

$ sudo update-alternatives --config pinentry

```



Make sure to select `pinentry-curses` when prompted. The `pinentry-gnome3` is

what causes the annoying modal dialog.



### References



- Bug #1672297 “gnome-shell uses lots of memory, and grows over time: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-shell/+bug/1672297

- The Infamous GNOME Shell Memory Leak: https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-memory-leak/