dotfiles

↻ 2025-01-24

• procedure
• notes
  • mail secrets
  • vmware svga emulation
  • windows lock command
  • autolaunch sway
• additional references

I keep updated scripts for this here

There’s a good guide on sway for Debian here, since that’s still a little new for me, coming from dwm and i3. As of Debian 12.9, it is possible to get stuck without a working system if you simply apt-get install sway on Debian, so keep that in mind.

I used to have an OpenBSD guide here, but I got tired of maintaining that, since I’m consistently disappointed with the desktop experience in OpenBSD. I love and support the project, just not its regular use as a workstation OS. This is a guide was last tested on Debian 12.9.

procedure

In VMWare Workstation, remember to set the following:

• enable Virtualize IOMMU to ensure you don’t have horrible keyboard lag
• enable 3D Acceleration and give the guest something like 2GB VRAM allocation
• if it is available, enable Enhanced Keyboard so you don’t have a lockscreen key combination conflict with Windows hosts

If you’re going to fork this and make your own dotfiles, you might want to make a step before the cloning bit where you scp your ssh key to the workstation you’re building so you can read/write the repo, and then push your changes back live. If you’re just getting a system running, though, read alone is enough here.

Run through the standard Debian install. In tasksel or the installer, choose:

• Debian Standard Desktop
• GNOME
• SSH Server
• Standard System Utilities

GNOME/GDM will launch after the install log in as your user, start a terminal, enter root with root’s path

su -

as root, install git

apt update && apt install git

clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/davidemerson/dotfiles.git
cd dotfiles/

execute the provision.sh script

bash provision.sh

reboot

systemctl reboot

notes

mail secrets

You’ll note that my .muttrc and .msmtprc refer to ~/.secrets/mailpass for credentials. This is a one liner file containing my mail app password, keeping it out of this repo, and allowing me to do things like encrypt it on disk. You can substitute any form of password management here, to accommodate your personal preferences.

vmware svga emulation

In VMWare Workstation, I have to launch sway using WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1 sway because the VMWare SVGA II Adapter is meh.

windows lock command

If you’re running on a Windows 10/11 host using some kind of hypervisor, my $mod settings in sway configuration conflict with the Windows lock command (Win+L). You can disable this in the Windows host by setting this registry key to “1”:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\DisableLockWorkstation

autolaunch sway

I do this thing with my .bashrc which launches sway whenever you’re logging in to tty1. Even if this is what you want, keep in mind that I have configured it as though I’m on a VM (janky graphics, WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1), since that’s where I am most of the time. Either delete the whole .bashrc or modify this line as appropriate for your situation:

if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then
  WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1 sway
fi

If you like this behavior, it’s likely, on hardware which is compatible, that you just want it to read:

if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then
  exec sway
fi

additional references

Check out how others have done this kind of thing, for inspiration and documentation:

• agung-satria, who helped a lot with my sway config here.
• sohcahtoa, who has some excellent OpenBSD inspo.
• jcs, who has some excellent OpenBSD inspo.
• daulton, who has some excellent OpenBSD inspo.
• eradman, who has some excellent OpenBSD inspo.

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