zeionara / gen2

Installation notes concerning gentoo linux

gen2

Dear diary, it is the second day of gentoo installation. I am writing this text while gentoo is still compiling GNOME...

This repo contains some gentoo installation notes, which contradict something said in the official guide, or add more information for certain steps concerning particular configurations or issues. In general, the official guide is complete enough to follow it without major changes.

Software

The following packages should be installed right after the base installation has completed:

sudo emerge --ask gnome neovim gnome-extra/gnome-tweaks neofetch htop sys-apps/pciutils alacritty tmux zsh dev-python/pip dev-vcs/git-lfs media-video/vlc net-p2p/transmission mlocate sys-power/suspend media-fonts/noto-emoji net-im/telegram-desktop media-video/obs-studio app-editors/sublime-text net-vpn/openvpn app-portage/gentoolkit

Wireless network

With wired network the connection should be established out-of-the-box, but wireless network configuration is more intricate, especially if you have an ssid with special characters like emojis which are quite challenging to type from keyboard.

0. Make sure that the target interface is up:

sudo ip link set wlp2s0 up

To persist the changes (for starting the interface on boot automatically) make sure that appropriate link exists:

cd /etc/init.d

sudo ln -s net.lo net.wlp2s0
sudo rc-update add net-wlp2s0 default

1. Seemingly the following packages are enough to support wireless network connectivity:

sudo emerge --ask net-misc/dhcpcd net-misc/netifrc net-wireless/iw net-wireless/wpa_supplicant

2. After that you will need to create /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf manually with the following content:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
update_config=1
network={
  ssid="🤍💙🤍"
  psk="password"
}

3. Then you can start the wpa_supplicant service:

sudo rc-service wpa_supplicant start

Which should say that the service started successfully. After any change in the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf the service must be restarted:

sudo rc-service wpa_supplicant restart

4. If your ssid contains non-printable characters (emojis, etc), the following strategy is advised:

4.1 List available networks and save them to a local file:

sudo iw wlp2s0 scan > nets.txt

4.2 Open the file nets.txt and find the ssid which is most likely yours. For example, mine looks like \xf0\x9f\xa4\x8d\xf0\x9f\x92\x99\xf0\x9f\xa4\x8d.

4.3 Copy this ssid somewhere where it can be viewed more easily. Your task now is to somehow echo this string with -e flag:

echo -e '\xf0\x9f\xa4\x8d\xf0\x9f\x92\x99\xf0\x9f\xa4\x8d' > ssid.txt

4.4 Open /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and copy ssid from file ssid.txt, then restart wpa_supplicant using the command above

4.5 Check the connection status:

iw wlp2s0 link

If everything went fine, the command aove displays the information about the wireless network you've just connect to

Packages

There are some notes about package installation

Desktop environment

Choose desktop profile as early as possible if you are planning to install a desktop manager. It will save time later on building and installing dependencies. Start installing GNOME only in the evening, since it will be running for the whole night and beyond.

Text editor

After booting install nvim text editor as early as possible, since by default only nano editor is available which is not quite convenient to use.

Fstab

Despite the official guide it is laborious to creage fstab manually. Instead genfstab can be used if you are installing from archiso:

genfstab /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Check installation status

The following command can be used to get information about currently installing packages:

sudo tail -f /var/log/emerge.log

Or use the following command to display timestamps in a human-readable format:

sudo tail -f /var/log/emerge.log | awk -F ':  ' '{ printf "%s:  %s\n", strftime("%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S", $1), $2 }'

Compare the following two code fragments, the first of which is printed as-is, without timestamp formatting:

1698519259:  === (1 of 56) Cleaning (acct-group/colord-0-r1::/var/db/repos/gentoo/acct-group/colord/colord-0-r1.ebuild)
1698519260:  === (1 of 56) Compiling/Merging (acct-group/colord-0-r1::/var/db/repos/gentoo/acct-group/colord/colord-0-r1.ebuild)
1698519276:  === (1 of 56) Merging (acct-group/colord-0-r1::/var/db/repos/gentoo/acct-group/colord/colord-0-r1.ebuild)

and the second one is displayed using formatted timestamps:

28-10-2023 21:54:19:  === (1 of 56) Cleaning (acct-group/colord-0-r1::/var/db/repos/gentoo/acct-group/colord/colord-0-r1.ebuild)
28-10-2023 21:54:20:  === (1 of 56) Compiling/Merging (acct-group/colord-0-r1::/var/db/repos/gentoo/acct-group/colord/colord-0-r1.ebuild)
28-10-2023 21:54:36:  === (1 of 56) Merging (acct-group/colord-0-r1::/var/db/repos/gentoo/acct-group/colord/colord-0-r1.ebuild)

GNOME Extensions

To install gnome tweaks:

sudo emerge --ask gnome-extra/gnome-tweaks

To install chrome extensions follow this tutorial.

Basically there are 4 steps in manual extension installation:

1. Download extension zip from the website: [e-mail] [e-mail]
2. Unzip the downloaded archive:

cd ~/Downloads
mkdir hide-top-bar
unzip hidetopbarmathieu.bidon.ca.v114.shell-extension.zip -d hide-top-bar

3. Check the extension uuid and rename the folder accordingly:

cat hide-top-bar/metadata.json
mv hide-top-bar [e-mail]

4. Move the extension folder to the system directory with other gnome extensions:

mkdir ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions
mv [e-mail] ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions

Overamplification

To enable overamplification run the following command:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.sound allow-volume-above-100-percent 'true'

Suspend

1. There is a problem with suspending a device, which can be avoided using the following algorithm:

# Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 - the desktop manager will become broken, but you will switch to the linux ternimal>
sudo loginctl suspend
# The laptop will suspend. Press any key to awake the laptop
# Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 - you will switch back to the 'first' linux terminal
sudo rc-service display-manager restart

2. It is better to use s2ram which works well, just install it via sudo emerge --ask sys-power/suspend and assign a keybinging Ctrl+Alt+Delete to run command sudo s2ram, and that's it!

Themes

Theme files should be copied to /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme.

Firefox

To customize firefox appearance:

1. Set layout.css.devPixelsPerPx in about:config to required value (0.9 for example);
2. Set browser.compactmode.show in about:config to true for enabling compact toolbar layout;
3. Set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets option in about:config to true for enabling toolbar customizations through css;
4. Create userChrome.css file at /home/$USER/.mozilla/firefox/tztkxjzk.default-esr/chrome/userChrome.css with the following content to paint tab titles with gorgeous gradients:

.tab-text {
  font-weight: bold;
  background: -webkit-linear-gradient(left, #ffed00, #08e8de);
  -webkit-background-clip: text;
  -webkit-text-fill-color: transparent;
}

Wayland @ Nvidia GPU

To enable wayland on nvidia gpu refer to this guide. What works for me:

1. Setting kernel parameter nvidia_drm.modeset=1;
2. Creating link to the 61-gdm.rules:

sudo ln -s /dev/null /etc/udev/rules.d/61-gdm.rules

Github cli

To install github cli perform the following steps:

1. Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/cli/cli.git $HOME/gh-cli

2. Install the toolkit:

cd $HOME/gh-cli
sudo make install

3. Set pager:

gh config set pager "less -F -X"

4. Authenticate with getting access to codespace management:

gh auth refresh -h github.com -s codespace

Download bubble in chrome

To disable download bubble feature in chrome:

1. Open the google-chrome desktop configuration for modification:

sudo nvim /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop

2. Change the following lines:

From:

Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --incognito

To:

Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U --disable-features=DownloadBubble
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --incognito --disable-features=DownloadBubble

Gpg passphrase

To ask gpg2 to accept the passphrase in terminal add the following line to file ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf:

pinentry-program /usr/bin/pinentry-tty

Then restart the gpg-agent:

echo RELOADAGENT | gpg-connect-agent

Bluetooth

To enable bluetooth, first start the bluetooth daemon (more details here):

sudo rc-service bluetooth start

To start the service automatically on boot run the following command:

rc-update add bluetooth default

Then ublock wireless devices (more details here):

rfkill unblock all

Then run bluetoothctl and perform commands for pairing and connecting to a desired device:

bluetoothctl
> scan on
> pair [device address]
> connect [device address]

To disconnect a device:

bluetoothctl
> disconnect [device address]