How to Setup My Dotfiles

axewbotx/dotfiles

WSL(System Drive)

Open Turn Windows Features on or off
A dialog box will open, turn on Virtual Machine Platform and Windows Subsystem For Linux and click Ok.
Restart your computer.
Install wsl2kernel
Restart your computer.

WSL(Other Drive)

Make a folder called WSL in whichever directory you want.
Make a another folder and name it to the name of distro that you want to install.
Go to this page and download whichever distro you want. You can also download any other WSL compatible distro than mentioned in this list if you want, all you need is the .tar.gz file to install a distro.
Exract the contents of the downloaded file untill you see the .tar.gz
Move that .tar.gz file into the base of the distro folder that you created in the WSL directory.

Run the Following command to install WSL on that drive.

wsl --import Name_For_Distro "/location/where/you/want/to/install/it" "path/to/.tar.gz/file"

Run wsl -d Name_For_Distro to start your WSL distro.

Arch WSL

If you are installing Arch linux on WSL then you need to do some additional setup before using it. You can follow the following steps.

Now we need to setup a main user for the WSL distro. Run the following command.
```
EDITOR=vim visudo
```
Now uncomment the line %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
Now run following command to add the user to wheel group that we just configured.
```
useradd -m -G wheel {user}
```
Now exit Arch from WSL using exit command and enter again via the following command to start WSL with specific user.
```
wsl -u {user} -d Name_For_Distro
```
Now lets setup keyring for Arch linux. Run sudo pacman-key --init to initialise the keyring.
Run sudo pacman-key --populate to append all the necesaary keys to the keyring and after that run sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring to finsih the setup. It can take some while to install the keyring.
Now make sure to run sudo pacman -Syyu to upgrade the whole system.
Now you can use Arch linux on WSL as you please.

Linux Shell

Before we do anything, we need to setup our shell.

Make sure you have git installed on your system.

You can install zsh by running following command

When you are asked for the shell, just enter /bin/zsh
```
sudo pacman -S zsh && \
chsh
```
Make sure to delete any previous ~/.zshrc files from your home directory.

You can install the needed packages by running the following commands

sudo pacman -S exa fd fzf stow starship curl unzip ripgrep python-virtualenv

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

Now you need to clone my dotfiles repo into the home(~) directory of your linux system, cd into that directory and run the following command.
```
stow .
```
Now just run the following command to source everything that we just installed.
```
source ~/.zshrc
```

Yay

yay is an AUR helper for arch linux. It is pretty awesome and has the 2nd largest storage of latest packages after Nix.
To install it just the following command

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay-bin && \
cd yay-bin && \
makepkg -si

Get the best Arch Linux mirrors

Make sure you have yay installed on your system
Following command installs the rate-mirrors package
```
yay -S rate-mirrors-bin
```
Following command fetches the best servers according to your location and then writes them to /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
```
rate-mirrors arch | sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
```

Font

It’s always good to have a nice nerd font installed on your system. I use Jet Brains Mono Nerd Font custom patched by nerd font patcher.

Install fontforge by using the following command
```
yay -S fontforge
```
Create a folder name FontPatcher anywhere you like

Go into that folder and run the following command

curl -LO https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases/latest/download/FontPatcher.zip && \
curl -LO https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases/download/v3.2.1/JetBrainsMono.zip

Now run the following the following command to extract these

mkdir -p JetBrains && \
unzip FontPatcher.zip && \
unzip -q JetBrainsMono.zip -d JetBrains

Now that we have all the files we need, just run the following command to patch the font

For the name of the font, I personally like to use JetBrainsMonoNLNerdFontComplete
```
fontforge -script font-patcher -c --name [name-that-you-want-for-font] ./JetBrains/JetBrainsMonoNLNerdFont-Regular.ttf
```

Now that we have the font ready, you can just run the following command to add it to your system’s fonts

sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/fonts && \
sudo mv [name-that-you-want-for-font] /usr/loacl/share/fonts

Window Manager Setup

You can follow this step according to the window manager that you have. My dotfiles are configured for Hyprland and i3WM

Hyprland

Make sure you have a minimal installation of Arch linux with no other window manager installed

Install the dependencies

yay -S base-devel cmake ninja meson wayland wayland-protocols libx11 libxkbcommon libinput pixman vulkan-icd-loader

Now according to your environment install and setup the needed drivers

Intel

yay -S mesa intel-ucode vulkan-intel libva-intel-driver

Virtual Box

yay -S open-vm-tools xf86-video-vmware mesa virtualbox-guest-utils

sudo systemctl enable vmtoolsd.service && \
sudo systemctl start vmtoolsd.service && \
sudo systemctl enable vmware-vmblock-fuse.service && \
sudo systemctl start vmware-vmblock-fuse.service && \
sudo systemctl enable vboxservice.service && \
sudo systemctl start vboxservice.service

Nvidia

You are on your own.

Install the audio drivers

yay -S pipewire pipewire-pulse pipewire-alsa wireplumber

Install the required tools for a functional hyprland environment

yay -S wayland-utils xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland dunst polkit-gnome wl-clipboard wlroots xorg-xwayland hyprcursor hyprutils

Now we are going to install Hyprland itself

wlroots to aquamarine recently but for me, aquamarine is not working properly and the hyprland version 0.41.2 is the latest release that uses wlroots instead of aquamarine

Hyprland moved from
- If you are running a newer device
  
  make lagacyrenderer just run make all
  
  If aquamarine is not working for you, then you can follow the next old-device guide and while building hyprland, instead of running
```
yay -S hyprland-git
```
- If you are running an old device then you need to build the hyprland from source using legacryrenderer build flag
```
CURL -LO https://github.com/hyprwm/Hyprland/releases/download/v0.41.2/source-v0.41.2.tar.gz
```
```
tar -xvzf source-v0.41.2.tar.gz
```
```
cd hyprland-source && \
make legacyrenderer && \
sudo cp ./build/Hyprland ./build/hyprctl/hyprctl /usr/bin && \
sudo cp ./example/hyprland.desktop /usr/share/wayland-sessions
```

Now just run the following command to install my dotfiles related packages and applications

yay -S waybar rofi-wayland alacritty wlsunset hyprpaper inotify-tools fastfetch cmatrix nyancat

You are all set, now you can just run the Hyprland command to start your Hyprland session and use the Alt+m keybind to exit that session whenever you want.

i3WM

While installing Arch linux make sure to install i3WM window manager along with it.

Just run the following command to install my dotfiles related packages and applications

yay -S rofi i3-gaps feh picom fastfetch cmatrix polybar alacritty redshift nyancat

Powershell And Oh-My-Posh

After installing powershell from Microsoft Store, open its config by using following command.

notepad $PROFILE.CurrentUserCurrentHost

Now inside that file add the following code from Microsoft.Powershell_Profile.ps1 to change the location of powershell config.

. $env:USERPROFILE\.config\powershell\user_profile.ps1

Make sure that the current font in Windows Terminal is set to a Nerd Font in order to load all the icons and stuff. Now you can install the oh-my-posh using the following command.

winget install JanDeDobbeleer.OhMyPosh -s winget

Now you can refresh the Windows terminal config by either restarting it or running .$PROFILE command.

Homebrew

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

C++ Full Package

yay -S gcc clang gdb cmake

Mise version manager

mise is an amazing way to both install and manage various version of various dev package.

You should refer to mise documentation to properly understand how to use it

You can install mise using the following command

curl https://mise.run | sh && \

source ~/.zshrc

Now just run the following command to install all the development tools with their specific versions as defined in my dotfiles

mise install

Now run the following commadn to install yarn and live-server

npm install -g yarn live-server tree-sitter-cli

Tmux

You can install tmux via the command below

yay -S tmux

Then you need the tmux plugin manager. You can install it using hte following command

git clone https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm ~/.tmux/plugins/tpm

Now just go run tmux and press CTRl-s followed by SHIFT-i to install the needed tmux packages.

Rust

You can install rust using the following command

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Run the below command to install various important cargo packages that come in handy.

cargo install sccache bacon cargo-info cargo-update

Neovim

Neovim is an amazing code editor. You can install it using the following command:-

You also need to install lazygit for lazygit.nvim plugin to work

yay -S neovim lazygit python-pylatexenc

Now you just need to run neovim and it will install everything automatically.

NOTE: It may take some time for it to install things so have some patience.

bookshelf

Explorer

how-to-setup-my-dotfiles_22-03-2025