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Although I am using Void Linux, this guide should also help (as is, or, in a minimum-modified form) other Linux-based OS users to understand or perform common tweaks/tasks.

The default mirror is too slow for me, so I used the "New York" Tier 1 mirror listed in their official documentation.

Verified the iso (steps mentioned in their docs).

dd command (example explained in their docs) is good to creating the live-usb, don't forget to sync.

Deleted the linux (ubuntu) partition using diskmgmt.msc (Ctrl-R, Run). Left the deleted partition as free-space, not created a new simple volume.

Restored windows boot mgr (and removed grub) using the method demonstrated in this video.

F9 is the key on HP (Pavilion) to select boot device.

Void Linux presents itself with a TUI to aid in the installation process which is pretty simple and straight-forward and is explained well in their docs. (RTFM)

The only thing to keep in check is that, since I am already dual-booting with Windows, so there already is a partition of type EFI System (about 200MB-1GB).

Void provides cfdisk to create and modify partitions. Write the changes before exiting.

I created a main partition (type linux filesystem) - 200G and swap partition (type linux swap) - 16G (for my 8GB RAM).

The next step is to modify the filesystem-type of the created partition. I just modified them appropriately (using type as ext4 and linux-swap respectively) for the two that I created - 200G and 16G. It also asks the mount point for the 200G, since it is my primary partition so I mounted it at /. Also, tell the mount point for the EFI System-type partition (206M, in my case) to be /boot/efi.

It will ask whether to create a new filesystem for

a) 200G (ext4, primary partition, linux filesystem mounted at /) - say yes.

b) 16G (swap, linux swap) - say yes.

c) 206M (EFI System type, mounted at /boot/efi) - say NO.

It separates root account (asking for a root password) and a first user account (which is already added to the wheel group for sudo powers) (asks a password).

The grub, on first start of the system, didn't show an entry for Windows, however, on next system reboot, it did show (or maybe because the system was updated and so the grub entry modification was triggered by some package that got installed?) Anyways, it shows up now.

The tty fonts are too small to be legible (HiDPI screen problems), which can be changed in /etc/rc.conf, though I have to still do that.

Updated the system.

Changed the mirror to the one from which the iso was downloaded (since it is fast for me). The process is explained in their docs.

Installed alacritty, bspwm, sxhkd, xorg, vim, firefox, and other necessary packages (from their repos, using xbps). - Pretty good and no hassle.

Created files - ~/.xinitrc, .Xresources, ~/.config/bspwm/bspwmrc, ~/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc and copied their default configs. Remember to check if these files have the proper permissions or not, and the ones which should be executable are executable or not. Also, set the terminal emulator in sxhkdrc to alacriity (default config has urxvt).

Add exec /usr/bin/bspwm to the end of ~/.xinitrc and comment out the x-programs (like xclock, twm, etc, etc) which is not needed.

startx from tty (This starts the X server and the client programs). Use bspc quit to return to this tty closing the X server and the client programs. Read more about it in the arch wiki.

Follow the steps explained here.

Installed chrony (mentioned as an alternative to ntp in their docs), and enabled the service (explained in the docs). The time is set correctly (as if by magic, since I had to issue no other command).

Do I need to disable the already installed ntp service (I don't see it listed in the running services)? Should I remove ntp package?

chrony had the following messages during installation -

chrony-4.0_2: unpacking ...
chrony-4.0_2: registered 'ntpd' alternatives group
Creating 'ntpd' alternatives group symlink: ntpd -> /usr/bin/chronyd
Creating 'ntpd' alternatives group symlink: ntpd.8 -> /usr/share/man/man8/chronyd.8
Creating 'ntpd' alternatives group symlink: ntpd -> /etc/sv/chronyd

Note: I also made Windows to use the UTC time (instead of localtime) (as linux uses UTC as default) by following the arch wiki for hardware clock.

tar will exit on a child process like xz since it is not already installed. Installed that and also unzip.

I have had no experience with dhcpcd which is the default for networking in void, so I installed NetworkManager.

For this, I read about enabling/disabling services with runit from their docs. (RTFM).

Then followed the instructions given in their docs for installing NetworkManager, disabling dhcpcd, enabling dbus, enabling NetworkManager service, and adding user to network group.

Logout and login for reflecting changes (using groups command) of being added to the network group.

Use nmtui or nmcli as usual to connect wirelessly, or via eth or usb.

I had used brightnessctl in previous Linux (ubuntu) and it worked well enough (xbacklight didn't work in ubuntu), so I installed it.

brightnessctl already packages a udev rule and installs it by default (in /lib/udev/rules.d), so the below steps are not required -

And followed the instruction in arch wiki to create a udev rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/backlight.rules (I had to create rules.d dir there, I checked the man page of udev in void linux too, it said that it looks for a rule there, so it was safe to create a dir. Also the udevd service was running as found out by sudo sv status /var/service/*, so udev was already installed.)

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="backlight", KERNEL=="intel_backlight", GROUP="video", MODE="0664"

Note that I (user devpogi) am already a part of the video group ( I configured it to be so during the install of void itself).

Installed alsa-utils package as instructed in the void docs.

cat /proc/asound/modules

This gives me -

 0 snd_hda_intel
 1 snd_hda_intel

I have checked that multiple applications can output the sound simultaneously, so I don't have to do any dmix thing.

Also, I didn't set up any configuration. The sound was ready to output as soon as the package was installed. The only thing to do was to unmute Master channel by alsamixer (which can be also done using cli-only command amixer, see arch wiki for details).

Then I set up keybindings for controlling (increasing, decreasing and un/mute) volume using amixer. arch wiki and stackexchange can help.

To get the volume, (to use in notification scripts, etc.), use this command, shamelessly stolen from stackoverflow

awk -F"[][]" '/dB/ { print $2 }' <(amixer sget Master)

Most of the websites use Helvetica as default font (still, apparently from MacOs). Something like helvR12.pcf.gz (or helv*.pcf.gz) turns up on command fc-match 'Helvetica'. I think it is installed by default in void, however, it is not that great font. So, we can set up a rule in ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf to replace this font with another font like -

<match target="pattern">
	 <test qual="any" name="family"><string>Helvetica</string></test>
	 <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="same"><string>Roboto</string></edit>
</match>

If there are other such rules then enclose the entire <match> block under a <fontconfig> block (xml).

To test if that got changed or not run fc-match 'Helvetica' or fc-match -a 'Helvetica'.

We can also set default fonts to use for serif, sans-serif, monospace by adding a rule in ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf -

<alias>
	<family>monospace</family>
	<prefer>
		<family>Hack Nerd Font</family>
		<family>FiraCode Nerd Font</family>
	</prefer>
 </alias>

To test, run fc-match -a monospace | less or fc-match -a serif | less

To see which all configs are being used run fc-conflist. You should see an entry like + ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf among others.

It appears that Roboto doesn't have CJK support. However, Hack Nerd Font and FiraCode Nerd Font have CJK and other unicode support but they are monospace fonts. So I needed to download a sans-serif font for unicode and CJK support.

After installing Noto fonts from void repos, check if it displays it correctly with fc-match 'Noto Sans'. fc-match 'Noto Serif.

These are the fonts that I have additionally installed (these don't include any fonts that might have been downloaded as a dependency for another application) -

• Monospace: Hack Nerd Font and FiraCode Nerd Font from nerdfonts.com/ and placed under ~/.local/share/fonts
• Sans-serif: Roboto and Serif: Merriweather from google fonts and placed under ~/.local/share/fonts. (I found that google fonts and roboto are also available in void repos).
• Serif, Sans-serif, monospace: noto-fonts-cjk noto-fonts-emoji noto-fonts-ttf noto-fonts-ttf-extra from void repos. (You can search for them on void list of packages page)
• Serif, Sans-serif, monospace: liberation-fonts-ttf from void repos.

Note: You can disable the ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf (by renaming it) (check fc-conflist after renaming to be sure) after installing Noto fonts from the void repos. All fonts will still be rendered properly. However, in order to set a peference for which fonts to use, you can enable fonts.conf.

My ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf looks like -

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
    <match target="pattern">
         <test qual="any" name="family"><string>Helvetica</string></test>
        <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="same"><string>Noto Sans</string></edit>
    </match>
    <alias>
        <family>serif</family>
        <prefer>
            <family>Merriweather</family>
            <family>Noto Serif</family>
        </prefer>
    </alias>
    <alias>
         <family>sans-serif</family>
         <prefer>
             <family>Noto Sans</family>
             <family>Roboto</family>
         </prefer>
    </alias>
    <alias>
         <family>monospace</family>
         <prefer>
             <family>Hack Nerd Font</family>
             <family>FiraCode Nerd Font</family>
         </prefer>
    </alias>
</fontconfig>

Readings: for understanding fontconfig -

• lfs wiki
• arch wiki
• arch wiki again
• stackexchange
• blogpost

Use feh to set the wallpaper for the first time as feh --bg-scale /path/to/file. It will create a file ~/.fehbg. Edit that file for changing wallpaper and include this file (which actually is a script) in the ~/.xinitrc (or in `~/.config/bspwm/bspwmrc, which is also a script file) as -

~/.fehbg &

See arch wiki for details

Some good icon packs (with ongoing development) (in order of liking) -

• Papirus -- installed from the release on gnome-look.org.
• Luv, from Nitrux -- installed from the release on their github.

Notes:

1. Use lxappearance (installable without any lxde desktop dependencies from void repos) to change icons. This creates and overrides the files ~/gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini. This also creates and overrides the file ~/.icons/default/index.theme for default cursor icon theme.

2. Use ~/.local/share/icons/ to extract icons into.

Some good themes (gtk2/3) (with ongoing development) (in order of liking) -

• Snow -- installed from gnome-look.org (hackable src code available on github).
• Matcha -- installed from gnome-look.org, though it is not the latest (src code available on github) release. -- The gtk2 variant requires gtk2-engines and gtk-engine-murrine, installed them from the void repos.
• Zuki -- installed from github release, the one on gnome-look.org is way-too-much outdated. The dark themes are not working idk why.
• Vimix -- installed from gnome-look.org, though it is not the latest (src code availabe on github) release.
• Arc -- installed from void repos (xbps-install arc-theme).
• Numix -- copied the release from their github. idk why Not working.
• Materia -- not installed.
• wpgtk -- I need to look into it.

These do not have source code (sass files) -

• Obsidian 2
• Jade 1
• Prof Gnome theme
• Nextwaita
• Desert

Notes:

1. Use lxappearance (installable without any lxde desktop dependencies from void repos) to change themes. This creates and overrides the files ~/gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini.

2. See arck wiki for other options that can be set in these files.

3. Qt themes are different and don't go well with the gtk themes, even icons.

4. Use ~/.local/share/themes/ to extract themes into.

Some good colorschemes for vim (but can be extended to terminal and other programs) and having both light/dark variants (mostly)

• forest-night, for alacritty this
• gruvbox-material, for alacritty this
• gruvbox
• iceberg
• base16-ocean, for alacritty this
• oceanic-next --> The official light theme still has some issues and is not usable at the moment, need to check again.
• two-firewatch
• Base2Tone-vim based on DuoTone for Atom
• one-half
• vim-one
• solarized8
• papercolor
• ayu

I got tired of searching for good schemes and so I decided to make some, see here But tbh, selecting good, eye-pleasing colors is a pain, and I don't even know how hard creating a vimscript is for the same.

For more good color schemes (vim) look at 'trending' and 'top' sections of vimcolorschemes.com Nord and dracula are intentionally left out.

Installed pcmanfm from void repos and set its preferences (like which terminal to use, etc.) from inside the gui app itself.

Also installed pcmanfm-qt from void repos (though I will uninstall it).

I am moving away from vim and switching to nvim because -

• vim by default, doesn't have support for x11 clipboard (need to install and use vim-x11 instead of vim to fix it). read this wiki

Also watch this video by Luke Smith to understand vim's registers and system registers for copy-pasting

• vim does some very bad indentation shit when pasting a text from another application into it. A part of the solution was that I used default vim settings (by removing .vimrc file) but that still strips-off some of the starting characters from the pasted text. this stackexchange answer is fine, but too much work to do a simple paste. (Also, it too didn't solve the stripping of starting characters.

• nvim has some good features by default, like it can access the system clipboard (Ctrl-Shift-c to copy from nvim to system clipboard and paste by Ctrl-v in another application) (Ctrl-Shift-v to paste in nvim from another application where we copied into the system clipboard by Ctrl-c).

• nvim doesn't do the indentation shit and doesn't strip-off start characters from the pasted text. It also has beam cursor for insert mode and block cursor for normal mode (nice!).

I will be exploring more of neovim's features.

• Trick to comment a block of code. Ctrl+v, then select, then Shift+i, then #. stackoverflow

• Use pkill instead of killall (not present by default in void).

• I installed bc from their repos because it wasn't there already, however, I got the following messages during install, -

... unpacking ...
bc-1.07.1_5: registered 'bc' alternatives group
Creating 'bc' alternatives group symlink: bc -> /usr/bin/gnu-bc
Creating 'bc' alternatives group symlink: bc.1 -> /usr/share/man/man1/gnu-bc.1
bc-1.07.1_5: registered 'dc' alternatives group
Creating 'dc' alternatives group symlink: dc -> /usr/bin/gnu-dc
Creating 'dc' alternatives group symlink: dc.1 -> /usr/share/man/man1/gnu-dc.1

What is dc, was it already installed? Was gnu-bc already installed? (I guess not. I guess bc provides dc and also sets the symlinks so that gnu-bc and bc refer to the same program, also similarly for dc.)

• It surprised me a lot to see that xbps repos already have pfetch, picom, rofi, starship and other popular programs with their latest versions. I no longer have to install them from source (like I used to do in Ubuntu - to get the latest versions).

• Installed make and gcc (which installs other important packages like binutils).

• git is to be installed for vim-plug in vim .

• firefox may say No compatible source found for this video for videos on some sites (like 4anime.to) and may give an error code of 102630 (video file cannot be played). Install ffmpeg and libavcodec from void repos. source, mozilla support

• Search void packages on web page

• masterpdfeditor5 is available as an executable script from their website. So downloaded that and running. But it needs qt5 to be installed (which installs other qt dependencies), along with qt5-svg(install from void repos). It is also available as a restricted package from void repos (which needs to be built using xbps-src. I haven't tried that). Also it is available as a deb package from their site and you can use xdeb to extract from deb into xbps format for installing in void (but haven't tried that either).

• Installed featherpad for a gui text editor.

• Installed vscode from void repos. This also installs xdg-utils, so I guess the problems of XDG_RUNTIME_DIR being not set (DID NOT SOLVE) and xdg-open (not found) will get solved. Also, note that this is code-oss (program name). Since I had already synced my setup on settings sync extension, I just needed to install this extension and sign-in with my github and download my settings.

• Colors in man - put the below in ~/.bashrc.

man() {
    LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[01;31m' \
    LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m' \
    LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\e[0m' \
    LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\e[01;44;37m' \
    LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m' \
    LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[01;32m' \
    command man "$@"
}

Other programs like ip, ls, grep, diff already have a switch --color=auto. Use these as aliases in ~/.bash_aliases (and then source this file in ~/.bashrc) -

alias ls='ls --color=auto'

source arch wiki

• xtitle should be installed for solving the floating image previews problem in telegram on bspwm. Or you will have to adapt something similar to xtitle with xprop (which must be already installed).

• Quick scratchpad in firefox -

data:text/html, <style>html,body{margin: 0; padding: 0;}</style><textarea style="font-size: 1.1em; font-family: 'FiraCode Nerd Font', monospace; line-height: 1.2em; background: rgb(40,44,52); color: rgb(220,223,228); width: 100%; height: 100%; border: none; outline: none; margin: 0; padding: 90px;" autofocus placeholder="write..." />

• Using audacious for a GUI music player. Need to install both audacious and audacious-plugins.

• Using mpv for video player. Additionally, installed youtube-dl from void repos for watching URL (see man mpv) videos in mpv.

• For touchpad "tap to click" and "Natural Scrolling", make a dir xorg.conf.d in /etc/X11 and inside it, make a file named 40-libinput.conf with the following contents -

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Touchpad"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Driver "libinput"
    Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Touchpad"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Driver "libinput"
    Option "NaturalScrolling" "on"
EndSection

arch wiki. Also see man pages for xorg.conf, xorg.conf.d, libinput.

• Other programs installed :

  • bat (modern cat clone, available in void repos)