Fedora 32: Setup Routine Updated

Back to XFCE desktop

Fedora XFCE / Materia theme

Post-installation setup guide, Materia style. Dotfiles available on Gitlab.

1. System & packages

DNF optimization

Avoid systematic check update, and boost download speed [ref.] :

$ sudo nano /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
metadata_expire=2d
max_parallel_downloads=10

RPMFusion Free

Enable repository RPM Fusion Free for additionnal packages (like CMUS)

$ sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
$ dnf check-update

Basic softwares

For a standard daily drive:

$ sudo dnf install bashtop bmon cmus conky exfalso git google-roboto-fonts googler gpick grsync materia-gtk-theme neofetch numlockx papirus-icon-theme ranger rofi xed zsh

• bashtop: better Top
• bmon: network monitor
• cmus: command line music player
• conky: display info on desktop
• doom emacs: terminal text editor
• exFalso: audio tag editor
• fd: best search tool
• googler: search Web in commande line
• grsync: incremental files copy
• numlockx: activate numpad on login
• xed: better text editor
• zsh: a better shell

For Zsh installation & config, see my post on Zsh & Oh-My-Zsh

Vivaldi browser

Aka the best browser in town:

$ sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/vivaldi-fedora.repo
$ sudo dnf install vivaldi-stable

If you get a duplicate repo configuration error, check if therepository vivaldi is listed more than once in the configuration folder:

$ grep vivaldi /etc/yum.repos.d/*

If two repos were configured you can delete the “Vivaldi-Fedora” one.

ProtonVPN on Linux

Install and configure ProtonVPN:

$ sudo dnf install -y openvpn dialog python3-pip python3-setuptools
$ sudo pip3 install protonvpn-cli

You’ll need your ProtonVPN credential to go further: type the following command, required information are located on your PM account: https://account.protonvpn.com/account

$ sudo protonvpn init

Once installed and logged, commands:

$ protonvpn c (connect)
$ protonvpn s (status)
$ protonvpn c -f (connect to fatest)

Or use the graphic configuration with preconfigured connexions.

LibreOffice 7

Get the Flatpak updated version:

$ flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
$ flatpak install flathub org.libreoffice.LibreOffice

2. Theming #1: Materia

GTK, Icons and Fonts

Making XFCE look sharp:

• GTK theme and XWFM : Materia-gtk-theme
• Alternative: I like Adwaita-Dark and the XFCE-ClassicLooks variants a lot, they give your desktop a retro (ie. non flat) yet polished look
• Font: Roboto 10 / Set hinting to slight
• Terminal font: JetBrains Mono
• Icons: Papyrus for the colorfull yet modern looks and the coherence it brings to the desktop experience
• Compositor: disable all shadows

Reminder :

• Fonts folders should be copied to /usr/share/fonts/
• GTK and Xfwm themes folders to ~/.themes/or /usr/share/themes/if you want them system wide
• Icons folders should be copied to /usr/share/icons/
• Use then Appearance and Window Management setttings to apply your themes

Settings

Panel applets

Create a top-panel of26px height / 16px icons. Then from left to right:

• Workspaces switch (1–3)
• Launcher: standard Application menu
• Button Windows
• Three Xfce4-genmon-scripts for CPU, RAM and HDD (path to the script in the applet 'sh ~/bin/scriptName.sh')
• Notification Area
• Audio Applet
• Battery Applet
• Notifications icon
• Orage calendar: date
• launcher: xfce4-session-logout (to customize the icon)
• Orage calendar: hour

Xfce4-Terminal colorschemes

All the colorschemes you can dream of are here. Copy the ‘colorschemes’ folder to ~/.local/share/xfce4/terminal/ and restart the terminal

Select your colorscheme in ‘Colors > Load presets…’

System & Event Sounds

Get the Borealis sound theme from my Gitlab (can’t find where I got it in the first place, surely from MXLinux!) and copy the folder to ~/.local/share/sounds/

Activate the system & events sounds in the Appearance window and set ‘Borealis’ as your theme in Settings Editor>Xsettings>SoundThemeName

3. Theming #2: Dracula

Fedora XFCE / Dracula theme

Alternative theming: Dracula! A fantastic color ecosystem available for a huge amount of applications.

• GTK: Dracula (slightly modified on my screenshot)
• Xfwm: Borders only
• Icons: papirus-folders (Yaru color)

Personnal dotfiles are here: https://gitlab.com/rphl_m/fedoracula_2020

4. Tools

ROFI launcher

Faster than anything else: https://github.com/davatorium/rofi

Rofi (…) is an application launcher and ssh-launcher, and can act as a drop-in dmenu replacement, making it a very versatile tool. Rofi, like dmenu, will provide the user with a textual list of options where one or more can be selected. This can either be running an application, selecting a window, or options provided by an external script.

Explore the themes by running rofi-theme-selector, then hit Alt+a to apply

To customize your launcher, copy the default config file and modify it:

$ rofi -dump-config > ~/.config/rofi/config.rasi

Neofetch

To pimp your screenshots. Modify the default config file to fit your ambitions, ie. add informations, ascii images and icons…