Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Installing Ansible and Molecule in Arch Linux

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Using “pip” is the supported installation method for Ansible and Molecule. Let’s install Python libraries and applications (in this case, Ansible and Molecule) in a Python virtual environment. (This post is similar to the one about Ubuntu.) First, install the required packages, including the Python virtual environment package:

Create a virtual environment somewhere (in […]

Using Flash remote in Neovim

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The “remote” feature of flash.nvim is handy: it acts in “operator pending mode” to perform operations and then return to the original position. It took me some time to understand what it was doing, so I’m writing about it. I’m using it in the LazyVim distribution, which enables “flash” by default (and also “which-key”, which […]

Installing Ansible and Molecule in Ubuntu Linux

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Using “pip” is the supported installation method for Ansible and Molecule. In Ubuntu, just using “pip” will lead to the error “externally-managed-environment” because of the Python environment that is “externally managed” by the package manager (this prevents direct use of pip for system-wide installations to avoid conflicts or issues). (This post is similar to the one […]

Installing the Tmux Plugin Manager (tpm) with Chezmoi

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Similar to what I had already shown in a previous post, in this post, I show how you can install (and keep up-to-date) the “tpm” (Tmux Plugin Manager) with Chezmoi, which I highly recommend! Typically, you manually install “tpm” by cloning its GitHub repository into the proper directory:

Let’s do that automatically with Chezmoi instead. Chezmoi […]

Disabling tracker-extract in Gnome 47 and 48

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I like the tracker service in Gnome, which indexes files so that you can easily search for them from the Activity view or the file manager. However, I don’t like tracker-extract, which also indexes the file contents: I use Recoll for such a service, and tracker-extract uses too much CPU (it indexes new or modified […]

Automatically regenerating Neovim spell files

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In Neovim, when you add a new word to your spellchecking dictionary with the command “zg”, the word will be added to a “.add” file in your config directory in the subdirectory “spell”. For example, “spell/en.utf-8.add”, depending on your locale. That’s a textual file you might want to share among different machines, e.g., part of […]

Ansible tasks for installing Firefox and Thunderbird as DEB packages in Ubuntu

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Ubuntu has forced the installation of Firefox and Thunderbird as snap packages for some time. I don’t like snap packages since they’re a bit slower to start, take much more space on the disk, and store the profile files into the “.snap” directory folder, while I want them in the standard place in my home […]

Speeding up AUR package installations in Arch Linux

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This post can be used for Arch Linux and EndeavourOS. Recently, a change was committed that highly compresses AUR packages before the actual installation. This takes a lot of time: even on a fast machine, installing something like Chrome or Visual Studio (AUR packages) takes even minutes just for the compression phase. Since I typically […]

How I manage Neovim configuration with Chezmoi

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I love to manage my dotfiles with Chezmoi, which I highly recommend! In a single Git repository, I have common dotfiles and Window Manager specific (KDE, GNOME, Hyprland, and Sway). However, I prefer to have my Neovim configuration in another Git repository, separate from my Chezmoi dotfiles. I’ve just started learning Neovim, and I’m not […]

Sway: monitor configuration for different computers

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I’m using Sway (not as my daily driver) on different computers: PCs and laptops. For the PCs, I’m using an HDMI monitor. Laptops have different display sizes, e.g., small displays with low resolution and more extensive displays with retina resolution. Thus, I need to set different scaling factors for the different displays. It’s pretty easy […]

Waybar Workspaces in Hyprland

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Waybar has a dedicated module for Hyprland workspaces: https://github.com/Alexays/Waybar/wiki/Module:-Hyprland#workspaces. One of its most fantastic features is the possibility of representing the application windows in each workspace. For example, here I have the workspaces with the following application windows: Kate (text editor) and terminal (Alacritty) Dolphin (file manager) A Firefox window and a Firefox window on […]

Downgrading packages in Arch Linux Arm

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In Arch Linux, you can easily downgrade packages with the script https://github.com/archlinux-downgrade/downgrade, also available from AUR. I experienced problems with the new version (2:2.11.1) of wpa_supplicant in PineBook Pro, where I have EndeavourOS. WiFi does not work anymore with the new version of wpa_supplicant. I tried downgrading as suggested in the EndeavourOS forum. However, I […]

Problems with xdg-desktop-portal-kde as well

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I recently blogged about some problems with UI tests in GNOME due to xdg-desktop-portal-gnome. Unfortunately, I also started to experience problems similar to those with KDE Plasma 6.1 (Linux EndeavourOS and Arch); as in the other blog post, the problem is only with Wayland. I’ll use this example project (taken from my TDD book): https://github.com/LorenzoBettini/demo-attsw. It is […]

Modifier-only shortcuts in KDE Plasma 6.1

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Before KDE Plasma 6.1 (released a few days ago and already available in Arch), if you wanted to configure a “modifer-only” shortcut (e.g., SUPER key, also known as META, to activate the “Overview” effect), you had to manually modify the “~/.config/kwinrc” file and add these lines:

Another example is if you wanted the SUPER […]

Customizing Grub during the EndeavourOS installation

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I typically have several EndeavourOS installations on my computers: one for KDE, one for Hyprland, etc. Thus, I want to have different UEFI entries, but they would all have “endeavouros”, each overriding the others. You can change the grub ID later by issuing a proper “grub-install” program from the running system or by booting it […]

Fixing the empty “open with” in Dolphin in Hyprland

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I have already blogged about KDE applications in Hyprland. However, with the latest updates, things broke a bit especially with Dolphin, which does not recognize file associations anymore: double-clicking on a file always shows this empty menu, as if it could not find any associations for any file: On the Arch forum that has already […]

Nerd Fonts in KDE Plasma 6

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As I have written, I’m using “Oh-My-Zsh” with Nerd icons and fonts. It has always worked perfectly in KDE. A few days ago, KDE Plasma 6 landed in Arch (and thus, EndeavourOS), and after upgrading, the Nerd fonts were not displayed in Konsole and Kate (and, I guess, in other KDE applications). For example, before […]

KDE Plasma 6 Desktop Cube in Arch Linux

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At last, KDE Plasma 6 has landed in Arch Linux (and in EndeavourOS, of course), and you’re eager to try the return of the desktop effect “Desktop Cube”! 🙂 You try to enable that in the System Settings “Desktop Effects.” You try the default shortcut “Meta + C”, and… it doesn’t work 🙁 Oh, they […]