Setting up EndeavourOS

It is Arch-based.

Stuff I did after login:

• ran nvidia-smi to make sure GPU was working: it was.
• enable bluetooth systemctl enable bluetooth.service –now

Caps lock should be an additional Control key, sorry, it's true. Add XKBOPTIONS=“caps:ctrl_modifier” to /etc/default/keyboard.

AUR is a collection of user-supplied build scripts for different programs. It's like EPEL for Redhat or PPAs for Debian (or Ubuntu? I forget which). AUR packages aren't binaries so you have to compile them, but it's not too painful because you mostly just run makepkg -s and then pacman -U name_of_freshly_built_package to install.

I don't know if there's a generally accepted way to keep track of downloaded AUR packages, so I made a folder in my Downloads folder, aur, and create a new subfolder for each package. Sometimes packages (like VMWare) have dependencies on other AUR packages, so having a subfolder for each package that I'm trying to install can keep things organized.

… so that I can keep using Affinity Photo. I followed https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/VMware to install VMWare Workstation 17.

# make a directory to work in.
mkdir Downloads/aur
cd Downloads/aur/
# vmware needs vmware-keymaps installed first
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/vmware-keymaps.git --depth=1
cd vmware-keymaps/
makepkg -s
sudo pacman -U vmware-keymaps-1.0-3-any.pkg.tar.zst
cd ..
# Build vmware workstation package
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/vmware-workstation.git --depth=1
makepkg -s
sudo pacman -U vmware-workstation-17.5.1-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
# I couldn't get vmw_vmci module to work until I rebooted.
sudo reboot
# activate vmware kernel modules
sudo modprobe vmmon vmw_vmci
# start services
sudo systemctl enable vmware-usbarbitrator.service  vmware-networks.service --now

None yet

micro

Had to use AUR packages to install xrdp

cd ~/Downloads/aur
mkdir xrdp
cd xrdp
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/xrdp.git
cd xrdp
makepkg -s
sudo pacman -U xrdp-0.10.0_beta.3-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst 
cd ..
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/xorgxrdp.git
cd xorgxrdp
makepkg -s
sudo pacman -U xorgxrdp-0.10.0-5-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
# Edited the "port" option in /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini to only listen to single IP.
port=tcp://secret.ip.address.here:3389

Also had to add wg-quick@2g0.service to the After= line of /usr/lib/systemd/system/xrdp.service, otherwise it starts before wireguard and fails to bind to the non-existent wireguard IP address.

• Install wine, winetricks, mono-wine, wine-gecko, and lutris from system packages.
• Install gamescope from system packages.
• For Epic Games
  • Used Lutris to install Epic Games Store
  • Note: Fortnite does not run on Linux because Epic won't fix their bundled EAC even though other EAC games run fine.

• Duck Game
  • Set monitor to 1920×1080 or
  • Use gamescope through the steam launcher: gamescope -h 1080 -w 1920 -f – %command%
• Elden Ring
  • Set monitor to 1920×1080
  • Set Proton version to Experimental
  • gamescope -W 1920 -H 1080 -f – %command%
• Helldivers II
  • Initially couldn't get past the final option screen.
  • BEST: On reddit, some ppl say set the command to %command% –use-d3d11 and that worked great, even when I set the resolution back to 1920×1080
  • (You can ignore the following bullet points) Found that other people had luck doing following things:
    • Set compatibility to Proton 8.0-5
    • Edited .local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/553850/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Roaming/Arrowhead/Helldivers2/user_settings.config:
      • Changed render_resolution to 1280 x 800
      • Changed screen_resolution to 1280 x 800
    • Works. I might try GameScope to see if that helps the resolution.

Set up wireguard.

Need to open a port for other wg endpoint to access service. Learning to use firewalld.

# as root
# Create a zone for the wg
firewall-cmd --permanent --new-zone=wgzero
firewall-reload
# Check if it worked, should see wgzero in the list
firewall-cmd --get-zones
# Add the wg0 interface to the zone
firewall-cmd --zone=wgzero --add-interface=wg0 --permanent
firewall-reload
# Check if the interface is active on wg0
firewall-cmd --get-active-zones
# Add a rule for our port
firewall-cmd --zone=wgzero --add-port=99999/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd reload
# Your thing should work now!

To get IceWM to run automatically I modified its system-wide config because I didn't want a ~/.xinitrc file messing up my local KDE sessions. I just had to comment out most of startwm function and add icewm-session. Here's the modified file.

I use a misbehaving app called Stability Matrix that, as of version 2.10.3, crashes if it can't send a desktop notification. My IceWM didn't have notifications out-of-the-box so I installed dunst which is a lightweight notification app.

IceWM doesn't have a searchable app launcher (think quicksilver on MacOS, the start menu on Windows, or KDE's start menu equivalent). I installed dlauncher to handle that in IceWM.

To make these programs work I made two files.

~/.icewm/startup

#!/bin/bash
dlauncher &
dunst &

and ~/.icewm/keys

key "Ctrl+Shift+space" dlauncher-toggle

I've been using Duplicati for years on Windows and Mac. Setting up the client:

cd ~/Downloads/aur
mkdir duplicati
cd duplicati
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/duplicati-canary-bin.git
cd duplicati-canary-bin
makepkg -s  # accept requirements installation
sudo pacman -U duplicati-canary-bin-2.0.7.103-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst 
 
# Run the tray program through mono:
mono /opt/duplicati/Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe

I prefer cool and quiet. In Linux you can reduce the allowed power draw with the nvidia-smi command.

To print the current power info:

sudo nvidia-smi -q -d POWER  

On my 4060, the default power limit is 165 watts. I'm going to drop it 145W with this command

sudo nvidia-smi -pl 145  

To do this automatically when the computer boots, I created a file cat /etc/systemd/system/nvpower.service:

[Unit]
Description=Set NVIDIA GPU Power Limit

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nvidia-smi -pl 145

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

And enabled it with: <code bash> sudo systemctl enable nvpower.service </bash>