Linux tweaks

General distro selection philosophy

Pick the distro/software/desktop envrionment/programming language that needs the least amount of work to get it the way you like it.

My preferred setup and why

Manjaro with i3wm and several addons that are oriented toward usability.

Why

Manjaro is much easier to install compared to Arch, but still has newer packages than most other distros. It also has access to the AUR, which I miss every time I go to another distro.

The i3 desktop environment is minimal, and has all the keybinds and tools to be productive. It is too minimal though. User authentication does not work until you start polkit in the background, you have to bind keys to change screen brightness and volume, and you still have screen tearing

Look at .i3/config if you want to see what I added.

Removing mouse acceleration

Copy and paste this into a file here: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-mouse-acceleration.conf

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "My Mouse"
    MatchIsPointer "yes"
    Option "AccelerationProfile" "-1"
    Option "AccelerationScheme" "none"
    Option "AccelSpeed" "-1"
EndSection

Correcting time

Install ntp and do this sudo timedatectl set-ntp true and sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Indianapolis (change the timezone as needed) and check with timedatectl status

Preferred keybinds

Look at the i3/config file and infer from that.

Screen tearing

Autostart compton (install it first) with the flags -b --backend glx --paint-on-overlay --vsync opengl-swc

File Open dialog is too big

Change the GeometryWidth and GeometryHeight entries in .config/gtk-2.0/gtkfilechooser.ini

Changing gtk themes on LXQt/i3

Install lxappearance and use it. (lightest option I found that works)

Input

Touchpad tap to Click

Make a file: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf

Paste this in it:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "devname"
    Driver "libinput"
    Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSection

Disable touch screen on boot

find this section in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "evdev touchscreen catchall"
        MatchIsTouchscreen "on"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
        Driver "evdev"
EndSection

and change it to this

Section "InputClass"
    	Identifier "evdev touchscreen catchall"
        MatchIsTouchscreen "on"
        Driver "evdev"
	Option "Ignore" "true"
EndSection

add authentication to i3-wm

Add this to your .i3/config exec --no-startup-id /usr/lib/polkit-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 &

makepkg flags/settings (arch-specific)

Go to /etc/makepkg.conf and change makeflags to -j4 and C and CXX flags to -march=native and -mtune=native

Linux optimizations

Lower boot time

Disable services on startup. The fedora section has my personal list. My universal list is here:

• bluetooth.service
• ModemManager.service
• lvm2-monitor.service also limit journal size by going here: /etc/systemd/journald.conf and changing the SystemMaxUse value.

Speed up shutdown

Change these settings in /etc/systemd/system.conf

DefaultTimeoutStartSec=10s
DefaultTimeoutStopSec=10s

Change I/O scheduler

To see the sceduler (for /dev/sda): cat /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler The bracketed option is the current scheduler.

To change the scheduler, use su to get superuser status. Then do: echo scheduler-name > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

Enable multi-queue schedulers

Add GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="scsi_mod.use_blk_mq=1" to /etc/default/grub and do sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg or sudo update-grub or sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.

Change Scheduler permanently

Add a elevator=schedulername entry to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= line.

Permanently change scheduler

Create udev rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/60-schedulers.rules and paste in this in that file:

#### set scheduler for rotating disks
ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="sd[a-z]", ATTR{queue/rotational}=="1", ATTR{queue/scheduler}="bfq"

#### set scheduler for non-rotating disks
ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="sd[a-z]|mmcblk[0-9]*|nvme[0-9]*", ATTR{queue/rotational}=="0", ATTR{queue/scheduler}="mq-deadline"

Useful Commands/tools

See if fsck was run sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sda6 | grep Last\ c

List loaded services systemctl list-unit-files | grep enabled

Disabling Services

Use systemctl disable service-name.service

Masking (stronger disable) sudo systemctl mask service-name.service

Enabling services

Enable: sudo systemctl enable service-name.service

Unmasking: sudo systemctl unmask service-name.service

OR

reinstall service/package or delete symlink /lib/systemd/system/service-name.service Then run sudo systemctl daemon-reload To check is symlink goes to /dev/null sudo file /lib/systemd/system/service-name.service

Boot analysis

Display time to load each service systemd-analyze blame

Show last boot times and stats systemd-analyze

Plot service load times systemd-analyze plot > boot.svg

Show dependencies and delay relationships systemd-analyze critical-chain

Fedora-specific tweaks

Get rid of old kernels. dnf remove $(dnf repoquery --installonly --latest-limit 2 -q)

The number is the number of kernels that should be left.

OR

Set kernel limit in /etc/dnf/dnf.conf as such installonly_limit=2

Set up qemu-kvm

Install libvirt qemu-kvm and virt-manager

Start the libvirtd service and enable it.

Use virt-manager to make the machine.

Add intel_iommu=on to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX in /etc/default/grub.

Update grub (fedora) grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Add a PCI device in virt-manager.

File sharing Linux host Windows Guest.

Go to the folder that you want to share on your guest and go to its properties and share it to everyone.

Then get the IP address of your Windows guest from control panel.

Then use smb://ip-of-guest/foldername in your file manager on Linux to access that folder.

Install broadcom-wl (Fedora 27/28)

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

sudo dnf update

sudo dnf install broadcom-wl

Install rawhide package

sudo dnf install fedora-repos-rawhide

sudo dnf install --enablerepo rawhide

Upgrade from rawhide

sudo dnf --enablerepo rawhide upgrade package-name

Install google chrome

sudo dnf install fedora-workstation-repositories

sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled google-chrome

sudo dnf install google-chrome-stable

Boot time reduction (Fedora-specific)

Consider removing /var/log/journal or renaming it.

Disable plymouth boot screen sudo dnf remove plymouth

Please note that not all these options were tested.

Services I disabled (I am not responsible for you FUBARing your system):

• dkms.servce
• ModemManager.service
• akms.service
• NetworkManager-wait-online.service
• lvm2-monitor.service
• fedora-readonly.service
• livesys-late.service
• livesys.service

Services you might not want to disable/mask (but I did anyway)

• firewalld.service (dynamic firewall)
• rtkit-daemon.service (not much benefit disabling)
• systemd-journal-flush.service
• gssproxy.service (security?, can be uninstalled)
• udisks2.service (external drive automounting)
• systemd-rfkill.service (disabling radios)
• systemd-modules-load.service (it was failing anyway)
• mlocate-updatedb.service (you can remove by removing mlocate package)

Arch Specific

Stuff to remove from arch XFCE (pacman -Rs)

• orage
• parole
• mousepad (use geany instead)
• ristretto
• xfburn

Change makepkg flags (especially MAKEFLAGS) in /etc/makepkg.conf

Masked for boot:

• lvm2-monitor.service

Disabled for boot:

• ModemManager.service
• bluetooth.service