General Recommendations
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This page is currently under construction. The final result will be a merged Post Installation Tips and Beginners' Guide Appendix. See Talk:Post Installation Tips#Duplication of effort (merge?) for details.
The intended style is that of an "index" of popular or otherwise frequently-sought information. This page should contain no real "content", but rather short introductions/descriptions of a problem/application followed by a suitable wiki link for interested parties.
That said, please keep headings alphabetical.
Contents |
Recommended reading
This section is probably unnecessary...
ABS, AUR, FHS, makepkg, pacman, Xorg, CUPS
Appearance
This section contains frequently-sought "eye candy" tweaks for an aesthetically pleasing Arch experience. For more, please see Category:Eye candy (English).
Colored output
Even though a number of applications have built-in color capabilities, installing a general-purpose, colorizing wrapper such as cope is another route. To install cope using yaourt or another AUR helper:
$ yaourt -S cope
Or for the oftenly updated git version:
$ yaourt -S cope-git
Console prompt
The console prompt (PS1) can be customized to a great extent. See the What's your PS1? forum thread for ideas, also see Color Bash Prompt if using Bash or Zsh#Prompts if using Zsh.
Emacs shell
Emacs is known for featuring options beyond the duties of regular text editing, one of these being a full shell replacement. Consult Emacs#Colored output issues for a fix regarding garbled characters that may result from enabling colored output.
grep
Beyond aesthetics, grep's color output is immensely useful for learning regexp and grep's functionality.
To add it, write the following entry to ~/.bashrc:
export GREP_COLOR="1;33" alias grep='grep --color=auto'
The variable GREP_COLOR is used to specify the output color, in this example a light yellow color.
Although the man page of grep states that GREP_COLOR is deprecated and that GREP_COLORS is preferable, this variable will not work (as of grep version 2.5.4) so continue to use GREP_COLOR for now.
ls
File ~/.bashrc should already have the following entry copied from /etc/skel/.bashrc:
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
The next step will further enhance the colored ls output; for example, broken (orphan) symlinks will show in red, etc. Add the following to ~/.bashrc and relogin, or source the file:
eval `dircolors -b`
Man pages
Man pages (or manual pages) are one of the most useful resources available to GNU/Linux users. To aid readability, the pager can be configured to render colored text as explained in Man Page#Colored man pages.
Fonts
A plethora of information on the subject of fonts can be found in the Fonts and Font Configuration articles.
Console fonts
If spending a significant amount of time working from the virtual console (i.e. outside an X server), users may wish to change the console font to improve readability; see Fonts#Console fonts.
LCD filtered fonts
Font rendering software can be patched to provide smoother fonts on LCD monitors by taking advantage of sub-pixel elements; see Font Configuration#LCD filter patched packages.
Booting
This section contains information pertaining to the boot process. An overview of the Arch boot process can be found at Arch Boot Process. For more, please see Category:Boot process (English).
Backgrounding daemons
Daemons are programs that run in the background, and are typically started during boot. In order to speed up the boot process, certain daemons can be backgrounded, allowing the boot process to continue whilst the daemon loads. See Daemon for a complete explanation.
Hardware auto-recognition
hwdetect informs of what modules are needed for a particular device.
# pacman -S hwdetect
lshwd is an alternative available in the AUR. To install it with yaourt or another AUR helper:
$ yaourt -S lshwd
LILO speed improvement
Besides GRUB, LILO is the most widely known Linux boot loader, legacy or not. Follow instructions shown in LILO#Sample setup for making the most out of its features.
NumLock activation at boot
NumLock is a toggle key found in most keyboards. For activating NumLock's number key-assignment during startup, see Activating Numlock on Bootup.
Retaining boot messages
Once it concludes, the screen is cleared and the login prompt appears, leaving users unable to gather feedback from the boot process. Disable clearing of boot messages to overcome this limitation.
Start X at boot
If utilizing an X server to provide a graphical user interface, users may wish to start this server during the boot process rather than starting it manually after login. See Display Manager if desiring a graphical login or Start X at boot for methods that do not involve a display manager.
Console improvements
This section applies to small modifications that better console program's practicality
Aliases
Bash additions
A list of miscellaneous Bash settings, including completion enhancements, history search and readline macros is available in Bash#Extended usage.
Compressed files
Browsing compressed files
Extracting compressed files
Control echo
Mouse support
Using a mouse with the console for copy-paste operations can be preferred over screen's traditional copy mode. Refer to Console Mouse Support for comprehensive directions.
Input
Adjusting mouse scroll wheel (depreciated?)
Configure all mouse buttons
Keyboard layouts
Laptop touchpads
Power management
This section may be of use to users running Arch on laptops or otherwise seeking power management controls. For more, please see Category:Power management (English).
acpid
Users can configure how Arch systems react to ACPI events such as pressing the power button or closing a laptop's lid using acpid.
CPU frequency scaling
Modern processors can decrease their frequency and voltage to reduce heat and power consumption. Less heat leads to a quieter system and prolongs the life of hardware. cpufrequtils is a set of utilities designed to assist CPU frequency scaling.
Laptops
For articles related to portable computing along with model-specific installation guides, please see Category:Laptops (English). For a general overview of laptop-related articles and recommendations, see Laptop.
Laptop mode
TODO: Expand Laptop Mode Tools; merge Beginners' Guide Appendix#Laptop-Mode
Suspending and hibernation
Several options are available to users desiring suspend-to-RAM (sleep/stand-by) and suspend-to-disk (hibernate) functionality on Arch systems. pm-utils describes one popular method, while hibernate-script is an older alternative that does not depend on Xorg packages.