Hstsethi's No Frills Dotfiles

This is a repository about how I do my computing, what softwares do I use, what I do not and why not, scripts, dotfiles and manifesto.

The pictures below were randomly taken during my work. I didn't setup these programs this way just for taking screenshots. They aim to show the real picture of how my workflow is like.

Configurations Not Available Here

• Music Player

  Because I don't listen to music.

• Video Player

  I don't watch videos. If I do, I stick with default mpv, ffplay.

• Wallpaper Utility

• Web Browser

  I mostly use Librewolf with JavaScript disabled, Elinks with default configuration.

• Grub Config

  Because It is specific to machine. Instead I have provided grub template which I use with grub2-mkconfig. It sets max cpu to 4, disables framebuffer and splash screen.

• Image Editor

  I mostly use Imagemagick from command line for cropping, chopping, resizing. I just guess the required chop size and it often works. For trivial tasks, I use Gimp.

  See my crop-sc-status-nav-bar.sh script in privacy-scripts folder for a practical example.

  Though, this usually has to be done only with mobile screenshots, as on desktop, I use combination of I3 shortcuts, Dmenu, Maim to take cropped screenshots, and save them with ISO 8601 formatted date followed by input variable collected through Dmenu. The shortcut is $Mod1 + Shift + s.

• Navigation Software

  I use Organic Maps, and a simple compass, on both Android and Desktop. I scrap important place's coordinates from Google maps and then locally bookmark them, export them to KML.

  My mobile doesn't have a precise GPS due to it being debloated. Though, I do not need to use map much. In case map isn't available, I also have knowledge of primitive methods of navigation including constellations, stick and shadow method.

• UFW

  I used it in past, but it was too slow for my use-case, it also creates lot of unnecessary chains. I have, since age 17, switched to Iptables script, iptables-ovpn-kill-switch.sh, that automatically extracts all ips, ports from openvpn config file. It then blocks all connections except from those ips and only from specific users: root, firefox. There is an another user called nonet which I use to run commands without internet.

• Cache Cleaners

I find their whole concept to be ineffective. Disk space is cheap and abundant, but not read-write cycle. Trying to delete them will lead to extra cycles of read-write.

On mobile, I use a custom shell script to move private stuff to sdcard. Then I backup to other devices through SD card. Storing them on SD card gives another advantage that SD card can be easily removed if required.

No Frills Dotfiles Manifesto

• Efficiency, time savings over aesthetic.
• Don't fix it until it's broken. Don't customize unless required.
• Document everything. Explain what did you do and why.
• Keyboard over mouse.
• Avoid unnecessary processes

Combine sed expressions with -e. Don't use rm with -rf flags. Avoid temporary files. Don't compress tar balls unless really required and result will likely be smaller.

• Machine Readability

Don't write error messages to stdout.

Configuration files must be machine readable. However this rule can be extended to various other scenarios including function documentation, personal notes in markdown.

For an example of such, see my Structured List Md project. Which is a specification, scripts for authoring structured, machine readable lists in plain Markdown by leveraging HTML. The readme of this project, what you are reading right now, also implements this.

The script provided there also demonstrates these principles such as combining sed expressions, avoiding temp files, and not writing error messages to stdout

Another minimalist example of this is my anonymize-initials project, which uses print, instead of external library, to output valid YAML, which can be piped to yq to convert to other formats, if required. It also avoids unneccessary processes, such as of regex, by advocating for tr over sed.