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How to install Endeavour OS?

[!warning] This guide is very specific to my preferences! It’s primary purpose is for my future reference.

[!note] My machine uses an NVIDIA graphics card.

Before that, backup!

Section titled “Before that, backup!”

This section is a checklist before you uninstall the existing arch linux system. This list is meant to be exhaustive, not all are necessarily updated manually.

  • Backup zsh and related config files - ~/.zshrc, ~/.zsh_plugins.txt, ~/.config/starship.toml
  • Backup alacritty config files, ~/.alacritty.toml and imports mentioned in that file, maybe like ~/.config/alacritty/nord.toml.

Guide

Section titled “Guide”

Flash Image

Section titled “Flash Image”

Download the image from Endeavour OS. Use Rufus to create a bootable USB drive.

Configure OS install

Section titled “Configure OS install”

Boot into USB drive using NVIDIA option in the boot manager.

After you boot into the USB drive, during the installer configuration, prefer offline install. Choose btrfs partition on full disk install. No swap, single partition for OS (and bootloader EFI partition ofcourse). Also choose systemd-boot for init.

Now after reboot, you should be in the installed OS.

Refresh Arch Linux Keyring

Section titled “Refresh Arch Linux Keyring”
Terminal window
yay -Sy archlinux-keyring

And use Endeavour OS tools to rank mirrors, update system packages to latest (preferably at the end of the guide)

Install Linux LTS kernel

Section titled “Install Linux LTS kernel”

By default, since Endeavour OS follows a rolling release cycle, it comes with the latest stable Linux Kernel (i.e. linux and linux-headers packages). Preferably keep both this and the LTE kernels. To install LTE Kernel,

Terminal window
yay -Sy linux-lts linux-lts-headers

and reboot into LTS kernel, by choosing the option in bootmanager after reboot.

Install NVIDIA Drivers

Section titled “Install NVIDIA Drivers”

Enable Early KMS loading of NVIDIA modules using dracut. Just add a new file, say nvidia.conf with content as,

force_drivers+=" nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm "

[!info] Endeavour OS uses dracut - more details on this can be found at https://discovery.endeavouros.com/installation/dracut/2022/12/

Use nvidia-inst package. It’ll take care of most things, including rebuilding the initramfs file (can be done manually too via. sudo reinstall-kernels).

After reboot, verify the the nvidia_drm.modeset=1 kernel modesetting is enabled using the command,

Terminal window
cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset

which should now return Y, and not N anymore.

[!info] More info at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA/

Also, you can check nvidia-smi to see if Xorg is using the NVIDIA card for display graphics. (assuming you login to X11 and not Wayland).

Final touches…

Section titled “Final touches…”

Plasma

Section titled “Plasma”
  • In Settings -> Window Management -> Virtual Desktops, add more desktops.
  • In Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts
    • KWin -> Toggle Grid View -> Add Meta+Backtick
    • KWin -> Window to Next Desktop -> Add Meta+Tab
    • Add new application -> Alacritty -> for new terminal -> set Alt+Tab
  • Move Plasma Taskbar to the left edge
  • Right click on Plasma Taskbar -> ‘Configure Icons-Only taskbar’ -> ‘Behavior’ -> ‘Show only tasks’ -> disable ‘From current desktop’
  • In Settings -> Window Management -> Task Switcher
    • Filter windows by -> Virtual Desktops -> must be set to ‘All other desktops’

IntelliJ IDEA

Section titled “IntelliJ IDEA”
  • In settings
    • Appearance -> Use custom font -> Noto Sans Medium, Size 11
    • Apperance -> UI options -> ‘Use smaller indents in trees’
    • New UI -> Enable ‘Compact Mode’, ‘Show main menu in a separate toolbar’
    • Editor -> General -> Mouse Control -> Enable ‘Change font size with Ctrl+Mouse Wheel in’ -> All editors
    • Editor -> Font -> NotoSansM NFM, Size: 13, Line height: 1.1
  • In plugins,

Others

Section titled “Others”
  • Setup Git: [[git-setup]]
  • Install packages (some are from AUR)
    • Google Chrome: google-chrome
    • Visual Studio Code: visual-studio-code-bin
    • Neovim: neovim
    • IntelliJ IDEA: intellij-idea-community-edition
    • exa: better ls written in rust
    • bat: better cat written in rust
    • dust: better du written in rust
    • ripgrep: better grep written in rust
    • fd: better find written in rust
    • procs: better procs written in rust
    • tealdeer: better tldr written in rust
    • bottom: inspired by gtop, gotop, and htop and written in rust
    • zoxide: better cd written in rust
    • broot: explore large directories, written in rust
    • skim: Skim is a command-line fuzzy finder. It can be used as a general filter (like grep) or as an interactive interface for invoking commands.
    • tokei: Tokei is a program that displays statistics about your code. Tokei will show the number of files, total lines within those files and code, comments, and blanks grouped by language.
    • alacritty: Terminal emulator, replaces Konsole.
    • lazygit