Jeff's Dotfiles

Here is my collection of dotfiles for configuring some basic programs on my Linux machine. The process is designed to be relatively easy to set up on a new machine with little hassle. However, if you don't use the same programs I do, you should be able to take this repo and add your own config files.

Parts of the code used in this setup were taken from Nick Nisi's dotfiles repo.

Initial setup

First, Clone this repo to ~/.dotfiles on your machine.

git clone https:/jeff-hughes/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
cd ~/.dotfiles
chmod u+x create_symlinks.sh
./create_symlinks.sh

This create_symlinks.sh script will do two things:

1. Backup any existing config files that would otherwise get overwritten, and store them in ~/dotfiles-backup (optional).
2. Create symlinks in your home directory that link to the dotfiles in the repo.

After running the create_symlinks.sh script, you will need to restart your terminal or run source ~/.bashrc to see changes to your terminal.

Programs configured by these dotfiles

• Bash
• Conky
• Vim
• Tmux
• VS Code (in the repo under "Code - OSS" because I am using the open source version)
• Joplin
• Redshift
• GTK (I hate the default GTK scrollbars, so the only thing this does is makes them wider)

This also adds some autostart files to start Conky, Plank, and an xcape command that maps the Windows/Super key to open the Xfce whisker menu. These autostart files should work on any desktop environment that is compliant with XDG specifications. However, the create_symlinks.sh script does not install any packages, so if you are not using Conky, Plank, or the Xfce whisker menu, you should delete these files from the ~/.dotfiles/.config/autostart directory.

Making modifications

If you want to use this framework to add your own config files, that's great! Make it your own. The directory structure of the ~/.dotfiles folder should mirror the structure of ~/ itself. In other words, a file in the main directory, like ~/.dotfiles/.foo.symlink, will create a symlink at ~/.foo that points to ~/.dotfiles/.foo.symlink. If you have a file at ~/.dotfiles/.config/.bar.symlink, it will have a corresponding symlink at ~/.config/.bar. Thus, you can edit any .symlink file in this repo and it will immediately be reflected (though you may need to restart the application you are reconfiguring to see the changes). If you add a new .symlink file to the repo, you will need to run ~/.dotfiles/create_symlinks.sh again to add the new symlink.

One final note: In the .bashrc.symlink file, there is a line that will source a ~/.localrc file if it exists. This is a great place to put data you want in your environment but don't want to add to a git repo, e.g., API keys, personal information.