BARBS is an efficient shell script that will install a fully-featured tiling window manager-based system on any Arch or Artix Linux-based system, without any of the routine of manual post-install processes and configuration.
Two types of BARBS users
Is BARBS for you? Probably yes. I don’t know how else you would’ve found this site. The script is for two types of people:
- People who already know their stuff and just want to automate installing a system without doing the boring stuff you’ve done a million times.
- Novices who want to use and learn about a leet hackerman computer setup like those in the movies for either efficiency or looking cool.
No actual phonies allowed though. The goal of the system for novices is helping you understand how a good Unix system works and how it is modified. I give huge amounts of documentation for this, but this is not a hand-holding distro that does things automatically for you. Instead, you realize how easy it is to set things up automatically yourself.
Installation
On a fresh installation of Arch Linux or Artix Linux, run the following:
curl -LO barbs.bobtopus.eu/barbs.sh
sh barbs.sh
BARBS will then guide you through installation, which is typically relatively snappy. On my slow internet, it takes around 10 minutes.
Note that the BARBS scripts will not partition any drives or wipe anything, but when it deploys the dotfiles, it will overwrite any preexisting files: e.g. the BARBS bashrc will replace your old bashrc, etc. To avoid even this risk, you can tell BARBS to install for a new username and nothing will be overwritten.
No un-features
- No proprietary software or spyware.
- No snaps or flatpaks or Mac-lite garbage. GNU/Linux the way it’s supposed to be.
- No branding cringe. Once you run BARBS, you have your own system, not mine!
Programs
Here are the main programs, all with extra information here:
- dwm – the main graphical environment
- st – the terminal
- dwmblocks – statusbar
- zsh – the shell
- Librewolf with the Arkenfox.js – browser
- lf – file manager
- neomutt – email
- abook – extensible address book
- ncmpcpp – music
- newsboat – RSS feeds and news
- htop – to look cool in screencaps… err… system monitor
- mpv – video player
- nsxiv – image viewer
Learning the system is fun and easy!
You can figure out about the system in a lot of different ways:
- BARBS has a built-in readme document and list of all the many efficient keybindings that you can read here. By pressing super + F1 at any time while in the system you can read this document.
- The many illustrative videos on Luke’s YouTube channel, some of which are easily watchable in BARBS by pressing super + F2.
- The documentation on the Github page.
- By just installing it and diving in!