Various configuration tricks for i3 on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 4th gen

Here we use Arch Linux as base system.

Running commands at startup

Just add to ~/.config/i3/config a line with exec --no-startup-id <command>, substituting <command> with the command you want to run.

Desktop background

Set the descktop background with feh, for example: feh --bg-fill <file>. This can be put in the config file for automatic running at startup.

Keyboard keymap

It can be set with setxkbmap, for example: setxkbmap -layout us -variant altgr-intl. This can be put in the config file for automatic running at startup.

Dropbox daemon

Just start it in the config file launching dropbox start.

Audio daemon

It can be started simply running pulseaudio in the config file.

On-screen notifications

I run the on-screen display daemon dunst which is very lightweight. I just added exec --no-startup-id dunst to my config file. I can then send notifications with the notify-send command.

Volume keys

Volume on the current sink can be adjusted with pulseaudio-ctl. It is then just a matter to bind it to the right keys in config:

bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec --no-startup-id ~/local/bin/volume-set.sh up
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec --no-startup-id ~/local/bin/volume-set.sh down
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec --no-startup-id ~/local/bin/volume-set.sh mute

I wrote a small wrapper around pulseaudio-ctl, so that I can display notifications with dunst. The script is:

#!/bin/bash

~/local/bin/pulseaudio-ctl $1

read -r -a status <<< "$(~/local/bin/pulseaudio-ctl full-status)"
volume=${status[0]}
muted=${status[1]}
bar=$(seq -s "─" $(($volume / 5)) | sed 's/[0-9]//g')
icon=""

if [[ $muted = "yes" || $volume = "0" ]]; then
    icon="/usr/share/icons/elementary-xfce-dark/panel/48/audio-volume-muted.png"
elif [[ $volume -lt 35 ]]; then
    icon="/usr/share/icons/elementary-xfce-dark/panel/48/audio-volume-low.png"
elif [[ $volume -lt 70 ]]; then
    icon="/usr/share/icons/elementary-xfce-dark/panel/48/audio-volume-medium.png"
else
    icon="/usr/share/icons/elementary-xfce-dark/panel/48/audio-volume-high.png"
fi

if [[ $muted = "yes" ]]; then
    dunstify -I $icon -r 7414 "    $bar      (muted)"
else
    dunstify -I $icon -r 7414 "    $bar      $volume"
fi

Display brightness keys

Similar to the volume keys, with the following binding:

bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec xbacklight -inc 20
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec xbacklight -dec 20

For it to work with x1's display and Intel graphic card, however, I had to add the following file: /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-backlight.conf. Its content is quite straightforward and it is used to tell xbacklight that it should look into the intel_backlight folder of /sys/class/backlight:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "card0"
        Driver "intel"
        Option "Backlight" "intel_backlight"
        BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Skip lightdm

If you want to start with a framebuffer shell, and run X only when you need it, disable the login manager with sudo systemctl disable lightdm.service. To run i3 with startx, simply echo i3 > ~/.xinitrc.

Configure external monitors

I use the laptop in two modes: with the lid open (regular laptop), or with the lid closed (as a workstation). When the lid is open I want the regular laptop display, and only that. When the lid is closed I want to disable the laptop display, and activate my two external displays. You can use xrandr to find out which displays are attached and which resolutions they support. Then it's very easy to create a small script to put the laptop in lid open/closed mode:

#!/bin/bash

samsung_monitor="DP-2-2"
lg_monitor="DP-1"
laptop_monitor="eDP-1"

config_closed_lid() {
    xrandr  --output $laptop_monitor --off \
            --output $samsung_monitor --auto --primary \
            --output $lg_monitor --auto --right-of $samsung_monitor
    feh --bg-scale "/home/alberto/Dropbox/Pictures/Backgrounds/Nature and Landscapes/forest-doggo.jpg"
}

config_open_lid() {
    xrandr  --output $samsung_monitor --off \
            --output $lg_monitor --off \
            --output $laptop_monitor --auto --primary
    feh --bg-scale "/home/alberto/Dropbox/Pictures/Backgrounds/Nature and Landscapes/forest-doggo.jpg"
}

if [ "$1" == "lidclosed" ]; then
    config_closed_lid
elif [ "$1" == "lidopen" ]; then
    config_open_lid
else
    echo "Unrecognised action: $1"
fi

Screen lock

i3 provides i3lock to lock the display. You can conveniently bind it to a key combination in the config file. For example: bindsym $mod+l exec --no-startup-id i3lock, which binds it to the Win+L combination. You might also want to lock the screen on resume from suspend. This can be achieved, assuming your system is plagued with the popular systemd malware, by placing the following file in /etc/systemd/system/wakelock.service:

[Unit]
Description=Runs i3lock on system resume from a suspended state
Before=systemd-suspend.service

[Service]
User=alberto
Type=forking
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
ExecStart=/usr/bin/i3lock

[Install]
WantedBy=sleep.target
WantedBy=suspend.target

Just remember to enable it with sudo systemctl enable wakelock.

Bluetooth speaker

I have a paired JBL Flip 2 speaker, with MAC address B8:69:C2:79:2C:28 (as you can check with bluetoothctl). Surely the following can be automated, but for now I use the manual approach. I turn on the speaker and then connect to it by issuing, in bluetoothctl command line: connect B8:69:C2:79:2C:28. This creates a new sink for pulseaudio, as one can check with pacmd list-cards and pacmd list-sinks. Then I put the card in "High Fidelity Audio Sink" mode with pacmd set-card-profile 2 a2dp_sink (where 2 is the card number for the JBL speaker). Finally, I activate the JBL sink with pacmd set-default-sink 2. It is important to notice that I can change sinks even during playback, as I modified the following line in /etc/pulse/default.pa:

load-module module-stream-restore restore_device=false

adding the restore_device=false part.

Status bar

I modified the status bar with i3blocks. In my config file, I put the following:

bar {
        font pango:FontAwesome-14 14
        status_command i3blocks -c ~/.config/i3/i3blocks.conf
        colors {
                separator #268bd2
                background #002b36
                statusline #839496
        }
}

Then, in i3blocks.conf:

separator_block_width=14

[wireless]
command=echo "<span font_desc='FontAwesome'></span> $(iwgetid -r) - strength: $(cat /proc/net/wireless | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}' | rev | cut -c 2- | rev)"
markup=pango
color=#FFD600
interval=30

[weather]
command=~/local/bin/i3blocks-weather.sh
markup=pango
color=#00BBFF
interval=1800

[battery]
command=~/local/bin/i3blocks-battery.sh
markup=pango
color=#FFAA00
interval=30

[volume]
command=~/local/bin/i3blocks-volume.sh
markup=pango
color=#FF00EE
interval=5

[time]
command=echo "<span font_desc='FontAwesome'></span> $(date --rfc-3339=seconds)"
markup=pango
color=#2DD500
interval=5

Finally, the three mentioned scripts are i3blocks-weather.sh:

#!/bin/bash

metric=1
location="Barcelona,Spain"
url="http://rss.accuweather.com/rss/liveweather_rss.asp?metric=$metric&locCode=$location"
response=$(curl -s "$url")
weather=$(echo $response | xml_grep '//rss/channel/item/title' --text_only | grep Currently | awk -F ":" '{print $2 $3}' | cut -c 2-)
symbol=""
temperature=""

if [[ $weather = *"Sunny"* ]]; then
    symbol=""
elif [[ $weather = *"Cloud"* || $weather = *"Dreary"* || $weather = *"Flurries"* ]]; then
    symbol=""
elif [[ $weather = *"Shower"* || $weather = *"Storm"* || $weather = *"Rain"* ]]; then
    symbol=""
elif [[ $weather = *"Snow"* || $weather = *"Ice"* || $weather = *"Sleet"* ]]; then
    symbol=""
elif [[ $weather = *"Clear"* ]]; then
    symbol=""
fi

echo "<span font_desc='FontAwesome'>$symbol</span> $weather <span font_desc='FontAwesome'>$temperature</span>"

and i3blocks-battery.sh:

#!/bin/bash

level=$(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/capacity)
charging=$(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/status)
symbol=""

case $level in
[0-9])
    symbol=""
    ;;
1[0-9])
    symbol=""
    ;;
[2-3][0-9])
    symbol=""
    ;;
[4-5][0-9])
    symbol=""
    ;;
[6-7][0-9])
    symbol=""
    ;;
[8-9][0-9])
    symbol=""
    ;;
100)
    symbol=""
    ;;
*)
    symbol=""
    ;;
esac

if [[ "$charging" = "Charging" ]]; then
    symbol="$symbol "
fi

echo "<span font_desc='FontAwesome'>$symbol</span> $level"

and i3blocks-volume.sh:

#!/bin/bash

read -r -a status <<< "$(pulseaudio-ctl full-status)"
volume=${status[0]}
mute=${status[1]}
symbol=""

if [[ $volume = "0" || $mute = "yes" ]]; then
    symbol=""
elif [[ $volume -lt 60 ]]; then
    symbol=""
else
    symbol=""
fi

echo "<span font_desc='FontAwesome'>$symbol</span> $volume"

Use oh-my-zsh themes in the TTY

When on i3, most terminal emulators have good support for UTF-8 fonts and you can easily use the Powerline fonts to obtain all sort of cool effects with oh-my-zsh. To have the same experience on TTY terminals, I simply downloaded the Terminus font pfs files, patched by Powerline. They can be found here. After copying the relevant files (in my case, ter-powerline-v32*) to /usr/share/consolefont, they become usable in ttys. Since I want this to be a user-specific setting, I put the following in my .zshrc:

# Select the Terminus Powerline Font if we are in a TTY
case $(tty) in
    (/dev/tty[1-9])
        setfont ter-powerline-v32n
        $HOME/local/bin/tty-solarized-dark.sh
        ;;
esac

The script tty-solarized-dark.sh is used to set the TTY colours to match the Solarized Dark popular theme:

if [ "$TERM" = "linux" ]; then
    echo -en "\e]PB657b83"
    echo -en "\e]PA586e75"
    echo -en "\e]P0073642"
    echo -en "\e]P62aa198"
    echo -en "\e]P8002b36"
    echo -en "\e]P2859900"
    echo -en "\e]P5d33682"
    echo -en "\e]P1dc322f"
    echo -en "\e]PC839496"
    echo -en "\e]PE93a1a1"
    echo -en "\e]P9cb4b16"
    echo -en "\e]P7eee8d5"
    echo -en "\e]P4268bd2"
    echo -en "\e]P3b58900"
    echo -en "\e]PFfdf6e3"
    echo -en "\e]PD6c71c4"
    clear
fi

Extend dmenu

There is a nice extension of the launcher dmenu, which gives you fuzzy file completion capabilities: dmenu-extended. I just installed it with aur sync dmenu-extended-git && sudo pacman -S dmenu-extended-git. Then, in i3/config, add: bindsym $mod+d exec --no-startup-id dmenu_extended_run to bind it to Mod+d.

Enable periodic TRIM for the SSD

Enables periodically sending the ATA_TRIM command to the SSD, increasing long-term performance and reducing wear. To do so, enable the corresponding service: sudo systemctl enable fstrim.timer.

Reduce the size of log files

Edit /etc/systemd/journald.conf changing SystemMaxUse to something like 200M.

Disable spectre and similar mitigations

Use Linux kernel parameter mitigations=off by setting it, e.g., in /etc/default/grub using variable GRB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.