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Ubuntu Install

The installer.sh script is current very experimental and could brick your install so be careful using it. To use the installer script:

./installer.sh <desktop|laptop>

Supply either desktop or laptop as the argument to the installer. Otherwise, you can run each script individually.

Desktop Setup Information

Installing Ubuntu on a desktop with these scripts is a little different. I currently use cinnamon instead of xmonad on my desktop.

Nvidia Graphics Card Issues - Booting to Black Screen with Ubuntu 16.04 and LUKS

It seems that the Nvidia proprietary drivers screw up booting into the splash screen irrepairably. This likely won't bother you much if you don't use LUKS (I'm guessing since it will just boot through to where it needs to be anyway) but for those of us who do, disabling the splash screen is the only way I have found to be able to enter your password in and continue booting.

To fix this problem change splash to nosplash in your GRUB config and run sudo update-grub to lock in the changes.

If you've found yourself in a situation where you are booting into a black screen and don't know how to fix it:

Push right shift a bunch of times until you get to the GRUB boot selection screen
Select your installation and press e
Scroll down until you see a place where it says quiet splash
Erase quiet splash and put either nomodeset or nvidia.modeset=0 - If one doesn't work try the other (this isn't a permanent change)
You should be able to boot into your install far enough to ctrl + alt + fN (where N is 1 - 6) into a virtual terminal so you can make the above nosplash change to your GRUB config permanent

An additional script fixplymouth.sh was included here for archiving purposes. This script did not work for me, but it may work for your install. If you want to keep the splash screen, try running fixplymouth.sh first.

Laptop Setup Information

By running the installer it wipes a complete install and turns it into something more minimal and less resource intensive. An alternative would've been to start with the Ubuntu minimal disk and work up, but the full Ubuntu ISO comes with some conveniences that I wanted to keep. Kit includes:

Compton
Xmonad
Dmenu
Lemonbar
Urxvt
Physlock
feh
zsh

It also substitutes Ubuntu's stock media players with less resource intensive alternatives such as mplayer and ffmpeg.

NOTE: After rebooting you will boot into a black screen. See the section on GRUB for details. To get to a login screen press ctrl + alt + f1 and login normally.

X Server

To start Xmonad simply type startx at the tty.

Make sure Xresources and Xinitrc are symlinked properly in your home directory. If you have any problems getting Xmonad to start, check the logs, and then those two files.

To Kill the server at any time press alt + shift + q.

Xmonad Hotkeys

Here are some hotkeys to get you started:

mod4 + shift + q: Kill X server
mod4 + q: Recompile Xmonad
mod4 + w: Move window up
mod4 + s: Move window down
mod4 + a: Move window left
mod4 + d: Move window right
mod4 + enter: Spawn a new window
mod4 + space: Launch dmenu
mod4 + h: Shift focus left
mod4 + j: Shift focus down
mod4 + k: Shift focus up
mod4 + l: Shift focus right
mod4 + <1...9>: Change to nth workspace
mod4 + t: Retile windows
mod4 + shift + c: Close currently focused window

GRUB Changes

A small change has to be applied to stop Ubuntu from booting into a non-existent display manager's login screen:

Type sudo nano /etc/default/grub
Find GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Replace (2) with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"
Run sudo upgrade-grub

This will force Ubuntu to boot into a tty. To start Ubuntu type startx in any tty.

Changing Desktop Backgrounds

Inside of ~/.xinitrc is a line that starts with feh. Change the image being passed into this to change the desktop background. Kill the xserver with alt + shift + q and startx again.

TODO

Have installer script git clone essentials and symlink everything correctly.
Have installer automatically modify the grub config to set up text login mode.

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