XFCE is a more lightweight Desktop Environment (or Common Environment) and it will use less RAM and CPU, which are able to make my laptop battery life longer (about 8~12 hours for normal use).

XFCE is clean and easy to customize. You can install lots of plugins for XFCE and make it like Gnome or KDE but have less CPU use than Gnome and KDE. And it is cleaner as well.

Install

Note. It is not necessary and recommended installing xorg independently looking forward to lightweight. Some packages from xorg group would install automatically as the dependent packages of XFCE

# pacman -S xfce4 to install XFCE. It is NOT recommended that you can # echo "exec startxfce4" >> /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to start xfce4 in the next boot and ignore step 3. It is highly recommended installing a display manager (DM) to start your system because DM will start your system more proper and create a user locker for log in as well.

# pacman -S lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter light-locker to install this recommended lightweight DM, then # systemctl enable lightdm to let lightdm start automatically when you boot your system. You can also choose your DM. P.S. lightdm is the main DM, lightdm-gtk-greeter is for configuring your lightdm, light-loceker is for that you can lock your screen with your settings.

Config

System

• AUR manager: yay

  • download snapshot, $ makepkg, $ sudo pacman -U *.pkg.tar.zst

• Gnome Keyring: gnome-keyring

• Power Management: tlp, tlp-rdw

• Network Management: network-manager-applet, networkmanager-openconnect (because of some bug, 1.2.8 is recommended)

• Folder Management: gvfs, gvfs-mtp for mobile connection, thunar-archive-plugin file-roller for compress function

  • edit > Configure custom actions > open terminal here: exo-open --working-directory %f --launch TerminalEmulator > xfce4-terminal --tab --drop-down --working-directory=%f

• Resource Monitor: xfce4-taskmanager

• Terminal: xfce4-terminal --drop-down

• Light-locker: /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf:

  [greeter]
  background=/usr/share/backgrounds/xfce/Laterano.png
  #user-background=
  theme-name=Adwaita-dark
  icon-theme-name=ePapirus-Dark
  font-name=Ubuntu 11
  xft-antialias=1
  xft-dpi=128
  xft-hintstyle=hintfull
  xft-rgba=none
  

• Desktop

  • HiDPI: Application - Settings - Appearance : DPI 128
  • Fonts: ttf-ubuntu-font-family, ttf-fira-code, noto-fonts noto-fonts-cjk noto-fonts-emoji
  • Icons: papirus-icon-theme

Media

Sound

• Basis: pipewire-pulse pipewire-alsa pipewire-jack pipewire alsa-utils

• GUI: xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin, pavucontrol

• Noise suppression: noise-suppression-for-voice:

  • ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/99-input-denoising.conf, then $ systemctl restart --user pipewire.service:

    context.modules = [
    {   name = libpipewire-module-filter-chain
        args = {
            node.description =  "Noise Canceling source"
            media.name =  "Noise Canceling source"
            filter.graph = {
                nodes = [
                    {
                        type = ladspa
                        name = rnnoise
                        plugin = /usr/lib/ladspa/librnnoise_ladspa.so
                        label = noise_suppressor_mono
                        control = {
                            "VAD Threshold (%)" = 50.0
                            "VAD Grace Period (ms)" = 200
                            "Retroactive VAD Grace (ms)" = 0
                        }
                    }
                ]
            }
            capture.props = {
                node.name =  "capture.rnnoise_source"
                node.passive = true
                audio.rate = 48000
            }
            playback.props = {
                node.name =  "rnnoise_source"
                media.class = Audio/Source
                audio.rate = 48000
            }
        }
    }
    ]
    

• Music Player: audacious

Video

• Video Player: vlc
• Recording & Steaming: obs-studio
• Edit: flowblade

Image

• Screenshot: flameshot
• Edit: krita inkscape
• View: ristretto

Work

Input

• Method: fcitx5

  • Basis: fcitx5-im fcitx5-chinese-addons

  • GUI: fcitx5-nord

  • /etc/environment:

    GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx
    QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx
    XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx
    SDL_IM_MODULE=fcitx
    

Writing

• Code: code
• Paper: zoteroAUR
• Blog: hugo

Social

• Email: evolution evolution-on
• Chat: telegram-desktop discord
• Meeting: zoomAUR

Game

• Steam: steam

  enable multilib: /etc/pacman.conf - [multilib] - uncomment Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist refresh: $ sudo pacman -Syy