19.3 – March release

new calamares – no swap
new arc themes
sardi ARc + new icons
new lock theme
grub ArcoLinux vimix theme
plasma lightdm
plasma settings
Deepin tutorials
plank lesser icons
17 new plank themes
SUPER + T = urxvt
TP-TROLL conky
fun script bonsai
general improvements
future efforts
Stay rolling

The 19.03 edition is all about theming

Grub theme
New login theme
New wallpapers
New lock screen
New icons
New Arc themes
New conky
New fun script

And a new CALAMARES with the possibility NOT to use SWAP.

And Plasma improvement.

And Deepin tutorials.

Calamares new version – rebranding – iso improvement

Since we have a new calamares version (3.2.4) we took a look at improving the iso and the packages of Calamares.

The most important change for the end-user is the the possibility NOT TO USE SWAP.

Or to use a

tiny amount of swap (no hibernate) or
use the swap as we were used to (with hibernate)

(see images)

You will also notice that the live-iso boots up faster that its predecessors.
Measured in Virtualbox around 5 minutes for ArcoLinux and 2,5 minutes for ArcoLinuxD.

Under the hood there are many changes in the iso and in calamares and its configs.

New arc themes based on Nico Hood github

We have created all our Arc themes plus Aqua and Pink on the basis of the github of Nico Hood.

The result can be installed on your system with

sudo pacman -S arcolinux-arc-themes-nico-git

and replaces arcolinux-arc-themes.

Read more here.

Sardi-arc as standard icon theme

Since theming was one of the goals this month we thought a more colorful icon theme will be better suitable to go with the new theming.

As always you can change it at will.

Sardi and surfn are mixed with the mint-y icons

Following a what-if I have created 7 new packages you can install via AUR.

It combines the Mint-Y icon theme from Linux Mint aka horst3180 (Arc theme and icons) with the core Sardi icons and Surfn. More info here.

Changed the lock theme

In the spirit of restyling we also changed the lock screen to one of the 19 choices that we have always provided on ArcoLinux. Good to know that there are many other choices.

Added our grub arcolinux vimix theme to the iso

In the spirit of restyling we also added a grub theme that we were developing together with the developer of vimix. See article for more info.

Plasma lightdm

Since the ArcoLinux iso has a new welcome screen, we update the welcome screen for Plasma as well.

Plasma settings

We took a look at the settings of Plasma to set the missing elements that we so love having around on our other desktops. For example our keyboard shortcuts. Let us give a summary of all the changes.

sardi-arc theme is now standard
numix-theme is installed
no splash screen so we boot up faster
gtk theme has been set to sardi-arc
desktop effects : desktop cube
desktop effects : wobbly effects
desktop effects : grid effect
4 virtual desktops in 2 rows with slide effect
30+ keyboard shortcuts – same as on other desktops
start with empty session on next boot

In the other video we see Plasma on SSD (that one has the wobbly effect – virtual box will not) and we go over the same content but this time we check the files that are coming to your system via /etc/skel. A more technical approach and a way to look at the source of all the plasma settings.Talking about skel and bupskel.

deepin tutorials

There are already 16 tutorials about Deepin. More to follow.

Follow this link to see them.

Plank has less icons

We decided to show less icons on the plank and show you icons that most people are likely to use.

All the other great applications you will have to explore them in the menu meld, inkscape, gimp, …

17 new plank themes have been added

We have added 17 new themes to the plank themes package after creating a new version of the numixx plank theme.

We have 101 plank themes to choose from.

super +t = urxvt

Since we have Seedhost to host our isos and repositories, I have noticed that communicating with a server is best done via urxvt. Therefore we changed the keyboard shortcut Super + T to be a fixed shortcut for urxvt.

We start by changing this in Xfce and will gradually move through all desktops.

You will still be able to launch termite with :

CTRL + ALT + T = termite

SUPER + RETURN = termite

CTRL + ALT + RETURN = termite

TP-TRoll is the new conky

We have added a new conky to your system. Select and use. If you want to know more how it was created or how to add a conky to your ArcoLinux system then you can find an article here.

Fun script of the month – bonsai

The bonsai script comes from John Allbritten at https://gitlab.com/jallbrit/bonsai.sh and as such the copyright is his but also all the questions.

To learn more about the script type bonsai –help in your terminal.

Update your system and type skel in your terminal.

General improvements

Applications removed

hplip has been removed from the iso.

Every single time the package updated, we had/have to run the hardcode-fixer to change the icon.

Users can install this package with “sudo pacman -S hplip”.

Applications ADDED

the platinum searcher bin is a great tool to search within the content of your files. It became useful once catfish could no longer give me this functionality.

Xmonad gets an alternative menu called xmobar

Thanks to Nick (ArcoLinux team) and krive001(on Discord) we were able to quickly develop a xmobar version for ArcoLinux. The intention is never to include the system icons in this one. The polybar version of Xmonad has the system icons. This is mainly done for stability reasons and for the design.

Since we now have two distinct possibilities and also two distinct xmonad configurations, we created three new packages

arcolinux-config-xmobar-git
arcolinux-xmonad-polybar-git
arcolinux-xmonad-xmobar-git

The package arcolinux-xmonad-git will disappear over time and is replaced by arcolinux-xmonad-polybar-git.

If you switch between menu’s polybar or xmobar, pacman will remove the other menu since both use the same folder and files. It will install the packages it needs.

Then you do a skel and logout and login and the menu has changed.

If on ArcoLinuxD or ArcoLinuxB you will see that there are more packages required now in order for the menu of Xmobar to work. Install also