↓ Skip to main content
Lazy notes

Kubuntu XPS installation

·1068 words·6 mins
Hardware Linux
Table of Contents

Installation
#

Note

Before installing, it is necessary to modify some UEFI Settings. They can be accessed with F2 when booting.

  • Change the SATA Mode from the default “RAID” to “AHCI”. This will allow Linux to detect the NVMe SSD.
  • Disable Secure Boot.

Other useful settings:

  • Turn off Intel TurboBoost - that usually the main cause of thermal throttling.
  • Turn on “Intel Speed Step” - downscale CPU clock and voltage when idling
  • Turn off “Intel Speed Shift Technology” - does not play nicely when “Intel Speed Step” is enabled.

Partitions
#

  • EFI System partition(fat32) /boot/efi - 512MiB
  • Root partition(xfs) / ~100GiB
  • Rest is /home - xfs and swap partition(at least double amount of installed memory)

Fix ext4 settings
#

Source: Essential and strongly recommended things to do directly after a Kubuntu 24.04 LTS installation

Make sure that you don’t use discard option for ext4 on SSD - use defaults instead, because a systemd timer for fstrim is already running.

To not do both is recommended by e.g. Red Hat and the ArchWiki (and openSUSE, Debian or Ubuntu’s main distribution also do not do it)!

Furthermore, Red Hat and SUSE(openSUSE) also recommend in general to use a fstrim.timer instead of the discard option (and Fedora, Debian or Ubuntu’s main distribution also use fstrim.timer instead) - except for special cases.

If you are unlucky, using the discard option in /etc/fstab may decrease the SSD’s lifetime and can lead to performance degradation. Also fstrim can behave unpredictably when the “discard” option is additionally set…

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.orig
sudo sed -i '/ext4/ s/discard/defaults/' /etc/fstab

Mount with “noatime”, “nodiratime”
#

Mounting your partitions with the options noatime and nodiratime will stop timestamp writes when you read files and folders. These timestamp writes are not generally required unless you use a local mail server client such as mutt.

For example:

UUID=49E1-D264                            /boot/efi      vfat    defaults   0 2
UUID=bc47366e-1ae0-463d-8f54-e9681cc975bf /              xfs     defaults,noatime,nodiratime   0 1
UUID=afba86b8-14ab-43d0-835e-b258fabf2e8b /home          xfs     defaults,noatime,nodiratime   0 2
UUID=f9ded650-ae18-4816-a9eb-e296a1423c3d swap           swap    defaults   0 0
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

Zabbly Kernel
#

https://github.com/zabbly/linux#installation

Kernel settings
#

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="mitigations=off nvidia-drm.modeset=1 mem_sleep_default=deep scsi_mod.use_blk_mq=1"
  • mitigations=off - disable all optional CPU mitigations. This improves system performance, but it may also expose users to several CPU vulnerabilities.
  • nvidia-drm.modeset=1 - enable the DRIVER_MODESET capability flag in the nvidia-drm devices so that DRM clients can use the various modesetting APIs. In addition to allowing clients that talk to the low-level DRM interface to work, it’s also necessary for some PRIME-related interoperability features.
  • mem_sleep_default=deep - by default, the very inefficient s2idle suspend variant is selected, which consumes a large amount of power.

Last setting scsi_mod.use_blk_mq=1 is setting different I/O scheduler.

I/O schedulers in Linux are responsible for managing read and write data operations that go in and out of the SSD. The default scheduler on most Linux distributions is the Completely Fair Queuing (CFQ) scheduler, which isn’t suitable for SSD.

The most suitable schedulers for the SSD are the deadline and noop schedulers. However, various I/O schedulers such as none, bfq, and mq-deadline show minimal capacity differences for fast multi-queue SSD or NVME devices. In these cases, it could be preferable to use none as the I/O scheduler to minimize CPU overhead. This option maximizes system performance by reducing pointless processing, thereby utilizing the SSD’s built-in speed.

Reduce swappiness for desktop installations
#

As it’s suggested by https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#What_is_swappiness_and_how_do_I_change_it.3F[Ubuntu].

echo -e "# Reduce swappiness for desktop installation (default = 60)\nvm.swappiness=10" | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysswappiness.conf

Reduce systemd timeouts for desktop installations
#

So, the system will not “hang” for 90 seconds and longer from time to time when logging out, rebooting or shutting down.

KDE suggests for Plasma in their https://community.kde.org/Distributions/Packaging_Recommendations#Systemd_configuration[Distributions/Packaging Recommendations].

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system.conf.d && echo -e "# Reduce timeout (default = 90s)\n\n[Manager]\nDefaultTimeoutStopSec=15s" | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system.conf.d/99-systemtimeout.conf
sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/user.conf.d && echo -e "# Reduce timeout (default = 90s)\n\n[Manager]\nDefaultTimeoutStopSec=15s" | sudo tee /etc/systemd/user.conf.d/99-usertimeout.conf

Terminal font
#

  • install Terminus font:
sudo apt install xfonts-terminus
  • configure font:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
  • configure GRUB(/etc/default/grub):
GRUB_TERMINAL=gfxterm
GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
sudo update-grub

Software
#

PipeWire: Disable HSP/HFP profile
#

💡Disable PipeWire HSP/HFP profile

mkdir -p ~/.config/wireplumber/bluetooth.lua.d/
cp /usr/share/wireplumber/bluetooth.lua.d/50-bluez-config.lua ~/.config/wireplumber/bluetooth.lua.d/
...
bluez_monitor.properties = {
  ...
  ["bluez5.headset-roles"] = "[ ]",
  ...
  ["bluez5.hfphsp-backend"] = "none",
}
...
bluez_monitor.rules = {
  {
    ...
    apply_properties = {
      ...
      ["bluez5.auto-connect"] = "[ a2dp_sink ]",
      ...
       ["bluez5.hw-volume"] = "[ a2dp_sink ]",
    },
    ...
  },
}

Homebrew
#

💡 More info about Homebrew on linux could be found https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux[here].

sudo apt-get install build-essential procps curl file git

Then follow installation instructions on https://brew.sh/

ZSH
#

sudo apt install zsh

# Make zsh default shell
chsh -s $(which zsh)
# Logout

Oh My Zsh
#

https://ohmyz.sh/#install[https://ohmyz.sh/#install]

Use most as a pager for man
#

sudo apt install most

Add to ~/.zshrc

export MANPAGER="/usr/bin/most -s"

Install Gruvbox color theme
#

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sbugzu/gruvbox-zsh/master/gruvbox.zsh-theme > ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/themes/gruvbox.zsh-theme
  • Set in ~/.zshrc:
ZSH_THEME="gruvbox"
SOLARIZED_THEME="dark"
  • Download and install Nerd Font: https://nerdfonts.com/
  • Copy: Gruvbox color scheme into ~/.local/share/konsole/gruvbox.colorscheme
  • Edit current profile in Konsole -> Appearance. Select Gruvbox color scheme and 3270Medium Nerd Font Mono

ZSH settings
#

~/.zshrc


export MANPAGER="/usr/bin/most -s"

# https://github.com/homeport/dyff
export KUBECTL_EXTERNAL_DIFF="dyff between --omit-header --set-exit-code --truecolor on"

function git-main-diff () {
    CURRENT_BRANCH=`git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD`
    echo "\e[0;31mDouble check that ${CURRENT_BRANCH} is rebased on main!\e[0m"
    COMMITS=`git log --oneline ${CURRENT_BRANCH} ^main | wc -l`
    echo "${CURRENT_BRANCH} diff with main: ${COMMITS}"
}

function git-master-diff () {
    CURRENT_BRANCH=`git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD`
    echo "\e[0;31mDouble check that ${CURRENT_BRANCH} is rebased on master!\e[0m"
    COMMITS=`git log --oneline ${CURRENT_BRANCH} ^master | wc -l`
    echo "${CURRENT_BRANCH} diff with master: ${COMMITS}"
}


function git-squash () {
    git reset --soft HEAD~$1 && git commit
}

HIST_STAMPS="yyyy-mm-dd"

plugins=(git brew ssh-agent poetry yarn kubectl kubectx)

alias gw="./gradlew"
alias gw-updates="./gradlew dependencyUpdates --refresh-dependencies -Drevision=release"
alias java-flags="java -XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -version"

eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

Midnight Commander
#

sudo apt install mc

Edit ~/.config/mc/ini:

skin=modarin256-defbg-thin

Edit /root/.config/mc/ini:

skin=modarin256root-defbg-thin

SSH key
#

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your_email@example.com"

Git
#

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa
sudo apt install git git-lfs git-man

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "youremail@yourdomain.com"

git config --global core.autocrlf input

# You can use an existing SSH key to sign commits and tags
git config --global gpg.format ssh
git config --global user.signingkey /home/USERNAME/.ssh/id_ed25519
# To sign all commits by default
git config --global commit.gpgsign true

Insync
#

https://www.insynchq.com/downloads/linux#apt[https://www.insynchq.com/downloads/linux#apt]

KeePassXC
#

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phoerious/keepassxc
sudo apt update
sudo apt install keepassxc

Java
#

Podman
#

systemctl --user enable podman.socket --now

~/.zshrc

export DOCKER_HOST="unix://$(podman info -f "{{.Host.RemoteSocket.Path}}")"