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Essential software for new systems

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Automaattinen sisällysluettelo / Automatically generated Table of Contents

Security

  • microcode - propietary, but otherwise CPU holes are going to be gaping open. Refer to tail -n +1 /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/*
    • Debian calls this as amd64-microcode or intel-microcode
    • Arch knows them as amd-ucode or intel-ucode and won’t load it for you, you will have to initrd /intel-ucode.img yourself instantly after linux and before initrd /initramfs-linux-lts.img…
  • ufw for Deb-based or firewalld on Fedora (and Kali and Arch Linux, if you so choose in the last)
  • sshguard for mitigating shared systems where others refuse to use keys
  • needrestart for knowing when updates actually require services to be restarted or a kernel upgrade happens and requires reboot
    • Arch users may prefer checkservices from archlinux-contrib
  • molly-guard so you won’t accidentally reboot or poweroff production rather than local machine.
  • apt-listchanges changelogs are worth knowing when updating.
  • apt-listbugs known bugs are especially nice when performing bigger updates.
  • chrony - security demands the time to be correct, Chrony supports NTS and is proper NTP server instead of just SNTP like systemd-timesyncd.
    • alternatively configure systemd-timesyncd
  • unbound - my choice for both DNSSEC validating and DNS-over-TLS, even if I had it connect to upstream dns[crypt]proxy
    • alternatively configure systemd-resolved. Simultaneously systemd-networkd may be a good idea.
  • unattended-upgrades or dnf-automatic so security updates are at least downloaded if not even directly installed (see configuration and systemd units!)
    • if dnf-automatic, consider sudo systemctl enable dnf-automatic-install.{timer,service} or at least sudo systemctl enable dnf-automatic-download.{timer,service}

Usability

  • nvim git tmux zsh mosh - good luck without these
  • if cryptographic operations are taking ages, consider something like haveged. It’s controversial, so if there are no issues, don’t install a random number generator.
  • userspace oom killer, may avoid frozen systems, much more pleasant than actually having to deal with a frozen system.
  • thermald for additional help keeping system cool, especially intel
    • sudo systemctl enable --now thermald
  • vnstat - help for observing bandwidth usage
  • yggdrasil - essential for getting through Carrier Grade NAT whether there is IPv6 or not. Also gives static internal IPv6 reducing need for dynamic DNS.
  • tlp - for laptop power management, especially ThinkPad.
    • sudo tlp-stat | less
    • sudo systemctl enable --now tlp
  • zram - for compressing RAM and getting a bit more breathing room before userspace oom killer hits.
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install zram-generator zram-generator-defaults
    • Debian: sudo apt install systemd-zram-generator
    • To check that it works zramctl. May take a while after sudo systemctl reload or a reboot.

pipx

pipx automatically creates virtualenvs and is basically a package manager for apps written in Python. Here is a small list to remember in no particular order.

  • (pipx install "git+https://github.com/fsfe/reuse-tool.git")
    • Refer to n/reuse, development version. Package manager version is generally good enough.
  • pipx install "git+https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp.git"
    • Downloader for multiple online video services, development version.
  • pipx install xkcdpass
    • correct horse battery stable needs no introduction, the possibilities are nearly endless with xkcdpas --help. E.g.
      • xkcdpass --wordfile eff-long,fin-kotus --valid-chars '[a-z]' --delimiter ',' --case random
      • UNLAWFUL,OPPIRAHAT,astonish,ruvettua,JOUTAVA,pultti
  • (pipx install pre-commit)
    • Synced pre-commit hooks for git, probably in all my repositories by now. However I would install it from system package manager instead.
  • pipx install "git+https://github.com/aajanki/yle-dl"
    • Downloader for {areena,arenan}.yle.fi, Finnish public broadcaster web portal.
  • pipx install "git+https://github.com/syncplay/syncplay.git"
    • Client (and server) for synchronising playback of a file. All parties need the same file, but seeking, playing and pausing are synchronized. Mpv recommended!

Just remember to pipx upgrade-all occassionally!

Fedora Atomic

By which I mean Fedora Kinoite unless otherwise specified. A system where everyone runs the same image, except that as this section shows, I alter it a bit…

# Alter base image by adding packages I need on the base system
sudo rpm-ostree install btop clang darkman duperemove gamescope git-lfs gnome-console htop mosh mpv neovim pipx pre-commit sshguard steam-devices symlinks syncthing terminus-fonts-console tmux tor unbound zsh
# Delete kernel boot arguments that would display boot splash screen and hide verbose kernel messages
sudo rpm-ostree kargs --delete=rhgb --delete=quiet
# Add kernel boot arguments for stricter lockdown mode and CPU vulnerability mitigation
sudo rpm-ostree kargs --append=lockdown=confidentiality --append=mitigations=auto,nosmt

Flatpaks

These also affect non-Fedora-Kinoite for which my first production installation was on Steam Deck and upon learning of flatpak uninstall --all, this section got out of paw so it got cut a bit.

Always remember that you don’t paste commands to terminal directly, use a text editor in the middle instead!

# Considering everything is installed from there, it should exist
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
# I need Nheko
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists nheko-nightly https://nheko.im/nheko-reborn/nheko/-/raw/master/nheko-nightly.flatpakrepo

Communication

sudo flatpak install --assumeyes nheko-nightly im.nheko.Nheko//master
sudo flatpak install --assumeyes im.dino.Dino org.briarproject.Briar org.signal.Signal org.squidowl.halloy org.telegram.desktop
  • Dino is a modern XMPP client
  • Briar is a P2P messenger using Tor or LAN, no bluetooth on desktop yet?
  • Signal is E2EE messenger
  • Halloy is a modern IRC client
  • Telegram is a common chat-app although not that secure
  • Nheko nightly is simply the best Matrix client

Gayming

sudo flatpak install --assumeyes flathub com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl com.valvesoftware.Steam com.valvesoftware.Steam.CompatibilityTool.Proton-GE net.davidotek.pupgui2
# Note branch numbers for Heroic Games!
sudo flatpak install --assumeyes org.freedesktop.Platform.VulkanLayer.MangoHud//23.08 org.freedesktop.Platform.VulkanLayer.gamescope//23.08
  • HeroicGames supports GOG and Epic Games (and Amazon)
  • Steam needs no explanation
  • Proton GE is improved version of Proton, the WINE based compatibility layer for playing Windows games and probably needs no introduction either
  • ProtonUp allows downloading newer versions of Proton including Proton GE, in flatpaks it’s mainly useful for either SteamOS users or Heroic Games which might actually have its integrated manager…
  • MangoHud and gamescope can be used by Heroic Games or manually in Steam (see gayming README below), but they might require specific version or branch, so after the dualslash change the branch from 23.08 if they decide to update to require a newer version.

General purpose

sudo flatpak install --assumeyes flathub com.github.tchx84.Flatseal com.github.wwmm.easyeffects com.nextcloud.desktopclient.nextcloud com.rafaelmardojai.Blanket de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave it.mijorus.gearlever me.kozec.syncthingtk org.fedoraproject.MediaWriter org.pulseaudio.pavucontrol org.qbittorrent.qBittorrent org.torproject.torbrowser-launcher org.mozilla.firefox org.videolan.VLC
  • Flatseal is a permission/override manager GUI, although one is integrated with KDE Plasma systemsettings
  • Easyeffects features autogain, limiter, equalizer amongst other useful audio features. I wasn’t sure whether to include it here, but I do autostart it most of the time…
  • NextCloud is selfhosted Google/Office/whatever suite and the desktop client is kind of Dropbox.
  • Blanket gives nice sounds for e.g. focusing, white and nature noise inclued
  • Shortwave is Radio Browser using Internet Radio app and woof approves having it at paw
  • Gearlever makes appimages less annoying a bit
  • Syncthing-gtk is a GUI for syncthing providing desktop notifications without browser.
  • Spread the love of Fedora Kinoite by having Fedora Imagewriter!
  • pavucontrol is the volume manager and needs no introduction especially if one looks at it
  • qBittorrent just is the best way to download Linux images since the Fedora Media Writer doesn’t use P2P and may be a burden for servers, while it does have the capacity to write any image and also restore the USB stick afterwards.
  • Tor Browser just must exist everywhere just in case!
  • Firefox is the last major non-Chromium web browser and while installed by default, it may not survive flatpak uninstall --all.
  • VLC is a world-famous media player supporting ~everything and the flathub apparently bundles libdvdcss having the capacity to play DVDs.

Office

sudo flatpak install --assumeyes flathub org.libreoffice.LibreOffice org.libreoffice.LibreOffice.BundledExtension.Voikko
# May be huge, especially TeXlive
sudo flatpak install --assumeyes flathub org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.texlive org.kde.kile
  • LibreOffice is world-famous office suite
  • Voikko is Finnish spellchecking support for it

Other essential atomic/kinoite/flatpak/gayming reading

  • init-browser-policies.bash for setting up Firefox policies. It’s shipped by default in Kinoite, otherwise I would list it above.
  • gayming/README.md for earlier or other notes that didn’t fit here or I don’t want to duplicate then.

Essential system configuration

Since software being present and doing nothing may not actually do anything.

Debian console

  • sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
    • ensure UTF-8 and select Terminus
  • sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
    • compose key

Terminus on Fedora

After installing the package, adjust /etc/vconsole.conf e.g.:

KEYMAP="fi"
FONT="ter-v16v"

Maybe sudo updatedb and locate ter-v16v at first though?

Terminus on Arch Linux

See Fedora, but change the FONT to "ter-132b" instead.

SSD

  • sudo systemctl enable --now fstrim.timer
  • check that /etc/fstab has noatime so every file access isn’t written to the disk. BTRFS filesystems should also have ssd flag.
    • NEVER ENABLE atime, relatime or norelatime under the threat of suffering especially on BTRFS. I have been doing fine without it for years, it will not help any issue, unless you want read operations to cause writes and eat space…

BTRFS

  • The above applies, /etc/fstab must have noatime.
  • compress=zstd:0 may be helpful. It enables zstd compression, which is an integrated feature of BTRFS, with the default compression level (3 at the time of writing). The BTRFS devs are most likely wiser than me and can provide a reasonable balance between efficiency and CPU use.
    • Alternatively compress-force=zstd:0 may be used, but that might bring extra CPU usage in compressing what cannot be compressed.
      • Test on Lumina: 20G free -> 24G free.
    • The compression will happen either the next time the file is written or can be manually triggered through sudo btrfs filesystem defragment -r "$PWD"
  • For swapfiles on btrfs partition, e.g. btrfs filesystem mkswapfile --size 8G /swap

Swap

8 GB everywhere may be enough,

summarizing Gentoo.

No swap partition and swap file is acceptable (consider SSD)? See above for btrfs or as root

fallocate -l 8G /swap
chmod 600 /swap
mkswap /swap
swapon /swap

The /etc/fstab rule is: /swap none swap sw 0 0 and then it’s just a matter of sudo swapon -a

sudo

Consider these:

# Thanks Tails
Defaults timestamp_timeout=0
Defaults pwfeedback
Defaults lecture = always

Additionally Arch Linux should consider either

# Allow full sudo access to the group which is uncommented. The first is
# Debian.
#%sudoers ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
# Defaults to passwordless sudo on Debian.
#%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

systemd presets

You are practically guaranteed horrible time especially on Debian, unless /etc/systemd/system-preset has a whatever.preset saying disable * as some distributions consider it a good idea to autostart every installed service by default. I am unsure on whether this requires sudo systemctl daemon-reload to apply.

To return to the preset state of nothing autostarting, execute the dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing command sudo systemctl preset-all.

Debian

Remember to install apt-transport-tor!

sources.list

The mirror to use is https://deb.debian.org/debian.

/etc/apt/preferences.d/whatever

# Copied from https://www.wireguard.com/install/ (2020-01-11)
# Default priority appears to be 500, so 90 results to unstable being
# used when the package is not available anywhere else
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 90

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable-debug
Pin-Priority: 90

sshd

If nothing else, please at least

# ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N "" -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key

LogLevel VERBOSE
PermitRootLogin prohibit-password
PasswordAuthentication no
AuthenticationMethods publickey

Encrypted DNS

/etc/xdg/autostart

Not having terminal autostarting for all users is pain.

[Desktop Entry]
Terminal=true
Exec=kgx --command="bash --norc -c tmux"
Name=Tmux in Console
Icon=org.gnome.Console

aminda-*.{service,socket}

They workaround either me or the distribution messing things up. While at it, don’t forget /etc/sysctl.d

Remember!

Not quite configuration, but I am not going to start inventing a new place for it.

Accessing UEFI setup without key smashing

  • systemd: there is a systemctl reboot --firmware-setup (spotted here)
  • Plasma: in systemsettings section desktop session there is a checkbox to after next boot, enter UEFI settings (via reply to that)
  • Windows allows access to UEFI by pressing Shift while reboot (said here) or simply shutdown -r -t 1 -fw twice (said here).
  • GNOME: in the reboot after 60 seconds menu, hold alt to get into boot options (said here)
  • In boot loader the command fwsetup should take you there (said here). And anyone using either grub or systemd-bootd has probably seen the menu entry.
  • efibootmgr: efibootmgr —bootnext 0000 && reboot (said or implied here)

Recovering selinux policy issues

  • The Fedora advice is sudo fixfiles -B onboot, but that didn’t assist me.
  • Boot with flags enforcing=0 autorelabel to temporarily have permissive mode and automatic fixing.
  • What actually worked was booting with enforcing=0 and sudo restorecon -R /

Removing all flatpaks

sudo flatpak uninstall --all --assumeyes

Now that overwhelmingly sinking into them has been resolved, you can reinstall a lot of them and feel overwhelmed again!