Introducing the MatterLinux config manager
06/05/24
It has been a (lazy) month since the latest release - and here we are with the new 24.04 release! And I a got some new cool stuff for you, so let’s get started.
MatterLinux configuration manager
I wrote a new tool, which allow you to install easily install configuration files (a.k.a. dotfiles). You see, I always wanted to ship a customized environment with MatterLinux. The only way to do that was to ship all the packages with a custom default configuration. However there is two problems with this:
- It’s really hard to find and modify default configuration files for all the packages I want to modify, and some of the packages don’t even ship a default configuration.
- Some users may prefer the out-of-the-box configurations instead of the custom configurations.
To solve this problem I decided to ship configuration packages. Well the problem with that is
I cannot do that with mp, as the most of these programs require configurations to be installed to
current user’s home directory. Well, instead of expanding mp, I created a new tool: MatterLinux configuration
manager or mc.
Yeah I really suck at naming things.
Anyway, mc is now in the desktop repo, to learn more about it, check out this new wiki page.
But this brings a new problem to the table. How do I ship different configs? Well, this brings us to the next
topic…
Config Hub!
I added a new section to MatterLinux’s website, called config hub.
It like a list of official configuration packages, that you can install with mc. Currently there is only
one config, and it’s called “messier87”. It’s an i3 window manager configuration, but I plan to add more
to the list.
Also if you are good at ricing, consider creating your own configurations and create a pull request to add them to the cofig hub.
Other stuff
- Since last month I added 50 more packages to the desktop repo, mostly python packages which are were required for polybar.
- I added colors to xcfg. With the new xcfg 24.07, you should get a better visual experience.
- Updated kernel to 6.7
What’s next?
I talked about a huge change to he one of the core system components last time. Well, that change is pretty much cancelled. So instead I might (maybe, IDK) work on the installer. Or I may work package other configurations for the config hub. And, yeah, I will also expand the repos, adding more desktop environment stuff.
So that will be it for now. See you in the next post!