helpers?

In the article "Yaourt is Dead! Use These Alternatives for AUR in Arch Linux" (https://itsfoss.com/best-aur-helpers/), Ambarish Kumar wrote:

So, how do you use AUR then? Well, you need a different tool to install software from AUR. Arch’s package manager pacman doesn’t support it directly. These ‘special tools’ are called AUR helpers.

Actually, it isn't really necessary to use "AUR helpers" to install software from the Arch User Repository (AUR). The manual build process is laid out at the Arch wiki's "Arch User Repository" page:

Installing packages from the AUR is a relatively simple process. Essentially:

    1. Acquire the build files, including the PKGBUILD and possibly other required files, like systemd units and patches (often not the actual code).
    2. Verify that the PKGBUILD and accompanying files are not malicious or untrustworthy.
    3. Run makepkg -si in the directory where the files are saved. This will download the code, resolve the dependencies with pacman, compile it, package it, and install the package.

However, many users enjoy the convenience of AUR helpers, which are discussed at the Arch wiki's "AUR helpers" page. Note the following warning highlighted and emphasized at the top of the page:

Warning: AUR helpers are not supported by Arch Linux. You should become familiar with the manual build process in order to be prepared to troubleshoot problems.

That page also has some important tables that users should check before choosing an AUR helper to use. Note that yaourt is listed in the "Discontinued or problematic" table.

I don't use much software from the AUR, but I've been using yaourt sometimes, when I don't go with the manual build process. I don't think that yaourt is actually "dead" because there's been some commit activity as recently as this past March (see: https://github.com/archlinuxfr/yaourt). Still, I decided to install aurman to use instead of yaourt, in Arch as well as in Antergos.

aurman is kinda cool in that it employs a lot of the same options as pacman. I didn't find a manpage for aurman, but usage info can be found with the aurman --help command (or with aurman -h).

aurman does seem to work fine here, but I prefer to use the manual build process for installing AUR packages, and for installing newer versions of those packages. I'll continue to use aurman for query operations, and maybe for checking for available updates (although it's no big deal to simply check a package's AUR page to see if a newer version is available).

keyring issues

While trying to bring in updates in Antergos the other day (with the pacman -Syu command), I saw the following error messages:

error: antergos-keyring: signature from "Antergos Build Server (Automated Package Build System) " is unknown trust
:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/antergos-keyring-20170524-1-any.pkg.tar.xz is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)).
Do you want to delete it? [Y/n]
error: antergos-mirrorlist: signature from "Antergos Build Server (Automated Package Build System) " is unknown trust
:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/antergos-mirrorlist-20170527-1-any.pkg.tar.xz is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)).
Do you want to delete it? [Y/n]
error: pamac: signature from "Antergos Build Server (Automated Package Build System) " is unknown trust
:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/pamac-4.3.6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)).
Do you want to delete it? [Y/n]

I typed n for "no" at each of those prompts. Result:

error: failed to commit transaction (invalid or corrupted package)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

I got things fixed, but only after having to dig through a few threads at the Antergos forums. Today, I see the issue mentioned in the "Pacman & Package Upgrade" section at the main page of the Antergos forums (at the moment, there's a link to the "Error during updating" thread). Too bad that there wasn't an "official" announcement posted somewhere.

In any case, the commands I used here to fix the problem:

wget http://mirrors.antergos.com/antergos/x86_64/antergos-keyring-20170524-1-any.pkg.tar.xz
sudo pacman -U antergos-keyring-20170524-1-any.pkg.tar.xz
sudo pacman -Scc
sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys
sudo pacman -Syu

The above-mentioned "Error during updating" thread contains posts showing a similar set of commands -- slightly different than what I ended up using here, though:

wget http://mirrors.antergos.com/antergos/x86_64/antergos-keyring-20170524-1-any.pkg.tar.xz
wget http://mirrors.antergos.com/antergos/x86_64/antergos-keyring-20170524-1-any.pkg.tar.xz.sig
pacman-key --verify antergos-keyring-20170524-1-any.pkg.tar.xz.sig
pacman -U antergos-keyring-20170524-1-any.pkg.tar.xz
sudo pacman -Scc
sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys
sudo pacman -Syu

Or, to "skip the sig-check":

wget http://mirrors.antergos.com/antergos/x86_64/antergos-keyring-20170524-1-any.pkg.tar.xz
pacman -U antergos-keyring-20170524-1-any.pkg.tar.xz
sudo pacman -Scc
sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys
sudo pacman -Syu

Good luck, Antergos users!

do it again

Ah, "Let's Do It Again", the song by The Staple Singers that was featured in the 1975 movie of the same name... Groove to that while you read on, if you want to...

Reinstalling can be good. Sometimes ya like to do a Steely Dan and go back, Jack, do it again. A few weeks ago, I reinstalled Antergos, as I wanted to revise the partition setup on the computer where the old Antergos installation was. Going through the process again gave me a system that (I think) is a little nicer than what I had before, and gave me a little better understanding of how Antergos is put together.

I went with Openbox again, but this time decided not to add LXQt, at least for now. But as usual I added a handful of apps and packages that didn't come with the default Openbox installation, and I customized the desktop to my own tastes. Here's a "clean" shot of the desktop, showing the Accessories submenu in the Antegos Applications menu opened up:

Installing Antergos doesn't take nearly as much time and effort as installing its parent distro, Arch Linux. That's nice for folks who want to get a feel for Arch, but it seems to me that the only way to get a "real" Arch system, and to acquire a good understanding of how Arch works, is to do a "real" Arch installation. Those who have done so, I think, will have a better experience with Antergos than those who haven't.

It's important that Antergos users refer back to the Arch wiki, and that they check Arch's home page for announcements prior to pulling in package updates. (Probably wouldn't hurt to glance at Arch's Installation Guide, as well.)

Antergos uses the Arch repos, and as with Arch, repository configuration is done via the /etc/pacman.conf file. There's also an Antergos repo, which by default is listed first in pacman.conf, giving packages from the Antergos repo priority over those from the Arch repos. That's important; one should certainly take a look at man pacman, man pacman.conf, and the Arch wiki's Pacman page for more info. Also informative: The Pacman Home Page at https://www.archlinux.org/pacman/.

Take, for example, a recent announcement posted at the Arch home page: "ca-certificates-utils 20170307-1 upgrade requires manual intervention". Antergos users needed to run the commands listed in that announcement (I did), same as Arch users.

Here's a screenshot that shows, among other things, the result of the paclist antergos command, listing the packages on my system that originate from the Antergos repo:

Note the antergos-repo-priority package. I ran pacman -Qi antergos-repo-priority to see more info:

This line in particular caught my eye:

Description     : Automatically adjusts the priority of the antergos repo in pacman.conf as needed.

Not sure that I want anything happening to my system "automatically"! I'll keep an eye on things; maybe this turns out to be no big deal.

I don't know yet if I'll end up keeping Antergos; maybe I'll want to replace it with Arch. But right now it looks good enough to keep installed for the long term. As their website describes it, Antergos "provides a fully configured OS with sane defaults that you can use right away." That, for sure, can be a good thing. The underlying system is about as close to "pure" Arch as you'll get with an Arch derivative; I think that's a good thing, too.

adding lxqt to antergos

As I wrote in "from spain, antergos", "The Antergos installer lets the user choose between Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE, MATE, Openbox, and Xfce desktops; I went with Openbox."

Later, I added LXQt, from the Arch repos. Here's what I saw at the command line:

$ sudo pacman -S lxqt
[sudo] password for steve:
:: There are 19 members in group lxqt:
:: Repository community
   1) libfm-qt  2) lxqt-about  3) lxqt-build-tools  4) lxqt-common  5) lxqt-config
   6) lxqt-globalkeys  7) lxqt-notificationd  8) lxqt-openssh-askpass  9) lxqt-panel
   10) lxqt-policykit  11) lxqt-powermanagement  12) lxqt-qtplugin  13) lxqt-runner
   14) lxqt-session  15) lxqt-sudo  16) openbox  17) pcmanfm-qt  18) qterminal  19) qtermwidget

Enter a selection (default=all):
warning: openbox-3.6.1-3 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (38) kidletime-5.30.0-1  kwayland-5.30.0-1  kwindowsystem-5.30.0-1
              libdbusmenu-qt5-0.9.3+16.04.20160218-1  libkscreen-5.8.5-1  liblxqt-0.11.0-2
              libqtxdg-2.0.0-1  libxkbcommon-x11-0.7.0-1  media-player-info-22-2  muparser-2.2.5-2
              polkit-qt5-0.112.0+git20160226-1  qt5-base-5.7.1-2  qt5-declarative-5.7.1-1
              qt5-script-5.7.1-1  qt5-svg-5.7.1-1  qt5-x11extras-5.7.1-1  qt5-xmlpatterns-5.7.1-1
              solid-5.30.0-1  tslib-1.3-1  libfm-qt-0.11.1-1  lxqt-about-0.11.0-5
              lxqt-build-tools-0.3.0-2  lxqt-common-0.11.1-1  lxqt-config-0.11.0-2
              lxqt-globalkeys-0.11.0-1  lxqt-notificationd-0.11.0-1  lxqt-openssh-askpass-0.11.0-1
              lxqt-panel-0.11.0-1  lxqt-policykit-0.11.0-1  lxqt-powermanagement-0.11.0-1
              lxqt-qtplugin-0.11.0-1  lxqt-runner-0.11.0-1  lxqt-session-0.11.0-1
              lxqt-sudo-0.11.0-1  openbox-3.6.1-3  pcmanfm-qt-0.11.1-1  qterminal-0.7.1-1
              qtermwidget-0.7.1-1

Total Download Size:    23.33 MiB
Total Installed Size:  104.90 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:      103.71 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]


Here's what the LXQt desktop looked like when I first logged into the session:

I had to change the icon theme from Adwaita to Numix to get all of my icons to show up in the menu and on the panel:

Looks like there aren't many themes for LXQt, and I don't think user themes are supported. I'm using the Ambiance theme for now:

To get transparency in xfce4-terminal, I enabled Compton in Session Settings:

A couple of shots of my current LXQt desktop in Antergos:

a good arch derivative

From what I'm seeing so far (after about a month and a half), Antergos seems like a very solid distro. As advertised, Antergos provides an easy way to get an Arch system up and running, ready to go out-of-the-box.

The installer provides a choice of desktops. I went with Openbox, but still the installer (called "cnchi") downloaded a ton of packages (cnchi showed 779 packages being installed). The system's loaded with useful apps. The number of installed packages appears to have no effect on the system's performance while running Openbox; everything's snappy and crisp.

The Pamac package manager is fun to play around with, but for package management I'm using pacman, from the command line, same as with my Arch installation. Antergos uses the Arch repos, plus an Antergos repo for some packages, as pamac shows in this shot.

The following yaourt command shows the packages that come from the "antergos" repo:

$ yaourt -Q | grep antergos
antergos/antergos-keyring 20150806-1 (antergos-base)
antergos/antergos-mirrorlist 20161107-2 (antergos-base)
antergos/antergos-openbox-setup 0.3.1-2
antergos/antergos-repo-priority 1.0.4-2 (antergos-base)
antergos/antergos-wallpapers 0.7-1
antergos/antergos-welcome 0.0.2-2
antergos/galculator 2.1.4-4 (mate-extra)
antergos/light-locker-settings 1.5.2-3
antergos/lightdm-webkit2-greeter 2.2.1-1 (system)
antergos/numix-frost-themes 3.6.6-1 (themes themes::gtk)
antergos/numix-icon-theme 1:0.r1890.2-1
antergos/numix-icon-theme-square 1:0.r83_8-1
antergos/obkey 1.0-4
antergos/openbox-menu 0.8.0-1
antergos/package-query 1.8.r380-2
antergos/pamac 4.1.6-2
antergos/paranoid 1.1.1-2
antergos/plank-theme-numix 0.1-1
antergos/ttf-google-fonts 20160408.r423-1
antergos/waldorf-ui-theme 0.07-1
antergos/yaourt 1.8.1-1


I'm using Antergos' Numix-Frost theme for Openbox, with a few key launchers on the tint2 panel and a customized menu that has all of my Openbox-related tools under one submenu:

But I also have the Antergos Applications menu available:

A "clean" shot from (empty) workspace #3:

antergos greeter screen background

In Antergos, the backgrounds for the LightDM greeter screen are stored in the /usr/share/antergos/wallpapers directory, and you can copy files into there to make them available to choose from at the greeter screen.

The icon at the upper-right corner opens up a panel along the right side for previewing and selecting from available backgrounds.

Seems appropriate for January. Clicking on the digital clock gives you the login window.

To get screenshots of the login screen, I first added the xorg-server-xephyr package from the Arch repos:

$ sudo pacman -S xorg-server-xephyr

Then I used dm-tool to start a nested display of the greeter screen, and took screenshots of that using xfce4-screenshooter with a delay (note: Alt-F4 gets you back to the desktop) (also see dm-tool --help):

$ dm-tool add-nested-seat --fullscreen

tinkering with openbox

My Openbox setups continue to evolve. Here's my current BunsenLabs desktop, with a reorganized menu; I've edited my conky and added a conky calendar:

I put a "start-stop-conky" item in my "openbox" submenu, which toggles my conkys off and on by running the ~/start-stop-conky script:

#!/bin/sh
# start or stop conky - click to start, click to stop
 
if pidof conky | grep [0-9] > /dev/null
   then
      exec killall conky
   else
      conky &
      conky -c /home/steve/.conkyrc-2
   exit
fi

My ~/.conkyrc-2 file contains the following (for the conky calendar):

alignment bottom_right
background no
border_width 1
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color black
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
draw_outline no
draw_shades yes
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
gap_x 15
gap_y 25
minimum_size 5 5
maximum_width 205
net_avg_samples 2
no_buffers yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
double_buffer yes
own_window yes
own_window_class Conky
own_window_type desktop
own_window_transparent no
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_colour 000000
own_window_argb_value 155
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 1.0
uppercase no
use_spacer none
show_graph_scale no
show_graph_range no

TEXT

$color ${font DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12}${execpi 60 DJS=`date +%_d`; cal -h | sed s/"\(^\|[^0-9]\)$DJS"'\b'/'\1${color gold}'"$DJS"'$color'/}

A similar setup in Antergos (on the same computer), but with a few launchers down near the bottom of the tint2 panel, and a somewhat different menu layout:

Here, a look back at the default Openbox setups I snapped earlier in BunsenLabs and Antergos, respectively:

Both distros ship with nice setups. Very few self-respecting Openbox users will stick with the default setups. If you use Openbox, you tinker; it's what you do. :)

fresh antergos

Antergos "iso refresh" announced: https://forum.antergos.com/topic/5489/iso-refresh-2016-11-20

As can be seen at the Antergos blog's news page, these .isos drop on a fairly regular and frequent basis, which is very nice.

from spain, antergos

I downloaded the Arch-derived Antergos (antergos-2016.10.23-x86_64.iso) and installed it in a multi-boot setup on one of my computers. The Antergos installer lets the user choose between Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE, MATE, Openbox, and Xfce desktops; I went with Openbox.

The default Openbox setup keeps things simple: right-click anywhere on the desktop to access the Openbox menu; there's a tint2 panel at the top, a dock (Plank) at the bottom center, and a basic, gray background -- boring and uninspiring, just the way Openbox-lovers like it. :)

Once installed, running Antergos is supposed to be the same as running Arch. We'll see. The Pamac GUI shows me that a handful of software packages come from the Antergos repository, which can be disabled. The other repos shown are official Arch repos:

For the most part, I'm in the "if you want Arch, install Arch" camp; you get a "cleaner" Arch system and you have a lot more control over what gets installed than you will if you go with an Arch derivative. Still, Arch derivatives (thinking of some I've run in the past, like ArchBang and Bridge Linux) can be great not only for folks who want to get a feel for what Arch is all about, but also for somewhat experienced Arch users who simply want a quick and easy Arch-based system installation.

With Antergos, you basically have to download the .iso, get it onto a flash drive, boot up, run the installer. I didn't find much good documentation at the Antergos site, but I did find a few nice guides (with screenshots) online. They're easy to find; for example: http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2016/08/an-everyday-linux-user-review-of.html

I think the Antergos site needs a nice installation guide along those lines. For post-installation documentation and help, the Arch wiki (they should provide a link to that!) and the Antergos forums should suffice.

Post-install, Antergos is ready to go "out-of-the-box" -- although some things might need to be added by the user, like maybe LibreOffice or whatever. To update the system, Antergos has the Pamac Update Manager available:

Or one can simply use pacman from the command line normally, as with Arch. Whatever the approach, the user should check the Arch homepage for important announcements before bringing in system updates.

I got rid of the Plank dock, went with a different tint2 panel setuup, edited the menu, added a few of my favorite apps (and some wallpapers!), tweaked a few other things, and came up with a desktop that works better for me:

Kinda bloated, perhaps, but quite crisp and snappy in action, as to be expected with Openbox.

Here's a link to DistroWatch's Antergos page: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=antergos