Linux Trying EndeavourOs

September 19, 2024

Overview

After trying Linux NixOs, Mint and multi flavors of Ubuntu, I wanted to try something different. I have seen different article regarding Arch Linux and I decided to try one distribution related to that one.

First attempt was with CachyOS. It was a complete disaster. I turned to the Official Arch Linux distribution next. Everything was running under the CLI. And I could not make the system boot. Last attempt, EndeavourOS. Surprisingly, this one was way better.

I will use a Beelink mini pc for this one, this is supposed to be my backup Git Repository. It will host a docker system, with Gitea. As things wen well, I decided to also install VS Code, dotnet framework, go and hugo in case I would have to compile on that server too.

Installation

loadkeys fr_CH-latin1 timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Zurich Windows Manager : for this one I choose XFCE which is supposed to be lightweight.

Disk

Disk is an 500 Mb NVMe disk. fdisk -l fdisk /dev/nvme0n1

Partion 1 : Boot Partition

Size: 1 Go
Type EFI System (1)
Filesystem: FAT32
Mount point: /boot
lags: boot

Partition 2 : OS

Size: 54 GiB
Type: Linux FileSystem (20)
Filesystem: XFS
Mount point: /
Flags: -

Partition 3 : Home

Size: 390 GiB
Type Linux Home (42)
Filesystem: ext4
Mount point: /home
Flags: -

Partition 4 : Swap

Size: 20 GiB
Type EFI System (19)
Filesystem: linuxswap
Mount point: -
Flags: -

Docker

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
sudo pacman -Syu

sudo pacman -S docker
sudo docker version

sudo systemctl start docker.service
sudo systemctl status docker.service
sudo systemctl enable docker.service

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

sudo pacman -S docker-compose

Docker - Portainer

1
2
3
docker volume create portainer_data

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9000:9000 --name=portainer --restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce

The Volume portainer_data should be linked to /var/lib/docker/volumes/portainer_data. For ease of access I am creating a folder portainer in my home folder then I create a symlink to the portainer folder.

1
2
3
sudo mkdir ~/portainer
sudo chmod 755 /var/lib/docker
sudo ln -s /var/lib/docker/volumes/portainer_data ~/portainer

Samba - Network File Access

This one has been a pain. On Laptop and on the mini PC.

1
2
3
4
sudo pacman -S samba smbclient
sudo mkdir -p /etc/samba
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/nas
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

[share]
   path = /srv/samba/share
   browsable = yes
   writable = yes
   guest ok = yes
   read only = no

[global]
 workgroup = RIVA
  server string = Samba Server %v
  netbios name = computername
  security = user
  map to guest = bad user
  dns proxy = no
  hosts allow = 1xx.1xx.xx 127.

[homes]
  comment = Home Directories
  browseable = no
  writable = no

[public]
  path = /srv/smb
  browseable = yes
  writable = yes
  guest ok = yes

host allows lists the range of ip addressess that I want to let access the share folders from the mini-PC. 127. for everything local, and 1xx.1xx.xxx to let all the machine from my network to have access. The values must be replaced with proper values.

For security reason I ve created a specific user to let the server access the NAS folder.

Mount the NAS Share :

1
sudo mount -t cifs -o username=your_username,password=your_password //NAS_IP_ADDRESS/share_name /mnt/nas

Replace your_username, your_password, NAS_IP_ADDRESS, and share_name with your actual NAS details.

Automate Mounting at Boot : To automatically mount the share at boot, add the following line to your /etc/fstab file:

1
//NAS_IP_ADDRESS/share_name /mnt/nas cifs username=your_username,password=your_password 0 0

Package Installer improvement

1
2
sudo yay
sudo yay pamac-all

This will provide a GUI tool to select packages to install.

Utilities

1
2
3
sudo yay go
sudo yay hugo
sudo yay code

oh-my-posh

1
2
sudo yay oh-my-posh
mkdir ~/.poshthemes

Download themes. Edit ~/.bashrc

Virtualization

This I have only done on the laptop. I wanted to try to install the VMWare tools to test the use of VM.

1
sudo yay vmware

Installation complete, the gui is running. Will test creating VM soon.

Conclusion

So far, I m very pleased. The installation has been tougher than I was expected. But at the end it s working properly. Both installations were really reactive. The only complain I could do is related to the Laptop screen. Because it s a 4K screen on a 15" screen, at some point, the text was really hard to read. I managed to solve the issue by setting the display zoom to 1.75. I was also very surprised on how long the battery life was lasting on the laptop, I ve spent 3 hours on it and battery was still a bit over 50%. Quite surprising for a 7 year old laptop.