omarchy

Watching The Linux Experience - Omarchy - YouTube (June, ‘26) inspired me to install Omarchy (pre-configured ArchLinux with hyperland). This would be my first time installing linux, probably in my bloodline.

installation

I following the guide in Guide: Dual boot Omarchy Os with Windows 11 · basecamp/omarchy · Discussion #2479 · GitHub to install Omarchy, as dualboot with Windows 11. I faced a few issues.

• I did not turn off BitLockers intially.
• After installing Arch Linux using archinstall, choosing and mounting the correct partition, I was supposed to install Omarchy using pacman. However, the packages where not downloaded because pacman was trying to get the packages offline. So I had to edit the pacman.conf configuration to add mirrorlist.

configuration: editor

After installing, I wanted to edit the display settings. I forgot it would be in the configuration which opened in Vim code editor by default. I luckily installed VScode before; I set that as the default code editor and now I can edit settings of my operating system in VScode! Wao!

configuration: shared ssd partition

I set the SSD parition that is shared between Windows 11 and Omarchy, called main, mounted onto /mnt/shared, correctly into /etc/fstab. But still Obsidian was not getting editing acess. So I added a symbolink (I think?)

~ ✗ ln -s /mnt/shared ~/main

configuration: obsidian

Obsidian came preinstalled on Omarchy. I needed to fix the SSD parition before I could work with Obsidian because my vault in on that parition. Now, I open Obsidian from /main/vault. It works flawlessly! This is one thing I like about tools that have this nature: I open the folder and it opens up on any system at any moment of time just as it was intended. Maybe some features, say that required $\text{LATEX}$ or python installed, won’t work, but Obsidian opens up on any system almost exactly the same.

However, I was met with a few bugs along the way!

configuration: $\text{LATEX}$

I was advised to install texlive instead of MikTex, so I did that. Then I opened up a small document on VScode and hit $\text{LATEX}$ build. It built the PDF so fast! With autosave and autobuild turned on, the PDF rendering is almost live! Although this is probably because of texlive rather than linux.

Now, I can use the Obsidian $\text{LATEX}$ Render plugin to use my installed $\text{LATEX}$ distribution to generate svg from a $\text{LATEX}$ codeblock in my notes.

configuration: python

I did not install sage on windows because it needed WSL. Now that I am on Linux itself, installing and using sage is a breeze!

I wanted to use python from inside Obsidian. To do this, I needed to create a virtual environment in the vault folder. I had never used python virtual environment before, but I wasn’t that hard to figure out.

configuration: transparent background

I simply made the background color “transparent !important” on Obsidian and Firefox using CSS and it produced a transparent glassy background effect.

bug: electron39 PDF viewer on Arch Linux

I encountered the bug https://forum.obsidian.md/t/arch-linux-pdf-viewer-renders-blank-after-electron39-libdrm-update/114148 which made me downgade my electron distribution a little bit:

sudo pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/e/electron39/electron39-39.8.9-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

bug: stylus using electron on wayland

Because of the upstream bug https://forum.obsidian.md/t/using-a-stylus-pen-with-wayland-means-mouse-events-get-ignored/110296, I have to run Obsidian on X11 obsidian --ozone-platform=x11 -force-device-scale-factor=1 which does not allow transparent background (from the get go).

So, I decided to create two instances of Obsidian. One I run as usual which opens from the vault/.obsidian config folder. And I created and open another instance by

obsidian --ozone-platform=x11 -force-device-scale-factor=1 --user-data-dir="$HOME/.config/obsidian-x11"

and set it to open from vault/.obsidian-x11 config folder where I have removed the CSS snippet making the window transparent.