Dotfiles

My Linux setup: one shared shell and toolset, plus a desktop profile, either gnome or niri (with DankMaterialShell). Colors come from the wallpaper via matugen.

1. Before you install

install.sh installs no software. Install these first, or it fails partway through.

Every machine

• git, stow, zsh

• Oh My Zsh. Install it before install.sh (its installer refuses to run once ~/.oh-my-zsh exists) and delete the ~/.zshrc it writes:

  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)" "" --unattended
  rm ~/.zshrc
  chsh -s "$(command -v zsh)"

• eza, bat, fastfetch. The shell calls these on every start (ls, cat, --help). Without them, every new terminal shows errors. On Debian/Ubuntu the binary is batcat, so add mkdir -p ~/.local/bin && ln -s /usr/bin/batcat ~/.local/bin/bat.

gnome profile

• GNOME itself (gsettings)

niri profile

• niri, DankMaterialShell (dms), DMS Files (dfiles)

2. Install

git clone https://github.com/jgoedde/dotfiles ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles
./install.sh gnome   # or: ./install.sh niri

The profile is remembered. After a git pull, run plain ./install.sh.

If stow reports conflicts, nothing has been changed yet. An app already wrote its own config where this repo puts one. Move the listed files away and run install.sh again. On niri this is expected for ~/.config/niri/config.kdl and ~/.config/dms/*.json.

Then create the first theme: put images in ~/Pictures/Walls and press Super+Ctrl+W (GNOME) or Mod+Ctrl+W (niri). Until then, bat, fzf, micro and ghostty run without their matugen colors.

3. Safe to install afterwards

None of these write over the linked config files, so install them in any order, whenever you like:

• matugen (needed for theming)
• ghostty, micro, btop, fzf + fd (on Debian/Ubuntu fd is fdfind, link it to ~/.local/bin/fd), zoxide, pay-respects
• jq and xdg-user-dirs (used by the wallpaper scripts)
• wl-clipboard (fzf Ctrl+Y copy)
• Claude Code, plus Node.js for its status line (npx ccstatusline)
• pywalfox (Firefox colors), Obsidian
• gnome only: Albert launcher (Ctrl+O)

One rule: ~/.zshrc is a link into this repo. Don't let installers edit it. The shell already sets up nvm, pnpm, pyenv, Homebrew, deno, go and zoxide if they are present.

• nvm: PROFILE=/dev/null before its install command
• fzf from git: ./install --no-update-rc (or just use your package manager)
• deno, pnpm and others: decline any "add to your shell profile" step

If one slipped through: git -C ~/dotfiles checkout zsh/.zshrc.

How it's organised

• Package: a top-level folder that mirrors $HOME (e.g. zsh/, ghostty/), linked by stow.
• Profile: a list of packages, profiles/<name>.txt, plus an optional setup script profiles/<name>.sh. Every machine gets common plus one desktop profile.

Theming

wallpaper-change.sh (Super/Mod+Ctrl+W) picks a random image from ~/Pictures/Walls, sets it, and runs matugen-apply.sh, which renders the matugen templates for the current wallpaper. Run matugen-apply.sh by hand to re-theme without changing the wallpaper. On niri, matugen-sync.path also re-themes when the wallpaper or light/dark mode changes in DMS.

Both scripts live in Common and ask a desktop adapter for anything desktop-specific. A package in each desktop profile ships one at ~/.local/bin/desktop-adapter: dms/ for niri (DMS IPC, session and settings), matugen-gnome/ for gnome (gsettings, scheme-content, contrast 0). Its interface:

Command	Does
wallpaper	print the current wallpaper path, exit non-zero if none
set-wallpaper PATH	show PATH as the wallpaper
mode	print light or dark
scheme	print the matugen scheme, e.g. scheme-tonal-spot
contrast	print the matugen contrast
reload	after a matugen run, re-theme the desktop's own UI (may do nothing)

A new desktop profile only needs its own adapter. Without one, both scripts exit with an error.

Machine-local changes, without touching the repo:

• ~/.config/zsh/custom/<file> replaces the same file from ~/.config/zsh/
• ~/.zshrc_custom is sourced last
• ~/.local/bin/wallpaper-post.sh runs after every re-theme (see wallpaper-post.example.sh)

Inspirations

• Stefan Raabe, https://github.com/mylinuxforwork/dotfiles
• rockyzhang24, https://github.com/rockyzhang24/dotfiles