jopen

Setting Up Arch On An Old ThinkPad

Wed, 27 May 2026 13:41:37 +0330

Recently I bought a used ThinkPad X230 for ~$60. It had an i7 3rd-gen CPU, 8GB RAM, and 180GB SSD. Enough specs for a family laptop (for my house). The previous owner had a fresh install of Windows 10 on it and idle RAM usage was >2GB: While on Arch + XFCE it got down to <1GB: Here is how:

Hardware

Bofore trying to install linux, I wanted to change the thermal paste on CPU and also change the coin battery so when booting without the main battery (which was the upgraded 9-cell version but dead and useless anyway), updating date and time wouldn’t need network connection or manual set-up. Alright you got me. I had no good reason to tear-up the whole device; I just wanted to =)

Let the tear up begin!

I took out the old coin battery and replaced it with the new one:

Then I cleaned the old thermal paste,

And replaced it with a new one (probably a little too much):

Software

Installing Arch

With the help of Arch Linux Wiki, I went to the official Arch Linux download page, picked a mirror close to my location and downloaded archlinux-2025.08.01-x86_64.iso (around 900MB). Then I plugged in my USB memory (an 8GB one was enough) and opened Rufus to make it bootable with these settings:

Device: my USB stick
Boot selection: archlinux-2025.08.01-x86_64.iso
Partition scheme: GPT
Target system: UEFI (non-CSM)

Then I hit START and selected Write in ISO Image Mode (Recommended)

Then I setted UEFI instead of Legacy in BIOS because appearently it’s the less painful choice.

archinstall

After booting up at archiso, I connected my device to a Wi-Fi using iwtcl network configuration tool. Then I typed archinstall to fetch the Arch Linux database and go to guided installer. these were my settings:

Language/keyboard: en, us (added Persian later in the settings)
mirror regions
- (~~Iran~~ failed at first attempt):
- Germany
- Netherlands
- Sweden
- Finland
Disk: picked my 180GB SSD
Disk layout: “Erase all” for a clean install
Bootloader: systemd-boot
Filesystem: ext4
Hostname: e.g., jfryusef
Root password: really?
User account: added one, ticked “superuser (wheel)”
Network: NetworkManager
Kernel: linux (plain)
Microcode: intel-ucode
Profile: “Desktop” → picked XFCE4 (light and stable)
Audio: ~~pipewire~~ (Could not get it to work for now)
Optional packages: added firefox and a few more (optional)
Timezone: Asia/Tehran

Then I hit Install. When it finished, Reboot (removed USB).
I saw XFCE’s login screen and logged in!

Appearently old ThinkPads + modern Linux kernels sometimes hard-freeze because of deep C-states. Mine was having it too.
Fix: added this kernel boot parameter in GRUB:
intel_idle.max_cstate=1

Installing Stuff

I opened Terminal and installed these:

sudo pacman -S man-db man-pages
(built-in documentation system for commands)
sudo pacman -S fwupd
(firmware updater)
sudo pacman -S bluez bluez-utils
(core Bluetooth protocol stack)
sudo pacman -S gvfs gvfs-mtp
(virtual filesystem support and MTP support for Android devices)
sudo pacman -S thunar-archive-plugin p7zip unzip unrar
(file manager integration tools and archive utilities)
sudo pacman -S brightnessctl
(screen brightness control utility)
sudo pacman -S pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber
(Linux audio stack)
sudo pacman -S blueman
(GUI Bluetooth manager)

Then I typed these commands to enable the ones that needed enabling:

systemctl --user enable -- now pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

sudo systemctl enable --now bluetooth

sudo timedatectl set-ntp true

I needed yay AUR to install some of my apps so I installed it:

sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git

cd yay
makepkg -si

pacman	yay
`sudo pacman -S firefox`	`yay -S obsidian`
`sudo pacman -S obs-studio`	`yay -S anydesk-bin`
`sudo pacman -S qbittorrent`	`yay -S hiddify-app-bin`
–snip–	–snip–

Tweaking things

I set some of these keyboard shortcuts:

Alt+T: Terminal (xfce4-terminal)
Windows button (Super L): Application Finder (xfce4-appfinder)
Super+E: ThunarFileManager (thunar)
ThinkVantage button (Launch1): Log out (xfce4-session-logout)

Alt+1: Workspace 1
Alt+2: Workspace 2
Alt+3: Workspace 3
Alt+4: Workspace 4
Alt+F: maximize window
Alt+Up: Tile window to the left
Alt+Down: Tile window to the right
Alt+Page Up: Tile window to the top-left
Alt+Page Down: Tile window to the top-right
Alt+Left: Tile window to the bottom-left (regret it because it interfears with going backwards for browsers)
Alt+Right: Tile window to the bottom-right

also I changed Volume steps to 10% in Volume Control (xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin)

Ricing?

I tried to use Open Sans + JetBrains Mono as my main fonts and Gruvbox as my main color palatte using this theme throughout the whole UI.

I switched my diplay manager from LighDM,

sudo systemctl disable lightdm.service

to Ly (a lightweight login manager that runs in the terminal):

sudo pacman -S ly
sudo systemctl enable ly.service

These:

are the items on my panel (a 24px buttom row): I set Smoothwall as my window decorations

I downloaded this Gruvbox Firefox theme and This VS Code theme and created this Obsidian theme:

{
  "minimal-style@@ax1@@dark": "#83A598",
  "minimal-style@@callouts-style": "callouts-default",
  "minimal-style@@h1-l": false,
  "minimal-style@@h1-size": "2em",
  "minimal-style@@h1-weight": 900,
  "minimal-style@@h2-weight": 800,
  "minimal-style@@h2-size": "1.8em",
  "minimal-style@@h2-l": false,
  "minimal-style@@h3-l": false,
  "minimal-style@@h3-size": "1.6em",
  "minimal-style@@h6-weight": 400,
  "minimal-style@@h5-weight": 500,
  "minimal-style@@h1-variant": "small-caps",
  "minimal-style@@h6-variant": "small-caps",
  "minimal-style@@h5-variant": "small-caps",
  "minimal-style@@h4-variant": "small-caps",
  "minimal-style@@h2-variant": "small-caps",
  "minimal-style@@h3-weight": 700,
  "minimal-style@@h4-weight": 600,
  "minimal-style@@h6-size": "1em",
  "minimal-style@@h4-size": "1.4em",
  "minimal-style@@h5-size": "1.2em",
  "minimal-style@@icon-muted": 0.5,
  "minimal-style@@active-line-on": false,
  "minimal-style@@checkbox-shape": "checkbox-square",
  "minimal-style@@metadata-heading-off": false,
  "minimal-style@@metadata-add-property-off": true,
  "minimal-style@@metadata-dividers": false,
  "minimal-style@@metadata-icons-off": false,
  "minimal-style@@sidebar-tabs-style": "sidebar-tabs-underline",
  "minimal-style@@sidebar-tabs-names": "tab-names-off",
  "minimal-style@@vault-profile-display": "vault-profile-default",
  "minimal-style@@hide-help": true,
  "minimal-style@@ribbon-style": "ribbon-hidden",
  "minimal-style@@tabs-style": "tabs-underline",
  "minimal-style@@tag-radius": "4px",
  "minimal-style@@hl2@@dark": "#665C54",
  "minimal-style@@window-title-off": false,
  "minimal-style@@titlebar-text-weight": 100,
  "minimal-advanced@@hide-settings-desc": false,
  "minimal-advanced@@cursor": "default",
  "minimal-style@@inline-title-size": "2em",
  "minimal-style@@inline-title-weight": 900,
  "minimal-style@@inline-title-color@@dark": "#689D6A",
  "minimal-style@@color-red@@dark": "#CC241D",
  "minimal-style@@color-orange@@dark": "#D65D0E",
  "minimal-style@@color-yellow@@dark": "#D79921",
  "minimal-style@@color-green@@dark": "#98971A",
  "minimal-style@@color-blue@@dark": "#458588",
  "minimal-style@@color-purple@@dark": "#B16286",
  "minimal-style@@color-cyan@@dark": "#689D6A",
  "minimal-style@@color-pink@@dark": "#D3869B",
  "minimal-style@@ax2@@dark": "#458588",
  "minimal-style@@blockquote-border-thickness": 3,
  "minimal-style@@blockquote-border-color@@dark": "#D5C4A1",
  "minimal-style@@blockquote-font-style": "normal",
  "minimal-style@@blockquote-color@@dark": "#D5C4A1",
  "minimal-style@@graph-node@@dark": "#D65D0E",
  "minimal-style@@graph-line@@dark": "#D79921",
  "minimal-style@@icon-color-hover@@dark": "#D5C4A1",
  "minimal-style@@icon-color-active@@dark": "#EBDBB2",
  "minimal-style@@icon-color-focused@@dark": "#FBF1C7",
  "minimal-style@@indentation-guide-color-active@@dark": "#504945",
  "minimal-style@@indentation-guide-color@@dark": "#32302F",
  "minimal-style@@minimal-tab-text-color@@dark": "#BDAE93",
  "minimal-style@@minimal-tab-text-color-active@@dark": "#FBF1C7",
  "minimal-style@@tag-background-hover@@dark": "#282828",
  "minimal-style@@tx1@@dark": "#EBDBB2",
  "minimal-style@@text-formatting@@dark": "#D5C4A1",
  "minimal-style@@tag-color@@dark": "#D5C4A1",
  "minimal-style@@sp1@@dark": "#1D2021",
  "minimal-style@@graph-node-attachment@@dark": "#B16286",
  "minimal-style@@base@@dark": "#282828",
  "minimal-style@@bg1@@dark": "#1D2021",
  "minimal-style@@ui3@@dark": "#665C54",
  "minimal-style@@ui1@@dark": "#3C3836",
  "minimal-style@@ui2@@dark": "#504945",
  "minimal-style@@ax3@@dark": "#689D6A",
  "minimal-style@@canvas-dot-pattern@@dark": "#3C3836",
  "minimal-style@@code-normal@@dark": "#EBDBB2",
  "minimal-style@@code-background@@dark": "#282828",
  "minimal-style@@code-comment@@dark": "#928374",
  "minimal-style@@code-operator@@dark": "#D65D0E",
  "minimal-style@@code-punctuation@@dark": "#458588",
  "minimal-style@@graph-node-focused@@dark": "#8EC07C",
  "minimal-style@@graph-node-tag@@dark": "#458588",
  "minimal-style@@graph-node-unresolved@@dark": "#928374",
  "minimal-style@@h3-variant": "small-caps",
  "minimal-style@@icon-color@@dark": "#BDAE93",
  "minimal-style@@image-muted": 0.7,
  "minimal-style@@hl1@@dark": "#3C3836",
  "minimal-style@@tx2@@dark": "#A89984",
  "minimal-style@@tx3@@dark": "#665C54"
}

Here is the GitHub page for the Obsidian theme.

I used the default “elementary” theme for my cursor and icons.

the end.

How I Made jopen?

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 13:41:37 +0330

jopen is a blog about mostly tech-related projects I do for fun. In fact, jopen itself is one of them! I wanted to take notes on the process of my projects, and there was no reason to keep them private. So, I made this blog, To Learn In Public.

I don’t like bloated CMSs. This stack is [almost] free, open-source, and lets me focus on writing in a tool I already use (~~Obsidian~~ VS Code). Plus, it’s all plain text — future-proof.

Here’s how I made it:

Tools & WorkFlow

~~Obsidian~~ for writing posts & local Markdown management
GitHub for cloud-based version control + repo hosting
Hugo (with Terminal theme) as the static site generator
Cloudflare Pages for free, automated deployment
Giscus to integrate a comment system via GitHub Discussions

Every push to GitHub updates the blog via Cloudflare and every comment shows up on GitHub as well.

Setup

A. Buying a domain

This was the only step in which I paid for something, purchasing this .link domain for ~$10 a year. But there were cheaper (even free) options as well.

B. Hugo site and Terminal theme

I customized the font family to JetBrains Mono and the color scheme to gruvbox-dark-hard-aqua using the Terminal CSS customizer, and chose ~~#282828~~ #1d2021 as the background, #ebdbb2 as the foreground, and #689d6a as the accent color. This generated a .css file, a favicon, and an OG image that I added to the site.

And here’s the list of changes I made to the /themes/terminal/config.toml file:

[params]
customCSS = ["css/terminal.css"]
centerTheme = true
showLastUpdated = true
updatedDatePrefix = "Updated on"
readMore = "Read"
# A reference from the movie Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope:
missingContentMessage = "This is not the webpage you're looking for."
minuteReadingTime = "min[s] read"
words = "word[s]"

[params.logo]
logoText = "jopen"

[menu]

[[menu.main]]
identifier = "about"
name = "About"
url = "/about"
weight = 10

[[menu.main]]
identifier = "tags"
name = "Tags"
url = "/tags"
weight = 20

[[menu.main]]
identifier = "search"
name = "Search"
url = "https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajfryusef.link+QUERY"
weight = 30

C. Creating a Git Repository and connecting to GitHub

I initialized the local Hugo files in Git and turned on Discussions as a feature on jopen’s GitHub repo (so I can use Giscus in step F).

D. Deploying via Cloudflare Pages

Added jfryusef.link and www.jfryusef.link as two custom domains.

E. Setting up Obsidian

I merged the Obsidian vault root and local files of Hugo, and every once in a while, I push its content to GitHub to sync manually because I couldn’t make the Git plugin to work properly.

Here is the list of all the core plugins that are enabled in my vault:

Backlinks
Bookmarks
Command palette
File recovery
Files
Graph view
Outgoing links
Outline
Page preview
Quick switcher
Search
Slash commands
Tags view
Template
Word count
Workspaces

And here is the list of the community plugins that I use:

Style Settings - to control and adjust theme, plugin, and snippet CSS variables
Minimal Theme Settings - to change the colors, fonts and features of Minimal Theme
File Explorer Note Count - to see the number of notes under each folder within the file explorer
Settings Search - to globally search settings in Obsidian

And here’s the metadata (frontmatter) for this post:

+++
title = "How I made jopen?"
date = "2025-06-20T13:41:37+03:30"
lastmod = "2025-07-19"
# This value can be configured for per-post date formatting‍:
#dateFormat = "2006-01-02"
author = "yusef"
cover = ""
tags = ["jopen", "Markdown", "Obsidian", "Git", "GitHub", "Hugo", "Website", "Software"]
description = "How I built a blog using just Markdown and Git"
showFullContent = false
readingTime = true
# Until the post is finished:
draft = true
+++

F. Enabling Giscus

Nothing special. I just enabled comments in almost every page, because why not?

<script
	src="https://giscus.app/client.js"
	data-repo="jfryusef/jopen"
	data-repo-id="[REPO ID]"
	data-category="Comments"
	data-category-id="[CATEGORY ID]"
	data-mapping="pathname"
	data-strict="0"
	data-reactions-enabled="1"
	data-emit-metadata="0"
	data-input-position="top"
	data-theme="gruvbox_dark"
	data-lang="en"
	data-loading="lazy"
	crossorigin="anonymous"
	async
></script>

Updates

A. Using VS Code instead of Obsidian

Recently I use VS Code + this md extension and this Gruvbox theme instead of Obsidian for writing posts & local Markdown management. It has built-in GitHub integration as well.

B. Showing full post content instead of summary in RSS readers

I noticed the full content of my posts didn’t show up on RSS readers, with the help of ChatGPT, I figured out it was because of the Terminal theme. So I made this custom RSS template in /layouts/_default/rss.xml which I think overrides the one in /themes/terminal/layouts/_default/rss.xml
I added the following content to the file:

{{- $pctx := . -}}
{{- $pages := where site.RegularPages "Type" "in" site.Params.mainSections -}}
{{- $pages = $pages | first 50 -}}
{{- printf "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>" | safeHTML }}
<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>{{ site.Title }}</title>
    <link>{{ site.BaseURL }}</link>
    <description>{{ site.Params.description | default site.Title }}</description>
    <language>{{ site.LanguageCode | default "en-us" }}</language>
    <generator>Hugo -- gohugo.io</generator>

    {{- range $pages }}
    <item>
      <title>{{ .Title }}</title>
      <link>{{ .Permalink }}</link>
      <guid>{{ .Permalink }}</guid>
      <pubDate>{{ .Date.Format "Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:04:05 -0700" }}</pubDate>

      <!--  This is the key line that gave me FULL CONTENT -->
      <description>
        {{ $content := .Content }}
        {{ $content = replaceRE "<img( [^>]+)>" "<img$1 />" $content }}
        {{ $content | htmlEscape | safeHTML }}
      </description>
    </item>
    {{- end }}
  </channel>
</rss>

C. Using Cloudflare Email Routing

From now on, cloudflare will forward every email sent to mail@jfryusef.link to my main Gmail inbox. This way people can’t see my actual email address until I answer them.

D. Adding an intro card on top of my homepage

I created content/_index.md with this content:

---
title: ""
---

---

## Welcome to my little corner of the Internet =)

jopen is a blog about mostly tech-related projects I do for fun. In fact, [jopen itself is one of them](https://jfryusef.link/posts/how-i-made-jopen/)!  
I wanted to take notes on the process of my projects, and there was [no reason to keep them private](https://github.com/jfryusef/jopen). So, I made jopen, _to learn in public._

---

<!-- more -->

Feel free to share your own setups if you have something similar and If you have any questions, ask them in the comment section below.

Hello World!

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 12:41:37 +0330

Header 1

Header 2

Header 3

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
~~THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG~~
~1234567890!@#$%^&*()[]{}-=+|_.,;’"`:<>/?

Test URL

There is pee without poop, ==but there may not be poop without “p”==.

Unchecked Item
Checked item

{
  "firstName": "yusef",
  "lastName": "jfr",
  "age": 22
}