Some utilities for Linux/Gnome to automate the path between clean install and useful system.
These tools are designed to make clean installs of Linux/Gnome environments automated including installing applications, cloning Github repos, installing themes and automatically controlling them via various Gnome settings adjustments and Tweaks. Think of them as examples, but they are fairly complete for my own setup. The motivation here is to make distro-hopping automatic and seamless, so there is also some custom configuration that can be easily automatically controlled. My system is skinned to look like Mac OS, but any theme/icon combo would work in a similar way. Note that installing extensions programatically requires a reload of Gnome Shell (a logout on Wayland) and makes them non-User Installed, which I don't really like. So, at current I'm manually configuring a minimal set of commands that really should be done from the command line (like the below) but can't be unless you're on an older WM. That is we manually install Extension Manager then User Themes and Just Perfection extensions. After that, the installation script handles everything else possibly requiring a logout/login upon completion.
flatpak -y install flathub ExtensionManager
sudo dnf -y install gnome-shell-extension-user-theme
sudo dnf -y install gnome-shell-extension-just-perfection
A specific bash script will be very user and preference specific, but here are some examples. Ordering is somewhat important here as you obviously can't point to a theme that's not installed yet, and some of this is redudant if your /home is it's own partition so that clean installs don't have to format it, but that redudancy is fine and won't interrupt the script. Your mileage may vary by distro and user specific requirements.
Cloning some Github repos:
git clone https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-icon-theme $HOME/Documents/Software/Git/WhiteSur-icon-theme
git clone https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme $HOME/Documents/Software/Git/WhiteSur-gtk-theme
git clone https://github.com/washburn24/Linux-Utilities $HOME/Documents/Linux-Utilities
Installing some GTK and icon themes:
sudo dnf -y install gnome-tweaks adw-gtk3-theme yaru-theme
$HOME/Documents/Software/Git/WhiteSur-icon-theme/install.sh -a -d $HOME/.icons -n WhiteSurAlt
$HOME/Documents/Software/Git/WhiteSur-icon-theme/install.sh -d $HOME/.icons -n WhiteSurClean
Command line controls of Gnome settings (you can use 'dconf watch /' to get syntax for gsettings set commands):
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad natural-scroll 'false'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-format '12h'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-show-weekday 'true'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface show-battery-percentage 'true'
Command line controls of Gnome Tweaks:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme 'WhiteSur'
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.user-theme name 'MacLight'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'adw-gtk3'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout 'close:appmenu'
Command line controls of Just Perfection (this snippet moves the clock and notification to the right):
dconf write /org/gnome/shell/extensions/just-perfection/clock-menu-position 1
dconf write /org/gnome/shell/extensions/just-perfection/clock-menu-position-offset 6
dconf write /org/gnome/shell/extensions/just-perfection/notification-banner-position 2
Install some applications in different ways, this list can be as long as your requirements:
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm
sudo dnf -y install google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm # Grab Google Chrome's latest and install locally
flatpak -y install flathub io.github.shiftey.Desktop # Github Desktop, syntax found via Flathub's web install
flatpak -y install flathub zoom geary # Multi install for built in apps, specifying Flathub as the repo
Any custom configuration or known bug fixes for specific hardware:
tar -C $HOME/.icons -xvf $HOME/.icons/WhiteSurCustom.tar.xz
rsync -a -v --ignore-existing $HOME/.icons/WhiteSurClean/* $HOME/.icons/WhiteSur/
sudo cp -f $HOME/Documents/Linux-Utilities/audio/snd.conf /etc/modprobe.d/
if [ ! -f $HOME/.vimrc ]; then
cp $HOME/Documents/Linux-Utilities/config/Dotfiles/.vimrc $HOME
fi
These examples are geared to Fedora for syntax and clean install toolset but other distros would be similar with different default apps and package managers. A functional bash shell example supporting Fedora, Ubuntu, and openSUSE is in the /tools subdirectory. Everything they need is self contained in public git repos including this one, which it will clone automatically. They aren't perfect but are a good start. Note that this tool now automates enabling Flatpak on distros that don't ship with support, so if you don't want that you'll need remove or modify it to support Snaps.