Installation

Archaeus installs from a bootable ISO using the bundled TUI installer. The process takes around 10–15 minutes.

1. Flash the ISO

Use Balena Etcher or dd on Linux/macOS (8 GB USB minimum):

sudo dd if=archaeus-0.1.0-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress && sync

2. BIOS settings

• Disable Secure Boot
• Set UEFI mode (recommended) or Legacy/CSM
• Set USB as first boot device

3. Run the installer

From the live environment, open Kitty (SUPER + Return) and run:

archaeus-installer

The dialog-based TUI will step through:

• Disk selection and GPT partitioning (EFI 512M + optional swap + root ext4)
• Locale and timezone
• Hostname, username, password, root password
• GRUB bootloader installation
• yay (AUR helper) built and installed from source
• ACC copied to /opt/archaeus/acc
• NetworkManager, Bluetooth, SDDM enabled

First Boot

On your first login, Hyprland starts and the ACC opens automatically in setup mode. This is triggered by ~/.config/archaeus/firstboot — the file is deleted after the session so it only happens once.

The setup flow walks through app installation, accent color, and wallpaper. After that, open ACC any time with SUPER + A.

Live Environment

The live ISO boots with these default credentials:

ACC — Packages

Six categories, 42 curated apps. Click to install or remove. ACC wraps yay -S and yay -Rns and streams the output live. The search bar queries the full AUR and pacman repos.

ACC — Desktop

Switch between Hyprland, KDE Plasma, and GNOME. The current session is read from ~/.config/archaeus/default-de. On switch, ACC installs the required packages and updates SDDM. The change takes effect on next login.

ACC — Appearance

Controls accent color (7 presets: Amber, Rose, Sage, Steel, Lavender, Teal, Peach), wallpaper (updates ~/.config/hypr/hyprpaper.conf and restarts hyprpaper), and font (Inter, JetBrains Mono, Noto Sans, Geist).

Color changes propagate to Hyprland border colors, Waybar styling, and the ACC window itself via CSS variables.

ACC — Startup

Lists all .desktop files in ~/.config/autostart/ as toggles. Toggling off sets Hidden=true inside the file — no deletion, always reversible.

Default autostart entries: hyprpaper, Waybar, dunst, polkit-gnome, hypridle, wl-clip-persist, nm-applet, blueman-applet.

ACC — Keybinds

Parses ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf for bind = ... lines and displays them as a table. Read-only view — to change a bind, edit the config file directly and it updates on the next ACC open.

Hyprland Configuration

Config lives at ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf. Reload without restarting:

hyprctl reload

Key defaults from the Archaeus config:

general {
  gaps_in  = 5
  gaps_out = 10
  border_size = 2
  col.active_border = rgba(C8A96Eff)   # amber
  col.inactive_border = rgba(2E2520ff)
}
decoration {
  rounding = 12
  blur { enabled = true; size = 8; passes = 2 }
  drop_shadow = true
  shadow_range = 12
}

Default Keybinds

Workspaces

Hyprland uses numbered workspaces 1–10. Also navigate via the Waybar workspace buttons or:

# Scroll through workspaces on Waybar
SUPER + scroll wheel

# Move focused window to another monitor
SUPER + SHIFT + comma/period

Using the AUR

yay is pre-installed. The ACC uses it internally, but you can use it directly in the terminal:

# Install
yay -S package-name

# Update everything (pacman + AUR)
yay -Syu

# Search
yay -Ss keyword

# Remove (including unused deps)
yay -Rns package-name

# List explicitly installed
yay -Qe

zsh Aliases

The default .zshrc ships with these aliases:

Building the ISO

Clone the repo on an Arch Linux machine and run the build script:

git clone https://github.com/Brokaliy/archaeus
cd archaeus
./build.sh

The script:

1. Runs npm install in acc/
2. Copies the ACC into archiso/airootfs/opt/archaeus/acc/
3. Strips node_modules caches to keep the ISO lean
4. Calls mkarchiso -v -w /tmp/archaeus-work -o ./dist ./archiso/

Output: ./dist/archaeus-YYYY.MM.DD-x86_64.iso