gatherd

Why?

I want to be able to USB-boot a random old laptop, install an OS configured to perform reasonably well, keep pace with future adjustments, and not have to click or remember much to accomplish this.

A corollary goal: nothing on a machine should be precious. Because a full working environment is only ever a fresh install and a git pull away, I can travel with a wiped or freshly-paved laptop and reconstitute everything once I've arrived — rebuilding a machine from the repo (and one memorized credential) is cheap and routine, so carrying my data along for the ride is optional.

That puts a premium on a repave that survives a hostile or absent network: bootstrapping needs to cope with captive portals, slow links, and the long tail of package downloads, ideally finishing unattended.

How

1. Boot the EndeavourOS live install environment
2. From the Welcome app, choose "Fetch your install customization file"
3. Enter this URL, then click OK:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/schmonz/gatherd/main/postinstall

4. Start the installer, choosing online installation and no desktop
   • Whole disk, encrypted, one big btrfs, swap with hibernate
5. On reboot, once the setup job completes, what you get is primarily EOS Sway Community Edition -- plus customizations to suit my hardware and personal taste.

The Calamares postinstall hook installs Ansible, clones this repo, sorts mirrors by speed (rate-mirrors, x86 and ARM), and registers a first-boot systemd service. On first boot, gatherd.service runs the playbook before login; a second service installs the slow packages in the background after you're logged in. A pushed change reconverges every machine on its next reboot, so machines keep pace without hand-holding.

Which hardware?

Tested on:

• Apple MacBook Air 7,1 (11", 2015)
• Apple MacBook Pro 5,2 (17", 2009)
• IBM ThinkPad T60
• Lenovo Chromebook 100e
• Lenovo ThinkPad X270
• Lenovo ThinkPad T470

Everything hardware-specific is autodetected per machine (see below), so an untested laptop should still come up with the common configuration.

Which customizations?

• Apps: 1Password, Helium browser (default), Tailscale, Private Internet Access VPN, LocalSend, Vesktop (Discord), Signal, Slack, Zoom, Teams, LibreOffice/AbiWord, Apostrophe + Dawn (writing), rclone, JetBrains Toolbox, Claude Code + Desktop + Cowork, btop, tmux, tig, etckeeper, fastfetch, glow, the_silver_searcher, github-cli, qemu, and more
• Web apps: a shelf of LLM chats installed as standalone Helium web apps (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Copilot, Le Chat, Meta AI, HuggingChat, Poe, Lumo)
• System: Tailscale with DNS push and firewall; PIA VPN; CUPS printing; etckeeper for /etc; fastest-mirror sorting; Sway autologin via greetd; Timeshift BTRFS snapshots (hourly + pre-upgrade autosnap); TLP power management; fingerprint auth for sudo; arch-update; NFS client (autofs over Tailscale); firmware updates via fwupd
• Desktop: macOS-style keyboard layout; Helium replaces Firefox as default browser; gtklock screen locker; custom swayidle; waybar shows btop CPU/mem and an mpris media widget; 1Password, Tailscale, and LocalSend autostarted by a session-lifetime supervisor that reaps the whole helper cohort cleanly on logout; gnome-keyring unlocked at login; git/ssh wired to the 1Password SSH agent; pbcopy/pbpaste wrappers via wl-copy/wl-paste; wallpaper, lock screen, and GRUB menu share one managed background
• Captive portals: at a portal network the captive-browser window pops on its own within a few seconds, already on the portal page, and closes itself once connectivity returns
• Hardware (autodetected per machine): Apple fan control and FaceTime HD camera driver; Chromebook function keys, AVS audio, lid-event poller, and OEM marketing-name label; phantom second display fix; software GL for old ATI GPUs; zswap for low-RAM machines; ambient light sensor; keyboard backlight; IR receiver tools; ThinkPad fan control, TrackPoint, ThinkVantage button, and battery charge thresholds; lid and power-button handling
• Dotfiles: gitconfig and tmux.conf symlinked from schmonz/dotfiles

After install

A handful of apps still need a one-time interactive sign-in (1Password, Tailscale, Claude, JetBrains, Zoom, iCloud via rclone). On each login gatherd regenerates a personalized post-setup notes file listing exactly which of those steps are still outstanding on this machine, plus a verification checklist — it doubles as the playbook's living test suite for a fresh repave.