calOS Hyprland Starter

CalOS is a desktop-friendly Hyprland starter setup (Arch btw) that strives to be both feature-rich, yet nominal; a blank template that the user can build on top of. With less than 600 packages on a complete install, calOS combines smart/minimal TUI-based defaults with smooth animations and extensive themeing.

tl;dr its dotfiles baby

Overview

• 💻 Minimal System Apps: Striving to be as bloat-free as possible, calOS primarily utilizes TUI applications/packages with minimal dependencies for system control. Examples include yazi as your file browser, cmus for playing local audio, and bluetui/impala for bluetooth/wifi support respectively.
• 🎮 Gaming Friendly: calOS ships with numerous gaming-oriented configurations, all found in the games.conf file within .config/hypr. Features include a special workspace for games (Super + G), a custom gaming submap (with full waybar integration) that disables keybinds of your choosing + enables passthrough (for global push-to-talk support) and Steam pre-installed (if chosen by the installer).
• 🧲 Complete Walker/Waybar Integration: Thanks to walker's extensive dmenu support, calOS comes with a powerful system menu that can help toggle/restart system daemons, launch applications, run system commands and even change your current theme. A custom fork of mechabar (Waybar) helps you keep on eye on your active workspaces, system resources, currently playing audio and pending updates. Easter egg included.
• 🖌️ Style: Speaking of style, calOS ships with 10+ themes that are fully integrated into the OS. Your waybar, Neovim, terminal applications, audio visuializer and walker menu all change based on the theme you pick! Check out the style section below for some examples. Shoutout to Omarchy for creating the excellent theme switcher that this is based on. Multiple beziers were either created or imported (from popular configs like caelestia) for a beautifuly animated system.
• ⚖️ Configurable Install: With preconfigured dotfiles, you sometimes run the risk of too little control over what you have installed on your system. The installer rectifies this by allowing you to choose what defaults you prefer, such as picking your AUR helper yay vs paru (defaults to paru because iTS BETTER) and whether or not you want to install Steam with full system integration.
• 🔧 Tinker Friendly: Some dotfiles also make it very difficult to change certain aspects of your system, from keybinds to default applications. This is your computer and you can do whatever you want with it. All configuration files are in the ~/.config directory, with your hyprland configuration files being neatly sourced in separate files for easy editing. Don't like something? Great, change it! To easily browse installed packages and "debloat", open up your system menu and navigate to System -> Packages to see what comes preinstalled.

Core Applications

Component	Application
Compositor	Hyprland
Launcher	Walker
Waybar	Mechabar
Terminal	Alacritty
Wallpaper	Awww
Notifications	mako
Browser	Firefox

Keybinds

For the uninitiated, your Super key is your windows key. Stop calling it the windows key.

General

Keybind	Action
Super + Enter	Open Terminal
Super + Q	Kill Active Window
Super + Escape	Open System Menu
Super + Alt + Space	Open System Menu (Alt)
Super + B	Browser (Firefox)
Super + K	List Keybinds
Super + Space	Application Launcher
Super + Y	Yazi (File Manager(
Super + N	Neovim
Super + G	Toggle Game Window
Super + S	BTop++ System Monitor
Super + Backspace	Toggle Opacity

System

System keybinds use CTRL and SUPER.

Keybind	Action
Super + CTRL + L	Screensaver
Super + CTRL + N	Toggle Bluelight Filter
Super + CTRL + W	Toggle Waybar On/Off
Super + CTRL + C	Clipboard History
Super + CTRL + S	Power Options (Reboot/Shutdown)
Super + CTRL + T	Theme Menu
Super + CTRL + G	Toggle Game Mode On/Off
Super + CTRL + B	Cycle Background

Window Management

Keybind	Action
Super + (1,2,3)	Switch Between [Number] Workspace
Super + F	Toggle Floating Window On/Off
Super + Arrow Keys	Switch Active Window
Super + Shift + Arrow Keys	Swap Active Window
Super + Shift + (1,2,3)	Move Active Window to [Number] Workspace

Style

Sexy Theme Switching Example

screenrecording-2026-02-08_20-21-12.mp4

Many, many, many (autistic) hours were spent tweaking each theme CalOS ships with to compliment the entire OS. Your waybar, audio visualizer, terminal and system monitoring tools will all change based on the theme you're feeling. This took so long you son of a bitch you better use the themes

Installation and Configuration

How 2 Install

You must have a fresh Arch install going into this. Feel free to use any settings you want; from disk encryption to file system type. Limine is heavily encouraged to be used as your bootloader as the installer enables extra features if it detects it. Other bootloaders will function just fine, however. The only required settings are a user with root (which you should be using anyway, you dummy) and pipewire to be installed.

sudo pacman -S git

Install git to clone the repository into the specified directory.

Create your directories:

mkdir -pv ~/.local/share
cd ~/.local/share

From there, clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/criticalart/calos

Then cd into /calos/ and run ./install.sh. Wow crazy.

Post Installation

• Try to familiarize yourself with all the keybinds to really get the most out of the system. Use Super + K to bring up your keybinds, sorted by importance.
• If you are a lazy sack of shit just read through the ~/.config/hypr configuration files as those are what you use to interact with your system.

Why Paru?

• its better just try it don't be a bitch