Hyperbola part 3 - taking this bad boy to overdrive - upgrading to the 0.4 beta

In part 2, I showed how to do a basic, minimal install of Hyperbola, how to get networking and graphics working, and how to install the DWM window manager and some programs: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/hyperbola-part-2-beginners-guide-installation-w-dwm-window-manager

Here, we are going to jump ahead and power up from Hyperbola 0.3 to the beta of the next version, Hyperbola 0.4. In so doing, we will be able to get the latest version of the iceweasel-uxp browser and we will get basic sound working!!! Follow along.

1. First, change the repos to disable all the Hyperbola "stable" repos, and only enable the Hyperbola "development and debugging" repo. Do this by opening the 'mirrorlist' file in our text editor, nano:
sudo nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Edit all the lines that say they are a "stable" repo by starting the line with a '#' symbol, in order to disable them. Edit the very last entry in the mirrorlist, which says:
"Note: Only for development and debugging
# Server = https://repo.hyperbola.info:50011/gnu-plus-linux-libre/testing/$repo/os/$arch"

Delete the "# " symbol and blank space at the beginning of the line, in order to enable this repo:
"Server = https://repo.hyperbola.info:50011/gnu-plus-linux-libre/testing/$repo/os/$arch"

Hit the Ctrl-o key combination and press Enter to save the file, and Ctrl-x to exit nano.

2. Remember, we have to re-start our internet each time, so if your network isn't running yet then run the earlier commands for starting the internet. Your ethernet device name will probably not be 'enp0s2' like mine - remember you have to use the 'ip link' command to determine the name of your ethernet device.
sudo ip link set enp0s2 up
sudo dhcpcd

3. Update and upgrade all the packages on your system
sudo pacman -Syyu

At this point I got asked some questions, to which I had to answer "y" for 'yes' to each one. Watch out, "y" is not always the default!

I also ran into some errors, which said that various "pinentry" files on the system were somehow causing problems while I was trying to update and upgrade. I resolved these errors by removing the offending files, per a solution I found in the Arch forums:
sudo rm /usr/share/info/pinentry.info.gz
sudo rm /usr/bin/pinentry-curses
sudo rm /usr/bin/pinentry-tty

Watch your error messages closely and see if you get the same errors, or something different, or none at all. I post these here only because they were the errors I ran into, not necessarily that everyone will always run into them.

Now I was able to update and upgrade the packages successfully:
sudo pacman -Syyu

4. This upgraded almost 300 different packages to newer versions. At the end of the process I rebooted. The new 0.4 beta version of Hyperbola deleted the 'sudo' package, so I could not use the command 'sudo reboot' to reboot the machine. I had to log in as root and reboot:
su
reboot

5. The 'sudo' package was removed, but it was replaced by a more secure and more minimalist alternative, the 'doas' command from the openBSD system. A lot of security experts are now recommending that we move most of our desktop GNU/Linux systems to 'doas' instead of sudo, so this is a great chance to try it out. 'doas' is already set up on the system for you, and should work right away. Try to update the package repository again:
doas pacman -Syyu

6. You should be asked for your password, however at this point I got another error saying that pacman would not run because I was missing the packages 'libssl.so.46' and 'libcrypto.so.44'. There appears to be some kind of small bug here, because I already have the later versions of both files on my system. The solution, if you run into this error, is to link the system to both of the newer versions of the packages, and tell the system that they fulfill the need for the older versions. We'll do that using our new friend, 'doas':
doas ln -sf /usr/lib/libssl.so.48 /usr/lib/libssl.so.46
doas ln -sf /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.46 /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.44

7. Now I was able to update the package repository with pacman, and pacman told me there were no additional package updates to install. If there are some, then go ahead and install them.
doas pacman -Syyu

8. You'll notice that every time you use the 'doas' command, you have to enter your password, and that there is no tab-completion of commands. This is not the ideal way to use it, not like with the 'sudo' command where it seems to remember your password for a few minutes after entering it, and where your terminal can complete commands by pressing the Tab key. In order to get the password "persistence" like with 'sudo', we can edit the 'doas' conf file like so by opening it in the nano text editor:
doas nano /etc/doas.conf

Here, you'll see that the following line has been un-commented (i.e., there is no "#" symbol at the start of the line):
"permit :wheel"

This is the line that allows us to act as the administrator with our regular user account by entering our regular password, because our user account is part of the "wheel" group. To make the password more "persistent", we change that line as follows:
"permit persist :wheel"

Save the changes by hitting the Ctrl-o key combination and the Enter key, and exit the nano text editor by hitting the Ctrl-x key combination.

In order to get the tab-completion of commands for doas, edit the .bashrc file in your home directory with nano:
nano ~/.bashrc

Add a line at the bottom of the file:
complete -cf doas

Again, save the changes by hitting the Ctrl-o key combination and the Enter key, and exit the nano text editor by hitting the Ctrl-x key combination.

That's it. Now if you use the 'doas' command where you would have used 'sudo' in the past, 'doas' will retain your password for a few minutes like it used to do with 'sudo', and once you are using it in a terminal it will tab-complete your commands.

9. Once in DWM, I noticed that the nice terminal emulator I had installed in the Hyperbola 0.3 version was no longer available, 'lxterminal'. And 'xterm' was uninstalled during the update process for some reason. So I needed to install both xterm and a decent terminal emulator (I do NOT consider xterm to be decent, despite what some may argue). I found one in the Hyperbola 0.4 repository that I like a lot - 'sakura'. I think you'll like it too. It's light, fast, has no added dependencies, and has nice options and defaults. I recommend installing them both before starting DWM:
doas pacman -S xterm sakura

10. Now let's log into DWM again and have a look around at our new stuff. If you did not run into the "missing libssl.so.46" and "missing libcrypto.so.44" errors from step #6 above, you may run into them here. If so, just follow the commands I listed in step #6 to overcome those errors. Log into DWM:
startx

11. You'll probably find that iceweasel-uxp, the web browser on Hyperbola, has been removed. Open a terminal by hitting your DWM menu key combination left-Alt-p and typing in the first few letters of your new terminal 'sakura' and hit Enter. Go into the terminal and install the new version of the iceweasel-uxp web browser:
doas pacman -S iceweasel-uxp

11. Now have a look at your nice new iceweasel-uxp web browser, which is the latest version from June 2021, instead of an old version from 2020. Start it by using your DWM menu key combination left-Alt-p, and typing the first few letters of 'iceweasel-uxp', and hitting Enter. Go to a website with some videos, like the invidio.us site 'yewtu.be', and find a video you want to watch. If all goes well, you will have video and for our first time in Hyperbola you will have sound!!

12. I'm going to add a few packages from Hyperbola 0.4 beta's repos so I can do some stuff in DWM, like write documents, browse the web with my favorite minimalist web browsers, watch and listen to media, etc. Hyperbola does not have Libreoffice at this time, so I'll install my favorite little word processor, 'focuswriter', and a classic spreadsheet program, 'gnumeric'. I'll install the minimalist web browser 'netsurf', the cli web browser 'elinks', and the cool classic Opera-style libre browser I've been wanting to try, 'otter-browser'. And of course, I'll be installing 'mpv' for music and videos:
doas pacman -S focuswriter gnumeric netsurf elinks otter-browser mpv

13. Try out some of these new programs. Hit the DWM menu key combination, left-Alt-p, and start to type in the name of one of the programs you've installed - 'focus'. Hit Enter when 'focuswriter' shows up in the menu. Enjoy!

14. NOTE - while sound is working with iceweasel-uxp, it will not work with mpv (for now) unless you start your media as follows:
mpv --audio-device=sndio [link_to_media_file]

Also, I've been able to get alsamixer running with root privileges to increase/decrease sound volume, but not as the regular user:
doas alsamixer

I'm assuming some of these sound issues will be ironed out while the beta rounds into form for a regular release.