I have to admit that installation of Arch Linux can be difficult for many people, but that’s why it’s a fun!

A few days ago I’ve tried first time to install Arch Linux. I’ve started on virtual machine, to know better the whole process and later I’ve tried to install it on my laptop - and you know, from 15 min of first impressions about the Arch I didn’t find anything that I could not like.

Yes, I agree that there are many decisions you have to decide during the installation of Arch. For example, manual setting up of partitions, current date, downloading all related packages, then finally install the whole system. For many it’s just the beginning because after the installation you’ve only a bare system - console and that is it. You have to install and configure GUI and other important stuff on your own, but actually this is a fun, isn’t it?

The longest part for me was the downloading and installation packages from the Net. This took me around 45 minutes to download the system and GUI interface (Gnome).

Beside the installation process, I love the whole idea of having one release in contrast to Ubuntu. You have only one major version and you stick to it - until that community decides to change it.

Below I would like to share my whole process and preferences during the setting up the Arch.

Partitioning hard drives

Display all drives on PC. I have only one drive called /dev/sda.

fdisk -l
cfdisk /dev/sda

I’ve got 500GB drive (with real space of 465GB), but the drive has one hidden partition for WinRecovery with size around 18GB (I’m not using it right now).

So, now I split a bit rest of my drive space for 2 additional partitions.

Many IT guys will be whimper a bit of having only one general partition for /, but I found it more useful for me in daily work.

Note: If you have disk bigger then 2TB use GPT instead of DOS, if using of MBR is not obligatory.

• 18GB hidden WinRecovery partition (not used)
• 16GB for /swap with type linux swap (82)
• ~431GB for / with bootable flag and type linux (83)

For more take a look at partitioning page on Arch wiki.

Downloading basic packages

I have tried installation on my virtual box then again on my laptop. The problem that I face, was internet connection through WiFi. There are several ways of doing this. You can use wifi-menu to set up temporary connection for downloading packages and after installation setup network-manager.

In this part we will format our partitions and enable Linux SWAP:

mksf.ext4 /dev/sda2
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mkswap /dev/sda1
swapon /dev/sda1
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel # most basic packages

If you don’t want to install anything more, for now, you can omit packages, but I recommend to install them also just for more efficient usage before setting up the network-manager.

pacstrap /mnt dialog wpa_supplicant network-manager-applet ldns # for connecting via wifi-menu after install
pacstrap /mnt sudo zsh wget curl # additional packages

Configuring the installation

arch-chroot /mnt
passwd root
vi /etc/locale.gen    # uncoment all for you lang: en_US
locale-gen
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin /etc/localtime
timedatectl set-ntp true
hwclock --systohc
echo vbox > /etc/hostname

# installing grub
pacman -S grub-bios
grub-install /dev/sda

# generate system info file
mkinitcpio -p linux

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
exit # from /mnt root

# generate partition info
genfstab /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
umount -R /mnt

This password is the most important of all. Write it down somewhere to not forget, we will need it later.

Connect to internet

ip link
systemctl enable dhcpcd.service
systemctl start dhcpcd.service
ping google.com

or copy profile from examples

cp /etc/netctl/examples/ethernet-dhcp /etc/netctl/
vim /etc/netctl/ethernet-dhcp    # change Interface=enp0s3
netctl enable ethernet-dhcp
netctl start ethernet-dhcp

If above not work try manual install upon result from ip link, in my case the Ethernet device name is called enp0s3

ip link
dhcpcd enp0s3

Create user

useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power,sys,adm -s /bin/zsh maciej
passwd maciej
vim /etc/sudoers    # Uncomment: wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Now SWITCH to newly created user! To do it logout from root user just to safety purpose.

Why? Because when you use root you can do everything (it is good when you know what you’re doing), but it’s not about what you can or can’t do, it’s about you. You’re more secure from yourself actions for example just using sudo program.

It’s a good approach - but hey, you already know this, right? ;)

Further steps

Now we’ll install additional useful stuff. You may or may not want to install it, it’s only up to you.

My must have list.

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S gvim git tmux htop jack2

The list:

• For Bash, I usually install bash-completion.
• For checking hardware lshw hwinfo.
• For mini-jack support jack2
• For supporting different drives I install exfat-utils dosfstools jfsutils ntfs-3g mtools and for partitioning, I like gparted and gpart for fixing drives.
• For graphics gimp inkscape and imagemagick for console operations.
• For FTP filezilla.
• For SSH openssh is the obvious choice!
• For LaTeX I usually install all packages texlive-most texlive-lang and texstudio

Install display manager

I choose Gnome3 for my graphical environment because now many problems have been fixed by maintainers and it looks quite nice.

sudo pacman -S gnome gnome-extra gnome-tweek-tool
sudo systemctl enable gdm.service

Reboot system with sudo reboot and we’re done with installation of GUI.

Install the Nvidia drivers

First, we check which graphic card we have:

lspci -k | grep -A 2 -E "(VGA|3D)"

In my laptop I’ve got GeForce GT 425m, so according to Arch Linux wiki about nvidia. I have to install nvidia nvidia-libgl and enable service.

It might want to uninstall mesa-libgl package (this package have some problems with handling animations for some graphics cards), so agree for that by pressing (Y).

sudo pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils nvidia-libgl
sudo systemctl enable nvidia-persistenced.service

Then we have to reboot the system and check lsmod | grep nvidia.

The end

Now you should have full operational Arch Linux system - and yes, you should be proud of yourself!

Thanks for staying with me to the end. I hope that little tutorial of mine, help you a bit during your journey of setting up you private Arch instance ;)