I’m planning to install Arch Linux for the first time. Any recommendations on setup, must-have applications, or best practices? Also, what’s something you wish you knew before switching to Arch?
Stick to the many guides available and you will be fine. One thing which I either missed or was glossed over in most guides is to install the Linux-firmware package. It is considered an “optional” package, but on all the machines I have ever used I have run into issues without it.
Install it in a VM. Create snapshots. When you fuck it up then revert the snapshot.
Once you’re decent at figuring out what to and not to do then try to get proficient at file system snapshots so you can do the same thing more or less on bare metal.
This, and take physical notes, or at least make notes in something you can refer to on a screen that is not your phone, ideally another desktop or a laptop computer with internet access in case something unexpected comes up during the physical install and you need to search the archwiki or the wider internet.
Lol
“The best way to run arch is to have a second non-arch computer at all times”
I think that sums it up
I mean, its useful regardless of the OS. When my Windows install broke and a system image restore got botched it was useful having a laptop.
Do yourself a favour and install it on a virtual machine first. Screwing up an install on Arch is frighteningly easy. The Arch Wiki is your friend, use it. Also, read the installation instructions before you begin the installation, not during. If this sounds like too much of a headache (understandably so), then give EndeavourOS a whirl.
It’s all automated now, it’s pretty hard to mess up a standard install. It’s not like the good old days.
Are you talking about archinstall or have they actually automated the default installation method?
That’s what I thought, but then when arch install fcks up it seems even harder to fix. I ised it because I have been getting new computers so it was easier to run run it. It messed up the SSD in a way, and trying to run it again wouldn’t work because it can’t find the SSD that it did something to. It took a while to manually fix all that.
Also idk why arch install doesn’t have easy way to partition home and root, the default suggestions’s root is too small, changing it requires manually making each partition, just take an integer(%) allocated for home and calculate from there.
funny you say that since I just did it (in virtualbox thankfully) and gave up until I heard about endavourOS a few minutes ago
You boot into your installation media and type archinstall then pick the options you want. You can do it the manual way but Arch install works great.
Alright I’ll try again and let you know, what DE do you recommend? I use cinnamon right now
The past 2 years I’ve only been using Arch with KDE plasma. It was the one that clicked with me and got me to stay using Linux. Before I ran pop! Os for a little while and didn’t really like it or gnome then I went back to windows.
Couldn’t get nano to work to change sudoers after using archinstall, I’ll just stick to mint until I learn how to properly use my computer
For starts, read the wiki. Specifically, read the installation guide at least twice to get a feel for how it works and what the Arch vibe is like. This is also your chance to figure out just what you want to do. Do you want to use GRUB or UEFI? Which sounds like a better fit? What filesystem? What do you want to run? mdadm or not? A little bit of planning and reading is better than reinstalling half a dozen times (ask me how I know…)
Must-have applications? Screen or tmux. SSH. Whatever shell you’re comfortable with (bash is how I roll, but you might be a fan of fish).
Print out the install guide on paper and have it with you while you go. If you fuck up networking, you’ll have the directions there to get it back.
Make sure you put “by the way I use arch” at the end of all your posts
And the neofetch print out
Arch is good for tinkering with to make it your own, but can sometimes require tinkering to do things other distros can do straight away, e.g. adding udev rules to use certain devices or setting up zeroconf to be able to discover printers on the network automatically
If you want to be able to roll back changes easily you could set up your root and home partitions as btrfs subvolumes and use snapper to take snapshots, which can be combined with pacman hooks to automatically take snapshots when updating/installing software and can even be set up to allow booting into the snapshots which could be useful if you break your system
EndeavorOS if you want to have an easy time. Also be comfortable reading documentation.
Why EndeavorOS over
arch-install?Mostly BC its low effort. The most intimidating thing about arch for me was the troubleshooting when things go wrong. I’m cool with that in general operation but not during the installation process. Endeavor makes it painless while still being a minimalistic install
What issues were you having with arch-install that you had to troubleshoot?
Manually resizing/replacing the efi partitions for Windows dual boot was where I decided to stop and switch to a graphical installer.
Partitioning is something I don’t mess with on the terminal. Last time I set up a new drive I used SystemRescueCD first just to use gParted before installing arch (manually)
If you don’t mind AI slop wallpapers every time you upgrade your system. I can’t wait to get rid of eOS on my desktop and just use regular Arch
I’ve only seen this on a system I hadn’t changed the wallpaper on. But agreed the stock ones suck
I don’t know why but even if I am setting my own wallpapers I still get to see the stock ones (when booting, etc), it pisses me off because it is clearly AI made and it seems the community around eOS likes them and even make worst ones on their forum
So many tips, let me add mine.
- btop - for monitoring and process management
- pacseek - terminal UI for installing, searching packages (uses yay)
- chaotic aur - repo for prebuilt binaries that are generally ok
When installing use the archinstall the first time, unless you really want to go into the deep end and use the normal install.
Don’t cheap out and use the hand holding script to ez mode the install. At least not the first time. You will learn a few things along the way.
- archinstall is one of the better/best distro installs around - it just does what it says it will and is pretty intuitive
- LUKS encryption is easy to set up in archinstall - strongly recommend encrypting your root partition if you have anything remotely sensitive on your system
- If you do use encryption but don’t like typing the unlock password every reboot, you can use tpm to unlock - yes, this is less secure than requiring the unlock password every time you reboot, but LUKS + TPM unlock is still MUCH better than an unencrypted drive just sitting there
- sbctl is a good tool for secure boot - If you want to get more secure, locking down bios with an admin password, turning on secure boot, sbctl works really well and is pretty easy to use. I would suggest reading up to understand what it’s doing before just installing/configuring/using it
- yay is a solid AUR helper / pacman wrapper
archinstall is still unstable as hell. I find that my best bet is to:
- Configure everything exactly like I want through the dialog
- Save the user and system preferences to their respective JSONs
- Mount a USB stick and copy the JSONs there
- Restart the archinstall process by loading from the JSONs, then hit commit
- When the above fails, restart the whole machine and jump to step 4, where it magically works
Ah, good to know. I haven’t really used that save configuration and reuse process, I just do the install directly at the end of configuring everything. But I can see the draw for using that, a shame it doesn’t seem to work that well.
Arch was the distro that got me to stop distro-hopping. It’s stable, it has a rolling release, and it’s mine (as in, customizable, manageable).
I guess, if there’s anything I wish I’d known off the bat is that the Arch documentation is probably the best available. So much so, a LOT of it applies to Linux in general and not strictly to Arch.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page
If something breaks, READ the error messages, understand each component, and check the wiki, there’s a very high chance the troubleshooting section has the exact issue laid out.
- ALWAYS avoid partial upgrades, lest you end up bricking your system: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported
- The Arch Wiki is your best friend. You can also use it offline, take a look at
wikiman: https://github.com/filiparag/wikiman - It doesn’t hurt to have the LTS kernel installed as a backup option (assuming you use the standard kernel as your chosen default) in case you update to a newer kernel version and a driver here or there breaks. It’s happened to me on Arch a few times. One of them completely borked my internet connection, the other one would freeze any game I played via WINE/Proton because I didn’t have resize BAR enabled in the BIOS. Sometimes switching to the LTS kernel can get around these temporary hiccups, at least until the maintainers fix those issues in the next kernel version.
- The AUR is not vetted as much as the main package repositories, as it’s mostly community-made packages. Don’t install AUR packages you don’t 100% trust. Always check the PKGBUILD if you’re paranoid.
It doesn’t hurt to have the LTS kernel installed as a backup option (assuming you use the standard kernel as your chosen default) in case you update to a newer kernel version and a driver here or there breaks.
I had a similar issue that was resolved by swapping to the LTS kernel. Learning about using a bootable Arch USB and chrooting into your install to make repairs would be a good thing for OP to know
Start from the install guide on the wiki. It’ll branch out fast and just follow all the links and read. If something goes wrong, check if you missed something on the wiki. It’s an amazing resource.
Also, look up your hardware on the wiki before you start.
Only update your system if you have some time on your hands afterwards, in case something breaks. Happened to me a few times before.
This.
“Just do a quick update” and spend 1h trying to fix some broken updatesAlso look at https://archlinux.org/news/ before updating (or follow the RSS feed), some updates may need manual intervention
Paying close attention to news feeds is something I wish I did when I ran Manjaro.
