Don’t install arch linux, install TempleOS instead. All hail HolyC! (R.I.P Terry). Jokes aside, please keep in mind that this guide might become obsolete because the nature of rolling release so you should always check the arch wiki installation guide .
A Brief Intro
I’m trying to install an OS as minimal as possible but not from scratch like Linux From Scratch or compiling everything like Gentoo . I might try to install both of them but i don’t think i’m gonna use one of them as my main OS.
Pre-Installation
First thing to do is download the iso from here
and make bootable usb drive. After that check if your machine using legacy BIOS or UEFI by doing ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars. If it shows directory without error then the system is booted in UEFI mode, and if the directory doesn’t exist then the system may be booted in legacy BIOS (or CSM). Most modern computer usually using UEFI but please check first because it could save you a lot of time during the installation.
For this guide, i’m installing arch linux on machine with UEFI so i won’t cover the legacy BIOS installation here.
Installation
Here’s step-by-step arch linux installation
Live Environment
After booting into live environment, there’re a few things you need to do. Below is the things you need to do inside live environment.
Set Keyboard Layout
The default keyboard layout is US so if you want to use US keyboard layout then you can skip this step. You can check available layouts using this command
ls /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/**/*.map.gz
and to modify the layout you can use loadkeys. For example, to set a german keyboard layout you can do
loadkeys de-latin1
Verify The Boot Mode
If you already know which one your machine use (legacy BIOS or UEFI), then boot into the right boot mode. You can verify the boot mode by using the same command
ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
Connect To The Internet
At the time of writing this guide, the installation ISO using IWD (Internet Wireless Daemon) to connect to wifi. You can check if you have internet connection or not by doing this
ping google.com #or any website you like such as pornhub.com
If there’s no internet connection, you can do:
- If you’re using ethernet, plug in the cable.
- If you’re using wifi, you can use
iwctl(IWD command).
Here’s the basic command after you use iwctl (don’t forget to press enter to execute the command):
device list #to check the device name
station <device-name> scan #to scan the wifi
station <device-name> get-networks #to check the available networks
station <device-name> connect <wifi-name> #and then enter the password if there's any
exit #exit iwctl
After that check again using the ping command.
Update The System Clock
After there’s an internet connection, you can update the system clock by using
timedatectcl set-ntp true
to check the service status, use timedatectl status
Partition The Disks
This is for UEFI, for legacy BIOS please check arch wiki .
To check the disks that available, you can use lsblk command and pick which disk you want to install arch linux on. The disk start with sd and without a number at the end like sda
For the disk partitions, i use cfdisk command. For example, cfdisk /dev/sda (replace sda with the disk you want to use).
I didn’t make swap partition so if you want to make one please refer to arch wiki .
The first partition is bootloader, usually around 120M and 512M (M means megabytes) depends on what bootloader you want to use. And then change the partition type to EFI System.
The second partition is root directory. I use everything that’s left but you can spare some for another partition. And then change the partition type to Linux Filesystem.
After you’re sure about your disk partitions, then write the changes and then quit.
Format The Partitions
The next step is format the disk partition. For bootloader partition, format it to FAT32 by using this command
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/<efi-system-partition>
For root directory, format it to ext4 by using this command
mkfs.ext4 /dev/<root-partition>
For example:
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
Mount The Filesystems
More info please refer to EFI System Partition Arch Wiki . The next step is mount the partition that we’ve made. First, mount root partition to
/mntusing this command
mount /dev/<root-partition> /mnt
after that create two directories, /mnt/boot and /mnt/boot/efi (basically create efi directory inside boot directory which both of them doesn’t exist so you need to create one by one). You can create both directories using this command
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
after that mount your bootloader to /mnt/boot/efi using this command
mount /dev/<efi-system-partition> /mnt/boot/efi
For example:
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
Install Essential Packages
You can install essential package by using this command
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware vim
/mntis where you mount your root partition.baseis base packages.base-develis development tool such assudoandgrep.linuxis the kernel.linux-firmwareis the necessary part of linux kernel.vimis the text editor (i don’t even installnano, sorry).
Generate Fstab
Fstab is for telling the kernel what to load in the booting process.
To generate fstab use this command
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
-U means using unique ID instead of human readable ID such as sda. You can check the content of fstab by opening /mnt/etc/fstab file using your text editor (in my case is vim, so i use vim /mnt/etc/fstab).
Change Root Into New System
To take a look inside our new system, we can change root to our new system by using this command
arch-chroot /mnt
Configure New System
After setup our new system in live environment, now we need to configure our system inside the system (not in live environment anymore) after change root into our new system. There’re a few things you need to configure, below is the things you need configure inside new system.
Set The Time Zone
To set the time zone, we can use this command
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime
For example:
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Jakarta /etc/localtime
You can check the region or the city by doing this
ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region
and
ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City
or just double <tab> while typing ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/
After that, generate the clock using hwclock with this command
hwclock --systohc
Select Your OS Language
First, you need to edit etc/locale.gen using your favorite text editor (which is not nano for me) and uncomment the language you want.
For example, you want to use US English as your OS language then what you need to uncomment is en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and en_US ISO-8859-1.
After that, use this command to generate locales
locale-gen
and then create the locale.conf file. For example:
vim /etc/locale.conf #you can replace vim with your favorite text editor
the content of locale.conf is
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 #if you choose US English
If you set the keyboard layout (at the beginning of installation), then you make the changes persistent in vconsole.conf. For example:
vim /etc/vconsole.conf
with the content
KEYMAP=de-latin1
Network Configuration
For the network configuration, create the hostname file with the name you want (it’s not the user name, it’s more like your machine name). For example:
vim /etc/hostname
with the content
bruhtus
After that, add this content to /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.1.1 <yourhostname>.localdomain <yourhostname>
For example:
The previous step i define my hostname as bruhtus, so what i need to do is add this content to /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.1.1 bruhtus.localdomain bruhtus
If the system has a permanent IP address, it should be used instead of 127.0.1.1.
After that, install network manager using this command pacman -S networkmanager wpa_supplicant and then activate on startup using systemctl enable NetworkManager and systemctl enable wpa_supplicant.
Set The Root Password
To set the root (or admin) password, use this command
passwd
and then enter your password.
Add New User
The default user is only root (or admin).
To create new user, use this command
useradd -m <username>
after that create the password for that username by using this command
passwd <username>
and then enter your password.
For example:
useradd -m bruhtus #i like my hostname and my username to be the same
passwd bruhtus
and then enter the password.
Add New User To Group
It’s so that the new user can have root access using sude
To add new user to group, we can use this command
usermod -aG wheel,audio,video,optical,storage <username>
Edit Sudoers File
Add the wheel group to have root access with sudo
Use visudo and look for wheel and then uncomment those line.
The line would be like this
%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
By default, visudo using vi to edit the file. If you didn’t want to use vi then you can do
EDITOR=vim visudo
Install Bootloader
In my case, i use grub as the bootloader. So, i’m just gonna cover grub installation in this section.
First, install the bootloader and efibootmgr using this command
pacman -S grub efibootmgr
After that, use this command to install grub on system partition
grub-install /dev/<disk-partition>
For example:
grub-install /dev/sda #without any number at the end
If there’s no error, then generate grub config using this command
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
If there’s an error, please check here or use search engine. I can’t cover every single error.
Reboot
If there’s no error, exit from chroot using exit command. After that, unmount the system using umount -R /mnt and then reboot (please make sure the disk partition is priority in bios).
Graphical User Interface
If you only use command line interface, then you don’t need to continue. But, if you still need graphical user interface (GUI) to open browser or something like that, then keep going.
Login To Your Arch Installation
After reboot, login to your user you just created (in my case, it’s bruhtus). After that check the internet connection by using ping command (for example: ping google.com). If there’s an error then connect to your network using nmtui command. After that check the connection using ping command again. If there’s still an error, please check arch wiki or use your search engine.
Install And Configure Graphical Environment
Install a few package using this command
sudo pacman -S xorg xorg-init alacritty lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings i3-gaps
xorgandxorg-initis for graphical interface.alacrittyis the terminal emulator i choose (you can replace that with your favorite terminal emulator).lightdm,lightdm-gtk-greeter, andlightdmn-gtk-greeter-settingsis for login manager (unless you want to start your graphical environment manually like a champ, then you should probably install one).i3-gapsis the window manager i choose (you can replace that with your favorite window manager).
Please keep in mind that i use standalone window manager so i need to install xorg and xorg-init manually, but if you choose desktop environment then i think you don’t need to install those two.
After everything installed, copy the xinitrc using this command
cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
What that command do is copy xinitrc to your home directory. What .xinitrc do is start the window manager or desktop environment you choose (we’ll get to that later in this post).
The next step is to edit .xinitrc, you can do the following step:
- Remove the last 5 row (from
twm &untilexec xterm -geometry 80x66+0+0 -name login) - And then add
exec i3in the last row (basically replace the last 5 row with thisexec i3).
Twm is default xorg window manager, in case you’re wondering.
Please keep in mind that i use i3 window manager so i use exec i3. To makes thing simpler, exec is where you start your window manager or desktop environment so the usual syntax would be like this exec <window-manager>.
After that, enable login manager by using this command:
sudo sysmtemctl enable lightdm
The last step is to check if there’s an error or not by using this command startx to start xorg. If everything fine (you can access your window manager or desktop environment) then reboot.
For intel user, if there’s an error while using
startx, you can try installingxf86-video-intelfirst and see if that fix the error or not. If that doesn’t fix your error then you know what to do.
The Conclusion
That’s all you need to do to install arch linux. After that you can install all the program you want. I suggest you to try it first inside virtual machine such as virtualbox, virt-manager or something else.