Arch Installation

Barebones install

Boot into live Arch ISO

# Switch to a larger font for HiDPI screens
setfont ter-132b # or ter-128b

# Verfiy boot mode
cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size

Connecting to internet

For ethernet connections, no action needed

Check devices

ip link

For WiFi devices, use iwctl to connect to a network

# INSIDE iwctl
device list

# Find device here, eg. wlan0
# Scan for networks

station wlan0 scan

station wlan0 get-networks

station wlan0 connect MYNETWORK

# Exit after done
exit

ping -c 5 ping.archlinux.org

Update clock

timedatectl

Setting up disks

Partitioning

Check disks

lsblk OR fdisk -l

Connect to installation destination drive, eg. nvme0

fdisk /dev/nvme0n1

# Inside fdisk prompt
# Use g to start clean
# p to see current partition setup
# n to create new partition
# t to change partition type
# d to delete partition

# In creating partitions, select default partition number & start sector
# For last sector, use size like +20G, to take up all remaining choose default
# Follow on screen list command to get code for partition type for t command

# w to finally write changes

Create the following partitions for a basic install: (For UEFI systems)

If dual booting, don't create new EFI partition & just mount the old one later.

1. 2GB EFI
2. 12GB Linux SWAP (Recommended to have 1.5x of RAM size)
3. 30GB Linux Filesystem (for root)
4. Remaining space Linux Filesystem (for home directory)

Formatting

For Root & Home, use mkfs.ext4 /dev/PARTITION For EFI, use mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/PARTITION For SWAP, use mkswap /dev/PARTITION

Enable swap with swapon /dev/PARTITION

Confirm the changes with lsblk

Mount partitions

mount /dev/ROOT_PARTITION /mnt

mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/HOME_PARTITION /mnt/home

mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/BOOT_PARTITION /mnt/boot

Final steps

Selecting mirrors

Use reflector to select closest mirrors

reflector --country CODE --latest 5 --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Essential packages

pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware base-devel vim nano networkmanager intel-ucode

Generate fstab

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Confirm all partitions are present in /mnt/etc/fstab with cat

Setting up new system

Change root into the new system

arch-chroot /mnt

Set timezone by linking appropriate file according to the location

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime

# Sync to hwclock
hwclock --systohc

Edit the file at /etc/locale.gen & uncomment desired locales

Then generate locales by running locale-gen

Create /etc/locale.conf file & set LANG variable

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Can also set keyboard layout by adding KEYMAP variable to /etc/vconsole.conf file

Set hostname by writing desired hostname to /etc/hostname file

Set root password by running passwd command

Create new non-root user

useradd -m -G wheel,users myuser

passwd myuser

Enable NetworkManager service

systemctl enable NetworkManager

Setup GRUB

For UEFI systems first install efibootmgr before grub

Install grub with pacman -S grub man-db man-pages (man packages are unrelated but recommended to have)

Setup bootloader

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

If dual booting, before rebooting install os-prober & run os-prober as root to detect & generate a boot entry. Don't format EFI partition.

Reboot into the new installation

exit # from chroot of new installation

umount -R /mnt

reboot

Remove the media while rebooting, after booting into new installation, use nmtui to connect to WiFi

Post-install steps

Upgrade system with pacman -Syu

In TTY, install terminus-font package to get larger font

Run ls /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts to get list of available fonts & set the desired one with setfont ter-128b or any desired one

To make the change permanent, modify /etc/vconsole.conf to add FONT="ter-132b with desired font

Then reboot

Allowing sudo

Install vi

Modify sudoers file with visudo to allow wheel group to run commands with sudo

visudo

# Uncomment this line
# Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command - more secure
%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Installing AUR helper

In this case, paru

sudo pacman -S base-devel git

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git

cd paru
makepkg -si

cd ..
rm -rf paru

Other helpful packages

Vulkan packages for apps with hardware acceleration

sudo pacman -S mesa vulkan-intel

Bluetooth

sudo pacman -S bluez bluez-utils

sudo systemctl enable bluetooth

# bluetoothctl bluetui

Firmware updates

sudo pacman -S fwupd udisks2

fwupdmgr get-devices
fwupdmgr get-updates
fwupdmgr update

Installing KDE Plama DE

sudo pacman -S plasma plasma-wayland-session konsole sddm

Enabling sddm service for login manager

sudo systemctl enable sddm

For smooth functioning

sudo pacman -S kde-cli-tools xde-desktop-portal xde-desktop-portal-kde kio nss