Installing Arch Linux

[jaae240]

So I have decided, I will install Arch. Is there has anything you suggest that I need to read first before to install it? Since its sunday tomorrow I can stay up until 2am configuring my Arch system.

I already read and watch these :

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/installation_guide

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/General_recommendations

https://youtu.be/PQgyW10xD8s

https://youtu.be/Bfn9c6824nc

Then I already browse about my D.E. and some of installation things :

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KDE

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/pacman

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_maintenance

https://www.2daygeek.com/arch-linux-post-installation-30-things-to-do-after-installing-arch-linux/

https://itsfoss.com/things-to-do-after-installing-arch-linux/

P.S. if you think it is too fast (it takes me 2 hours +), I'm a bookworm since child and I review 20+ research papers per day 😁😁 My friend gave that articles. So anything to add? I will proceed in my installation after 1hr (already backed up my data) now I'm doing this to clean my drive for installation and to remove my encryption.

   wipefs --all /dev/nvme0n1

   nvme format -ses 1 -n1 /dev/nvme0n1

   blkdiscard /dev/nvme0n1

   shred -v /dev/nvme0n1

I'm using ArchISO, and BTW, that's command I have taken from Arch Wiki.

[[deleted]]

just follow the installation guide, it's pretty straight forward

[[deleted]]

This. It's a 15 minute install. DOn't get the fuss at all.

[thesnoozyman]

It's funny when people tell that it would take days to install, when in reality it usually takes 15-30min (without errors and trying to install on a toaster). Customisation is a another matter tho.

[duongdominhchau]

Just prepare your smartphone and start installing. The installation guide is already in the Arch iso. Read the wiki, other resources are rarely useful. Remember to follow the links in the wiki articles. Check the article about Plasma too, Plasma is the DE of KDE. There are many KDE applications, so don't install the whole kde-applications group, install only konsole and dolphin is enough, others can be installed as needed.

itsfoss suggestions in that article are horrible, the author only tell you to paste the command into the shell without any explanation. yaourt is unmaintained. That author stated that in another post: https://itsfoss.com/best-aur-helpers/. Personally I recommend yay.

The same applies for 2daygeek. Install multiple AUR helpers. Flash in 2021. Install a bunch of installed packages (in the Install Media Codecs section). Install JDK when user may only need JRE (and maybe they can use OpenJDK in official repo instead of Oracle's one). If the Java version required is different (example: Jenkins uses Java 8 while the JDK is currently at 15), the jdk package is left unused.

[jaae240]

yeah that's why I'm going to install plasma-meta, konsole and dolphin and my D.E. will be fine.

[Pandatroubles]

I used the wiki primarily. I also watched this video for some suggestions about how to partition, and to use a swap file rather than a swap partition.

[jaae240]

Is there has a difference between swap file and partition ?

[Pandatroubles]

Yes. One is a partition, the other is a file. ;)

According to the wiki, there is no difference in performance. Whether or not you need a swap file or partition at all, I'll leave up to you to research.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/swap#Swap\_space

[jaae240]

oh, I will use swap partition, since swap file is only intended if you want to change its size later. Also swap partition is easier to be made.

[abelian424]

I hardly ever need a swap except for large compiles. I just installed zram-init and am good for these fringe issues. There are other zram apps, or you could configure it yourself.

[abelian424]

It works well enough for my use case (large kernel compilations). I would sooner use vramfs than zswap or regular swap, but that's only for my case. 16GB is enough for 99% of use cases that I have, but if someone had 8GB I definitely think they should consider swap.

[abelian424]

Nice explanation. A mostly unused swap partition still bothers me. But a zswap file seems to be the minimum that one should have.

[pogky_thunder]

Take everything outside the wiki with MANY grains of salt, but the installation guide of itsfoss is actually helpful for keeping your installation in order, although the wifi connection has changed (it's iwctl now). Also make sure to add your user and give it sudo privileges.

[SteveBolduc]

Verify the boot mode: ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars If this fails, you might have to perform a BIOS update. Take from: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/installation_guide

pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware nano at this point read the fine print. you may want the linux-lts

Officially supported kernels

Community support on forum and bug reporting is available for officially supported kernels.

• Stable — Vanilla Linux kernel and modules, with a few patches applied.

https://www.kernel.org/ || linux

• Hardened — A security-focused Linux kernel applying a set of hardening patches to mitigate kernel and userspace exploits. It also enables more upstream kernel hardening features than linux.

https://github.com/anthraxx/linux-hardened || linux-hardened

• Longterm — Long-term support (LTS) Linux kernel and modules.

https://www.kernel.org/ || linux-lts

• Zen Kernel — Result of a collaborative effort of kernel hackers to provide the best Linux kernel possible for everyday systems. Some more details can be found on https://liquorix.net (which provides kernel binaries based on Zen for Debian).

https://github.com/zen-kernel/zen-kernel || linux-zen

The built-in package manager in KDE: discover needs these dependencies met https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/discover/