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This post is the result of me walking into every pitfall on my way to install Arch Linux.

It is recommended to follow the official Arch Linux Installation guide. But the problem is that it's presented in a way that requires you to read the whole document and every link too thoroughly to understand what are you doing and why. There's no short version. So I tried to make one here.

Preparation

Making a bootable USB drive

Create a bootable USB drive with an ISO of Arch Linux. Use the boot menu or UEFI/BIOS to boot in.

Connect to the internet

Wired

You should be good to go. The wired connection should work right away, even if you use a USB-Ethernet adapter.

Wi-Fi

Use iwctl to connect to a wi-fi network.

# see the list of visible networks
iwctl station wlan0 get-networks
# connect to a visible networks
iwctl station wlan0 connect SSID
# connect to a hidden network
iwctl station wlan0 connect-hidden SSID

Connection check

ping -c 3 ya.ru

Disk partitioning

Let's find the partition where we want to install Arch.

lsblk

In our case, it's /dev/sda.

Now we need to format and re-partition the whole disk. We will use a very user-friendly cfdisk.

cfdisk /dev/sda

Let's partition the disk. The interface is really simple. Just follow the instructions on the screen.

Save the new partitioning by pressing the [ Save ] button. Confirm the changes.

Then exit the program.

Disk format

Let's launch lsblk again. We will see the following partitions:

The boot partition must have the format of FAT32.

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

For a swap partition we will use another command.

mkswap /dev/sda2

For other partitions, we will use the Ext4 format.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

Mount the partitions

Mount all the partitions, including the swap.

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/home --mkdir
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot --mkdir
swapon /dev/sda2

Installation

pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware sudo vim networkmanager archlinux-keyring zsh iwd

You can also install another kernel instead of linux. Here's the list of available kernels:

pacstrap might ask you to choose between two or three sources of installation. The default one should work.

Configuration

Right after the installation we should create a fstab file.

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

Let's move the system's actual root user in the newly installed system.

arch-chroot /mnt

Now we're in the context of installed system, as if we rebooted to the system itself.

Date, time and timezone

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Continent/City /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc --utc

Now check the current datetime with date command.

Localisation

We will use english as primary language, but will also install some other locales.

Open the locale.gen file with vim.

vim /etc/locale.gen

Find the strings with needed locales and uncomment them.

-#en_US.UTF-8
+en_US.UTF-8
# ...
# ...
# ...
-#ru_RU.UTF-8
+ru_RU.UTF-8

Save and close the file. Now it's time to generate the locales.

locale-gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf

hosts

Set the hostname. I will choose mypc, you can use your own.

echo mypc > /etc/hostname

Open the file /etc/hosts with vim and add the following:

127.0.0.1   localhost
::1         localhost
127.0.1.1   mypc mypc.localdomain

If you use a static IP-address, you should use that instead of 127.0.1.1.

Kernel initialisation

mkinitcpio -p linux

If you chose another kernel during the installation, specify that kernel instead.

Root password

passwd

Microcode

Read more here

# if you have an AMD CPU
pacman -S amd-ucode
# if you have an Intel CPU
pacman -S intel-ucode

Boot loader

All possible boot loaders can be found here.

Grub

pacman -S grub efibootmgr
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

systemd-boot

Install systemd-boot.

bootctl install

Now we need to configure it.

Open the file loader.conf.

vim /boot/loader/loader.conf
default arch
timeout 3
console-mode keep
editor no

No we should create the entry configs.

vim /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
title    Arch Linux
linux    /vmlinuz-linux
initrd   /amd-ucode.img
initrd   /initramfs-linux.img
options  root="PARTUUID=" rw

We should not forget about fallback entries.

vim /boot/loader/entries/arch-fallback.conf
title    Arch Linux (fallback)
linux    /vmlinuz-linux
initrd   /amd-ucode.img
initrd   /initramfs-linux-fallback.img
options  root="PARTUUID=" rw

For root option value, use PARTUUID from the output of

blkid /dev/sda3

Turn on the internet

systemctl enable NetworkManager

Reboot

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

Now we wait until we boot into the system.

Then we should log into the root user.

Post installation configuration

Create an admin user

useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash username
passwd username

Now we'll give sudo rights to all users in wheel group.

export EDITOR=vim
visudo

Uncomment the string and save the file.

# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Fix the "invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)" error

sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring
sudo pacman -Syu

Sound

We should use pipewire.

sudo pacman -S pipewire pipewire-{pulse,alsa}
# Chose wireplumber as source Repository

However, if we want to use Pulseaudio:

sudo pacman -S pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa

Login manager

lightdm

sudo pacman -S lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter
sudo systemctl enable lightdm

greetd

sudo pacman -S greetd tuigreet

Then we need to choose the UI. We have the following options:

I will choose tuigreet.

sudo pacman -S tuigreet

Now we need to integrate tuigreet with greetd. Open the file /etc/greetd/config.toml with vim.

Set the command value as tuigreet (or whatever UI you have chosen). Save and close the file.

Now we need to enable greetd.

sudo systemctl enable greetd

Some GUI require additional configuration, like gtkgreet. Read more

gdm

Install gnome first. Then:

systemctl enable --now gdm

Ly

Ly is published in AUR, so we need to install yay or paru first.

After that:

yay -S ly
sudo systemctl enable --now ly.service

Desktop environment

XFCE4

sudo pacman -S xfce4
echo "exec startxfce4" > ~/.xinitrc

i3

sudo pacman -S i3 lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter
echo "exec i3"  > ~/.xinitrc
sudo systemctl enable lightdm

sway

sudo pacman -S sway alacritty dmenu swaylock swayidle

GNOME

sudo pacman -S gnome power-profiles-daemon gamemode
# optionally
sudo pacman -S gnome-extra

Now enable gdm.

sudo systemctl enable --now gdm.service

KDE

Read here.

sudo pacman -S plasma
# or
sudo pacman -S plasma-meta
sudo systemctl enable --now sddm.service

Install some software

yay

https://github.com/Jguer/yay

pacman -S --needed git base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si
yay

paru

https://github.com/morganamilo/paru

pacman -S --needed git base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git
cd paru
makepkg -si
paru

NetworkManager

yay -S networkmanager networkmanager-openvpn nm-connection-editor libnma
sudo systemctl enable --now NetworkManager

Bluetooth

yay -S bluez bluez-utils
sudo systemctl enable --now bluetooth

We can also install the bluez frontend blueman.

Steam

First, enable the ultilib repository by uncommenting the whole section in /etc/pacman.conf:

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Install steam and other required packages

yay -S steam steam-fonts wqy-zenhei lib32-systemd

It will ask you to choose the video driver to install along steam. For AMD GPU, it is recommended to choose vulkan-radeon and lib32-vulkan-radeon.

After the installation, launch Steam and log in. Don't forget to enable Steam Play and Proton to play games for Windows.

Droidcam

See the post about installing Droidcam.

Fonts

yay -S wqy-zenhei

Other stuff

yay -S discord {telegram,signal}-desktop bitwarden keepassxc spotify

Devices

Xbox One Controller

xboxdrv

yay -S xboxdrv