Arch Linux Installation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Result
• Pre-installation
• Installation
  • Disk formatting
  • Mount and Pacstrap
  • Generating Fstab
  • Localtime, locale and extra config
• Grub Installation
• BSPWM Installation
• Exit and Reboot
• Post-Installation

Result

Pre-installation

Image to USB:

sudo dd if=archlinux-version-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M

Installation

You need to make sure you have working Internet, if you are using WiFi then you need to connect your device using iwctl.

# IWCTL COMMANDS
iwctl
device list
station <device> scan
station <device> get-networks
station <device> connect "WIFI"

If you are connected through a Proxy Server you need to do the following:

export http_proxy=http://user:pass@proxy.direction.com:port
export https_proxy=$http_proxy

Once you check you have working Internet you can move forward

timedatectl set-ntp true
timedatectl status

Be careful at this step:

#Formatting Disks
cfdisk

My personal Disk partition:

Disk	Type	Capacity
sda1	EFI	550M
sda2	Swap	4G
sda3	Linux Filesystem	All

Disk formatting

#EFI
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

#SWAP
mkswap /dev/sda2
swapon /dev/sda2

#EXT4
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

Mount and Pacstrap

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt

#Installing base packages
pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware base-devel

Generating Fstab

We need to generate our filesystem table

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

Then chroot into the fresh install

arch-chroot /mnt

Localtime, locale and extra config

I use NeoVim:

pacman -S neovim

Add your own localtime

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Havana /etc/localtime

hwclock --systohc

Look for the line #en_US.UTF-8 and uncomment

nvim /etc/locale.gen

#Generate locale
locale-gen

Just type your hostname, in my case it’s ‘arch’

nvim /etc/hostname

nvim /etc/hosts

Add the next lines to the file, change ‘arch’ for your username

127.0.0.1   localhost
::1         localhost
127.0.1.1   arch.localdomain    arch

Type your SUDO password

passwd

Create a new user, in my case it’s gonna be named ‘kr’

useradd -m kr
passwd kr
usermod -aG wheel,audio,video,optical,storage kr

Make sure ‘sudo’ is installed

pacman -S sudo

Look for the line %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL and uncomment, also for the proxy settings persistance add this: Defaults env_keep += “*_proxy *_PROXY”

EDITOR=nvim visudo

Grub Installation

This is not a Dual Boot Window’s configuration, you will need OS_PROBER to do that

pacman -S grub efibootmgr intel-ucode
mkdir /boot/EFI
mount /dev/sda1 /boot/EFI
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --bootloader-id=grub_uefi --recheck
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

BSPWM Installation

We install our Xorg server and BSPWM, sxhkd and a few useful tools.

pacman -S xorg xf86-video-intel mesa xdg-user-dirs xorg-xinit git alacritty flameshot mpv emacs bspwm sxhkd feh picom ranger arandr ark bluez bluez-utils brightnessctl rofi dunst htop ntfs-3g obsidian openssh openssl pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-bluetooth stunnel telegram-desktop thunar unzip zsh yt-dlp thunar-volman thunar-archive-plugin ripgrep fd npm noto-fonts-emoji 

Make sure NetworkManager and bluetooth are enabled, if the user-dirs are not created then run xdg-users-dirs-update.

systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl enable bluetooth

Exit and Reboot

exit
umount -R /mnt
reboot

Post-Installation

Make sure all the executables have chmod +x.

Mousepad

Create the following file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad"
    Driver "libinput"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    Option "Tapping" "on"
    Option "NaturalScrolling" "true": natural (reverse) scrilling
EndSection

Paru

Run this:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git
cd paru
makepkg -si

Fonts

To install the fonts needed for this config:

sudo pacman -S ttf-roboto ttf-firacode-nerd

paru -S nerd-fonts-jetbrains-mono

GTK Theme

Install the Breeze theme and tela icons

sudo pacman -S breeze-gtk
paru -S tela-icon-theme

QT Theme

Install breeze with sudo pacman -S breeze Then install qt5ct sudo pacman -S qt5ct And modify the file /etc/environment as sudo an add the following line: QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct