Simple Arch Installation Guide

A Simple Introduction

This Guide to Arch Installation is meant to be Simple by Desgin. The Arch OS is Simple by design and hence is this guide. The Official Guide is recommended as well as this serves as supplementary to installation. This was written step by step when I was Installing the OS for the first time and hence contains tested commands.

This is super useful for understanding Linux in general. Debian users can also get an insight on setting up bare minimum setup on their distro too.

Setting up WiFi connection

iwctl
device list
station "device" connect "SSID"

Time Date Settings

timedatectl set-ntp true

listing drive

lsblk

Partition Management

cfdisk "disk path"

1. Atleast 512MB for the BootLoader (512 MB works well) 2. Rest for the Root Partition

Making the file partition

mkfs.ext4 "disk path"

path mounting

mount "installation partition (Ex. /dev/sda2)" /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount "boot partition (Ex. /dev/sda1)" /mnt/boot

Essential Tools Installation

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware vim

FSTAB Generation

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

Get the arch run up

arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Install Network-Manager and GRUB

pacman -S networkmanager grub

Enable the Network Manager

systemctl enable NetworkManager

GRUB installation

grub-install /dev/sda (just the drive)

GRUB Configuration File Generation

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

Setting Passwork for the root user

passwd

Generating Locale

vim /etc/locale.gen
(Uncomment the language to use)

Generate the Locale File

vim /etc/locale.conf
LANG=en-US.UTF-8

Setting up the Hostname

vim /etc/hostname
(add the hostname)

Setting up the hostname

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/<Region>/<Timezone>

Exit the CHROOT Environment

exit

Unmount the installation medium

umount -R /mnt

Reboot the system

reboot

Boot into the installation drive and Arch is installed

Here the installation will be command line only which is good. This way, it's lightweight and absolutely free of any bloated software. It's now on you how you want it to be and how should it perform.

I recommend going with xfce desktop environment for initial setup and then moving towards setting up dwm. xfce is fast and lightweight which works really well for starting up the initial work. Suckless terminal is one of my favourite so I recommended that one for a good experience.

Troubleshooting Issues while Installation (goes same for Debian)

These are some issues that you would face while installing utilities. I am referencing the packages here, it's same for both Arch and Debian.

<X11/Xlib.h> not found

sudo apt install libx11-dev

<X11/Xft/Xft.h> not found

sudo pacman -Sy libxft-dev
sudo apt install libxft-dev

<X11/extensions/Xinerama.h> not found

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxinerama-dev

startx not found

sudo apt install xinit

Installing a Display Manager: lightdm

sudo apt install lightdm

Make sure to adjust them as per the distro you are using.

Additional Resources

PythonHacker24/Arch-Linux-Installation-Guide