Sunny's Arch Linux installation guide

💡Remember, you can click the icon to the left of the README.md title for a table of contents.

This noob-friendly guide aims to assist users in setting up a fresh Arch Linux system equipped with a minimal installation of the KDE Plasma desktop environment.

I have personally had a lot of troubles getting Arch to connect to Wi-Fi during the install process. For maximum convenience, consider connecting your machine using Ethernet.

Throughout this guide, if you see square brackets '[ ]' in code blocks, that means the word of code (square brackets included) should be replaced with something else. This is detailed in the instructions before or after the code block.

This guide makes a few assumptions:

The keyboard layout used is English US.
The ISO used is the Arch Linux ISO from the official site.
The system boot mode is UEFI.
The disk to install Arch on uses GPT.

Setup

Boot mode verification

To verify that the boot mode is indeed UEFI, the following command shows an output without error.

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

If the directory does not exist, the system is not in UEFI mode. Refer to your motherboard's manual for troubleshooting.

Internet connection

If you are connected via Ethernet, you should have Internet access already. If you must use Wi-Fi, you will have to use iwd (iNet wireless daemon). Get an interactive prompt for it using:

iwctl

List Wi-Fi devices.

device list

Take note of the name of the Wi-Fi device you are using (usually wlan0). For the next three commands, replace [device_name] with this name.

Scan for networks (this command does not output anything).

station [device_name] scan

List all available networks.

station [device_name] get-networks

Take note of the SSID of the network you want to connect to. Then connect to it using

station [device_name] connect [ssid]

where [ssid] is the SSID you took note of. You will be prompted to enter a password if required by the network.

Exit iwd.

exit

Verify your Internet connection.

ping archlinux.org

You should see lines continuosly being printed in the terminal. This indicates a working connection.

Press Ctrl+C to stop pinging.

Update system clock

timedatectl is the service that controls the system time and date. Update the system clock with:

timedatectl set-ntp true

The service's status can be checked with:

timedatectl status

Partitioning

Disk identification

List available disks and their partitions in your system.

lsblk

Take note of the name of the disk you want to install Arch on. Usually, it should be sda, nvme0n1 or similar.

To modify our disks and partitions, we will use a command-line tool called fdisk. fdisk supports GPT and is used in the official Arch Linux installation guide. However, it is fully dialog-based and may not be intuitive for new users. You can refer to the full list of partitioning tools for alternatives. In this guide, we will be sticking to fdisk.

Partitioning with fdisk

Launch fdisk on the target disk.

fdisk /dev/[target_disk_name]

[target_disk_name] should be the name you took note of earlier (sda, nvme0n1 or similar).

From this point onward, all changes you make inside fdisk are saved inside memory only. You can still discard changes and exit. Writing the changes to the disk is irreversible, so be careful and double check your changes before writing.

fdisk is quite simple. You type a one-letter command, press Enter, and a dialog prompts you to enter further values to modify your disk. The m command shows a list of all available commands.

For UEFI systems, a bare minimum of 2 partitions are required for a working installation of Arch: a root partition and an EFI partition. For this installation, we will create these 2 partitions as well as a swap partition.

To completely wipe the target disk and create these 3 partitions, follow the steps below:

Enter g. This deletes all current partition data and creates a new GPT.
Enter n (creates a new partition).

Partition number prompt: Enter 1 (denoting the first partition).

First sector prompt: Enter without typing anything (this takes the default value for first sector).

Last sector prompt: Enter +512M (so our EFI partition is 512 MiB in size).
Enter n.

Enter 2.

Enter without typing anything.

Enter +[swap_size], where [swap_size] is the desired size of our swap partition. For example, 8G indicates 8 GiB and 512M indicates 512 MiB. Swap size is a personal choice. This article provides a guideline on how much swap you should need.
Enter n.

Enter 3.

Enter without typing anything.

Enter without typing anything (this allocates the remainder of the entire disk to the root partition).
Enter t (changes the type of a specified partition).

Enter 1 (selects the first partition).

Enter 1 (sets the partition type to EFI System; you can view all partition types by entering L and return to the prompt by pressing q).
Enter t.

Enter 2.

Enter 19 (sets the partition type to Linux swap).
Enter p to view and check the current partition table. You should have a 512 MiB EFI partition, a swap partition of your specified size, and a root partition that takes up the remaining disk space. You can add new partitions with n and delete partitions with d if you wish.
Enter w to write changes and exit fdisk. This action is irreversible.

Formatting

List available disks and their partitions in your system again.

lsblk

Identify the disk you just partitioned and take note of the names of the partitions. They should be called sda1, sda2 and sda3, or nvme0n1p1, nvme0n1p2 and nvme0n1p3, or similar.

Format the EFI partition.

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/[EFI_partition]

[EFI_partition] should be the name of the first partition you took note of earlier (with size 512M).

Using the same logic, format the swap partition

mkswap /dev/[swap_partition]

and the root partition.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/[root_partition]

Mounting

Mount the root volume to /mnt.

mount /dev/[root_partition] /mnt

Enable the swap volume.

swapon /dev/[swap_partition]

Create a directory called boot inside /mnt and a directory called efi inside boot.

mkdir /mnt/boot && mkdir /mnt/boot/efi

Mount the EFI partition to the efi directory.

mount /dev/[EFI_partition] /mnt/boot/efi

Base and kernel installation

Before we start installing packages, it might be helpful to update the mirror list so the packages are retrieved from sources closer to our geographical location. This will increase download speeds.

You can view the current mirror list with

cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Make a backup of this default mirror list in the same directory.

cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

Update the mirror list using the reflector module.

reflector -c [country1] -c [country2] -a 12 -p https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[country1] and [country2] should be names of countries where you are currently or which are close to you. Available country names can be viewed here.

Install the base system.

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware linux-headers sof-firmware dosfstools mtools [ucode] [text_editor]

[ucode] should be replaced with intel-ucode if you have an Intel CPU, or amd-ucode if you have an AMD CPU.

[text_editor] should be replaced with the name of a command-line text editor of your choice. For new users, nano is recommended. In the rest of this guide, any step that requires editing a text file is done with nano.

Generate the file systems table (fstab) file.

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

Change root into the new system.

arch-chroot /mnt

Localisation

Setting time zone

To view the list of available time zones, run

ls /usr/share/zoneinfo

Some of these zone names are directories that contain more zone names. We can view their contents with

ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/[region]

where [region] is the name of a directory inside /usr/share/zoneinfo.

Take note of the name of the time zone you are in. Then run

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/[time_zone] /etc/localtime

replacing [time_zone] with the name.

Generate /etc/adjtime.

hwclock --systohc

Setting locale

Edit locale.gen.

nano /etc/locale.gen

If this is your first time using nano, it is a very simple command-line text editor. Use the arrow keys to scroll through the file.

Search for your desired locale and uncomment (delete the # at the start of the line) it. Take note of the name of the locale. For example, if the locale we wish to use is en_US.UTF-8, we uncomment the line #en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8. We have to take note the name of the locale, which in this case is en_US.UTF-8.

In nano, press Ctrl+X to exit the file, press Y to save changes, and press enter to retain the file name.

Generate the uncommented locale.

locale-gen

Create locale.conf and add the LANG variable.

echo LANG=[locale_name] > /etc/locale.conf

[locale_name] should be replaced with the name of the locale we took note of earlier (for the previous example, the full command is echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf).

Network configuration

Create the hostname file and set the hostname.

echo [hostname] > /etc/hostname

[hostname] should be your desired hostname (ie. the name of your device).

Edit the hosts file (in this case using nano).

nano /etc/hosts

This file already has two lines of comments. Go to the third line and type the following:

127.0.0.1        localhost
::1              localhost
127.0.1.1        [hostname].localdomain [hostname]

Again, replace both instances of [hostname] with the hostname you chose earlier. The hosts file should now have 5 lines in total. Save and exit the file.

Install networkmanager, a program and service that allows us to manage network connections.

pacman -S networkmanager

Enable the service.

systemctl enable NetworkManager

Permission settings

Set the root (administrator) password for your system.

passwd

Follow the prompt to set the password.

Create a user (for yourself).

useradd -m [username]

[username] should be the desired name for the user. Replace it with the same name for the next two commands.

Set a password for this user.

passwd [username]

Add this user to essential groups.

usermod -aG wheel,audio,video,optical,storage [username]

Edit /etc/sudoers.tmp.

EDITOR=nano visudo

Find the following two lines.

## Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command
# %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Uncomment the second line so it becomes like this:

## Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command
%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Save and exit the file.

Bootloader setup

For this installation, we will install a very popular bootloader called GRUB. A list of alternatives can be found here.

Install GRUB and efibootmgr, a UEFI management tool.

pacman -S grub efibootmgr

Install GRUB to the drive.

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

Generate GRUB config file.

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

At this point, we already have a working Arch Linux system, albeit without a GUI. It is good practice to reboot the machine first before continuing to see if everything works well.

Exit chroot.

exit

Unmount /mnt.

umount -R /mnt

Reboot.

reboot

If everything works as intended, you should be able to log in as the user you created before by entering prompts for a username and password.

GUI installation

Display driver installation

From this point onward, the root password has to be entered every time a sudo command is run.

Check for package updates.

sudo pacman -Syu

If you do not know what GPU your machine has, identify it using

lspci -k | grep -A 2 -E "(VGA|3D)"

Look for keywords like Nvidia, AMD and Intel. If you have an Nvidia or AMD GPU, make sure you know the name of the GPU's microarchitecture (Ampere, RDNA2, etc.).

Install the display driver.

sudo pacman -S xorg [display_driver]

Replace [display_driver] with

nvidia if you have an Nvidia GPU of the Maxwell series or newer.
- If you have an Nvidia GPU of the Turing series or newer, you can choose to install nvidia-open instead, which are open-source Nvidia drivers.
xf86-video-nouveau if you have an Nvidia GPU of the Tesla series or older.
xf86-video-amdgpu if you have an AMD GPU with GCN 3 architecture or newer.
xf86-video-ati if you have an AMD GPU with GCN 2 architecture or older.
xf86-video-intel if you have an Intel GPU.

If you have an Nvidia GPU of the Kepler or Fermi series, leave [display_driver] blank for now and just install xorg.

Press Enter without typing anything when prompted to select members of the xorg group.

KDE Plasma installation

There are multiple ways to install KDE Plasma in Arch Linux minimally.

The bare minimum is to install plasma-desktop. This is basically just the Plasma desktop without commonly used plugins and applets. If you know exactly what additional packages you want to install for your Plasma desktop, this is a good place to start. This method, however, is not recommended for beginners. You might end up with an overly minimal desktop that is unintuitive and missing basic features.

The other 2 ways are to install plasma or plasma-meta. Both include plasma-desktop as well as other essential packages for a minimal yet usable out-of-the-box Plasma desktop.

plasma is a package group. All packages within this group are explicitly installed. You can uninstall any package individually later on if you want. plasma-meta is a meta package. All packages within it are treated as a single package. You cannot uninstall individual packages without installing all other packages that came with the meta package.

Whether you want to install plasma or plasma-meta is up to you. plasma offers more flexibility for users who may want to trim down their installation later on. plasma-meta offers stability for users who are confident that they require all packages in the meta package and wish to treat them all as a single unit, preventing an accidental uninstallation of a core Plasma package. Note that plasma-meta has fewer packages than plasma.

In this guide, we will install plasma-meta (which you can replace with plasma if you wish), as well as a number of other commonly used KDE applications excluded from the minimal installation.

sudo pacman -S plasma-meta ark dolphin firefox git gwenview kcalc kdeconnect kinit konsole krunner kvantum kwrite okular packagekit-qt5 partitionmanager print-manager spectacle vlc xsettingsd

This is a table explaining what each package is. These are just the packages that I usually install personally and should be used as a guideline. Feel free to omit packages and add others as you wish.

Package	Description
ark	Archive manager
dolphin	File manager
firefox	Browser
git	Version control system
gwenview	Image viewer
kcalc	Scientific calculator
kdeconnect	Connects KDE to your smartphone to do various inter-device actions
kinit	KDE process launcher
konsole	Terminal
krunner	KDE desktop launcher
kvantum	Theme engine
kwrite	GUI text editor
okular	Document viewer
packagekit-qt5	Ensures Discover works on Arch
partitionmanager	Disk utility
print-manager	Printer and print job management tool
spectacle	Screenshot utility
vlc	Media player
xsettingsd	Provides settings to X11 applications

Some applications above require the JACK API and you will be prompted to install one of jack2 and pipewire-jack. The differences between the two are illustrated here. For me personally, I go with pipewire-jack.

Some applications above require you to install a ttf-font package. You can choose any. For me personally, I go with noto-fonts, a popular font family that is open-source.

Some applications above require a backend for phonon-qt5, KDE's multimedia framework. You will be prompted to choose one of phonon-qt5-gstreamer and phonon-qt5-vlc. The dfferences between the two are illustrated here. For me personally, I go with phonon-qt5-vlc. Note that phonon-qt5-vlc automatically installs the vlc package, which is the VLC media player application. If you do not intend to use VLC media player, you might prefer phonon-qt5-gstreamer.

Enable the SDDM display manager.

sudo systemctl enable sddm

Legacy Nvidia drivers

If you have an Nvidia GPU of the Kepler or Fermi series, you will have to install legacy drivers from the Arch User Repository (AUR). Otherwise, skip this section. For beginners, the process is different from installing with the pacman -S command.

Change the working directory to your Downloads folder (it can be any folder, but this should be most convenient).

cd ~/Downloads

Acquire build files using Git.

git clone [url]

Replace [url] with https://aur.archlinux.org/nvidia-470xx-utils.git if you have a Kepler series GPU or https://aur.archlinux.org/nvidia-390xx-utils.git if you have a Fermi series GPU.

Change the working directory to the folder containing the build files.

cd [folder]

Replace [folder] with nvidia-470xx-utils or nvidia-390xx-utils, depending on the one you downloaded.

Then, package and install the driver.

makepkg -si

This is generally how an AUR package is installed. These 3 steps

git clone [url]
cd [folder]
makepkg -si

can be applied to install any package from the AUR. You can search for AUR packages here and get their Git clone URLs.

Audio and bluetooth installation

Bluetooth setup

Install audio and Bluetooth utilities.

sudo pacman -S alsa-utils bluez bluez-utils

Enable Bluetooth.

sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service

Pipewire installation

By default, our system uses the PulseAudio sound server. PipeWire is a newer alternative that has performed better on nearly every device I tried. I recommend installing it.

sudo pacman -S pipewire pipewire-alsa pipewire-jack pipewire-pulse wireplumber

Press Y and Enter when asked whether to replace pulseaudio with pipewire-pulse.

If you have the jack2 package installed, it will conflict with pipewire-jack. You can safely replace jack2 with pipewire-jack.

Post-installation

This is where you can install any other packages or services you want before you boot into the GUI for the first time. Usually, I will further install the following packages:

sudo pacman -S acpid cronie cups neofetch ntp openssh pacman-contrib wget xf86-input-synaptics

Package	Description
acpid	ACPI power management event daemon
cronie	Program scheduling daemon
cups	Printing daemon
neofetch	Shows system information in the terminal
ntp	Network Time Protocol implementation
openssh	SSH connectivity tool
pacman-contrib	Contributed scripts for pacman
tlp	Power management tool (if you have a laptop)
wget	Tool to retrieve files from the web
xf86-input-synaptics	Driver for laptop touchpads (if you have a laptop)

Enable any services you installed.

sudo systemctl enable acpid.service  
sudo systemctl enable cups.service
sudo systemctl enable ntpd.service
sudo systemctl enable sshd.service
sudo systemctl enable tlp.service

Clear pacman cache (this requires pacman-contrib).

sudo paccache -r

Reboot!

reboot

After you reboot, you should be greeted by a GUI login prompt. And that is it - A minimal KDE Plasma desktop on Arch Linux!

What's next?

Yay

As an Arch Linux user, you may find yourself installing packages from the AUR a lot. It may be more convenient to use an AUR helper, such as Yay. Yay has to be manually installed from the AUR first.

Change the working directory.

cd ~/Downloads

Acquire build files.

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

Change the working directory to the Yay folder.

cd yay

Package and install Yay.

makepkg -si

From this point onwards, you can search for packages from the AUR (and even the Arch Linux repositories) using yay -Ss [package_name]. Packages from the AUR can now be installed easily with yay -S [package_name]. Instead of running sudo pacman -Syu, you can now run yay to update all packages in your system, including those installed from the AUR.

Multilib repository

In addition to the core, community and extra repositories, Arch Linux also has a repository called multilib that contains 32-bit software and libraries. Software commonly used for gaming on Linux (such as WINE and Steam) is usually found in this repository.

The multilib repository is disabled by default. To enable it, edit /etc/pacman.conf.

sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf

Find these 2 lines

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

and uncomment them.

Input methods

To change input methods in KDE Plasma, I recommend using the Fcitx5 input method framework. Unfortunately, input methods are not done very well in Plasma and I have experienced a lot of troubles getting it to work. By far the best guide I have come across thus far is on Jeffrey Tse's blog. The process to set Fcitx5 up is quite long so I will not repeat it here. By following the instructions in the article closely, you should be able to get Fcitx5 up and running.

Hibernation

If you have set up a sufficiently large swap partition during the Partitioning step, you can now put it to good use and enable hibernation on your system.

List the UUIDs of your partitions.

sudo blkid | grep UUID=

Look for your swap partition. It should be the line that contains the string TYPE="swap". In that same line, you should see strings for UUID and PARTUUID. The field we should pay attention to is UUID. Its value is a string of hexadecimal numbers. Copy the value of UUID (excluding the double quotation marks).

We need to tell the kernel where our swap partition is, and this is done via configuring the bootloader. This guide will only provide instructions for GRUB.

For GRUB, edit /etc/default/grub.

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

You should see the field GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. Usually, for a fresh installation, the entire line looks like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT='quiet'

It is fine if you see anything other than quiet. We need to add the parameter resume=UUID=[your_uuid], where [your_uuid] is the UUID value of your swap partition which you copied earlier. Append this parameter within the quotation marks of the field. There should be a space between parameters.

The line should now look like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT='quiet resume=UUID=[your_uuid]'

Remember, you may have other parameters between quiet and resume. That is fine. Save and exit the file.

Regenerate the GRUB config.

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

Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.

sudo nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Look for the HOOKS field. It should be underneath all the comments in the # HOOKS section, and look something like this:

HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf block filesystems keyboard fsck)

It is fine if yours looks a little different. We need to add the resume hook to this field. It can be anywhere within the parentheses, as long as it is positioned after udev.