💾 Archived View for zaney.org › posts › generalrecommendations.gmi captured on 2021-12-05 at 23:47:19. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This document is an annotated index of popular articles and important information for improving and adding functionalities to the installed Arch system.
Readers are assumed to have read and followed the Installation guide to obtain a basic Arch Linux installation.
Understanding the concepts explained in the System administration and Package management sections is required for following the other sections of this page and the other articles in the wiki.
This section deals with administrative tasks and system management.
A new installation leaves you with only the superuser account, better known as "root". Logging in as root for prolonged periods of time, possibly even exposing it via SSH on a server, is insecure. Instead, you should create and use unprivileged user account(s) for most tasks, only using the root account for system administration.
Users and groups are a mechanism for access control; administrators may fine-tune group membership and ownership to grant or deny users and services access to system resources.
The following command line utilities allow running commands or starting an interactive shell as another user (e.g. root).
su — Allows to assume the identity of another user as long as you know the target user's password. root can assume other identities without needing a password.
pkg name = util-linux (a dependency of base)
sudo — Allows a system administrator to delegate authority to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands as root or another user while providing an audit trail of the commands and their arguments. In default configuration only usable by root .
pkg name = sudo
pkexec(1) — A Polkit application that allows an authorized user to run commands or an interactive shell as another user. Configured using Polkit rules.
pkg name = polkit
doas — A smaller, simpler alternative to sudo.
pkg name = opendoas
Arch Linux uses systemd as the init process, which is a system and service manager for Linux. For maintaining your Arch Linux installation, it is a good idea to learn the basics about it. Interaction with systemd is done through the systemctl command.
Arch is a rolling release system and has rapid package turnover, so users have to take some time to do system maintenance.
This section contains helpful information related to package management.
Note: It is imperative to keep up to date with changes in Arch Linux that require manual intervention before upgrading your system. Subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list or the recent news RSS feed. Alternatively, check the front page Arch news every time before you update.
pacman is the Arch Linux package manager: it is highly encouraged to become familiar with it before reading any other articles.
If you plan on using 32-bit applications, you will want to enable the multilib repository.
The Unofficial user repositories article lists several other unsupported repositories.
You may consider installing the pkgstats service.
Visit the Mirrors article for steps on taking full advantage of using the fastest and most up to date mirrors of the official repositories. As explained in the article, a particularly good advice is to routinely check the Mirror Status page for a list of mirrors that have been recently synced.
Ports is a system initially used by BSD distributions consisting of build scripts that reside in a directory tree on the local system. Simply put, each port contains a script within a directory intuitively named after the installable third-party application.
The Arch Build System offers the same functionality by providing build scripts called PKGBUILDs, which are populated with information for a given piece of software: integrity hashes, project URL, version, license and build instructions. These PKGBUILDs are parsed by makepkg, the actual program that generates packages that are cleanly manageable by pacman.
Every package in the repositories along with those present in the AUR are subject to recompilation with makepkg.
While the Arch Build System allows the ability of building software available in the official repositories, the Arch User Repository (AUR) is the equivalent for user submitted packages. It is an unsupported repository of build scripts accessible through the web interface or through the Aurweb RPC interface.
This section contains information pertaining to the boot process. An overview of the Arch boot process can be found at Arch boot process.
Hardware should be auto-detected by udev during the boot process by default. A potential improvement in boot time can be achieved by disabling module auto-loading and specifying required modules manually, as described in Kernel modules. Additionally, Xorg should be able to auto-detect required drivers using udev, but users have the option to configure the X server manually too.
Processors may have faulty behaviour, which the kernel can correct by updating the microcode on startup.
Once it concludes, the screen is cleared and the login prompt appears, leaving users unable to gather feedback from the boot process. Disable clearing of boot messages to overcome this limitation.
Num Lock is a toggle key found in most keyboards. For activating Num Lock's number key-assignment during startup, see Activating numlock on bootup.
This section provides orientation for users wishing to run graphical applications on their system.
Xorg is the public, open-source implementation of the X Window System (commonly X11, or X). It is required for running applications with graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and the majority of users will want to install it.
Wayland is a newer, alternative display server protocol and the Weston reference implementation is available.
The default modesetting display driver will work with most video cards, but performance may be improved and additional features harnessed by installing the appropriate driver for AMD or NVIDIA products.
Although Xorg provides the basic framework for building a graphical environment, additional components may be considered necessary for a complete user experience. Desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE, LXDE, and Xfce bundle together a wide range of X clients, such as a window manager, panel, file manager, terminal emulator, text editor, icons, and other utilities. Users with less experience may wish to install a desktop environment for a more familiar environment.
A full-fledged desktop environment provides a complete and consistent graphical user interface, but tends to consume a considerable amount of system resources. Users seeking to maximize performance or otherwise simplify their environment may opt to install a window manager alone and hand-pick desired extras. Most desktop environments allow use of an alternative window manager as well. Dynamic, stacking, and tiling window managers differ in their handling of window placement.
Most desktop environments include a display manager for automatically starting the graphical environment and managing user logins. Users without a desktop environment can install one separately. Alternatively you may start X at login as a simple alternative to a display manager.
Well-known user directories like Downloads or Music are created by the xdg-user-dirs-update.service user service, that is provided by xdg-user-dirs and enabled by default upon install. If your desktop environment or window manager does not pull in the package, you can install it and run xdg-user-dirs-update manually.
This section may be of use to laptop owners or users otherwise seeking power management controls.
See Power management for more general overview.
Users can configure how the system reacts to ACPI events such as pressing the power button or closing a laptop's lid. For the new (recommended) method using systemd, see Power management with systemd. For the old method, see acpid.
Modern processors can decrease their frequency and voltage to reduce heat and power consumption. Less heat leads to more quiet system and prolongs the life of hardware. See CPU frequency scaling for details.
For articles related to portable computing along with model-specific installation guides, please see Category:Laptops. For a general overview of laptop-related articles and recommendations, see Laptop.
See main article: Power management/Suspend and hibernate.
ALSA is a kernel sound system that should work out the box (it just needs to be unmuted). Sound servers such as PulseAudio and PipeWire can offer additional features and support more complex audio configuration.
This section is confined to small networking procedures.
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a protocol for synchronizing the clocks of computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. See Time synchronization for implementations of such protocol.
For better security while browsing the web, paying online, connecting to SSH services and similar tasks consider using DNSSEC-enabled DNS resolver that can validate signed DNS records, and an encrypted protocol such as DNS over TLS, DNS over HTTPS or DNSCrypt.
A firewall can provide an extra layer of protection on top of the Linux networking stack. While the stock Arch kernel is capable of using Netfilter's iptables and nftables, neither are enabled by default. It is highly recommended to set up some form of firewall.
To share files among the machines in a network, follow the NFS or the SSHFS article.
Use Samba to join a Windows network.
This section contains popular input device configuration tips.
Non-English or otherwise non-standard keyboards may not function as expected by default. The necessary steps to configure the keymap are different for virtual console and Xorg, they are described in Keyboard configuration in console and Keyboard configuration in Xorg respectively.
Owners of advanced or unusual mice may find that not all mouse buttons are recognized by default, or may wish to assign different actions for extra buttons. Instructions can be found in Mouse buttons.
Many laptops use Synaptics or ALPS "touchpad" pointing devices. For these, and several other touchpad models, you can use either the Synaptics input driver or libinput.
This section aims to summarize tweaks, tools and available options useful to improve system and application performance.
Benchmarking is the act of measuring performance and comparing the results to another system's results or a widely accepted standard through a unified procedure.
The Improving performance article gathers information and is a basic rundown about gaining performance in Arch Linux.
The Solid State Drives article covers many aspects of solid state drives, including configuring them to maximize their lifetimes.
This section relates to daemons.
Most distributions have a locate command available to be able to quickly search files. Arch Linux provides several alternatives, see locate for details.
Desktop search engines provide a similar service, while better integrated into desktop environments.
A default setup does not provide a way to synchronize mail. A list of mail delivery agents is available in the Mail server article.
CUPS is a standards-based, open source printing system developed by Apple.
This section contains frequently-sought "eye candy" tweaks for an aesthetically pleasing Arch experience.
You may wish to install a set of TrueType fonts, as only unscalable bitmap fonts are included in a basic Arch system. There are several general-purpose font families providing large Unicode coverage and even metric compatibility with fonts from other operating systems.
A plethora of information on the subject can be found in the Fonts and Font configuration articles.
A big part of the applications with a graphical interface for Linux systems are based on the GTK or the Qt toolkits. See those articles and Uniform look for Qt and GTK applications for ideas to improve the appearance of your installed programs and adapt it to your liking.
This section applies to small modifications that improve console programs' practicality.
It is recommended to properly set up extended tab completion right away, as instructed in the article of your chosen shell.
Aliasing a command, or a group thereof, is a way of saving time when using the console. This is specially helpful for repetitive tasks that do not need significant alteration to their parameters between executions.
Bash is the shell that is installed by default in an Arch system. The live installation media, however, uses zsh with the grml-zsh-config addon package.
A list of miscellaneous Bash settings, history search and Readline macros is available in Bash#Tips and tricks.
Compressed files, or archives, are frequently encountered on a GNU/Linux system. Tar is one of the most commonly used archiving tools, and users should be familiar with its syntax (Arch Linux packages, for example, are simply zstd compressed tarballs). See Archiving and compression.
The console prompt (PS1) can be customized to a great extent. See Bash/Prompt customization or Zsh#Prompts if using Bash or Zsh, respectively.
Emacs is known for featuring options beyond the duties of regular text editing, one of these being a full shell replacement. Consult Emacs#Colored output issues for a fix regarding garbled characters that may result from enabling colored output.
Using a mouse with the console for copy-paste operations can be preferred over GNU Screen's traditional copy mode. Refer to General purpose mouse for comprehensive directions. Note that you can already do this in terminal emulators with the clipboard.
Using terminal multiplexers like tmux or GNU Screen, programs may be run under sessions composed of tabs and panes that can be detached at will, so when the user either kills the terminal emulator, terminates X, or logs off, the programs associated with the session will continue to run in the background as long as the terminal multiplexer server is active. Interacting with the programs requires reattaching to the session.