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Creating the fstab file:
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
With the chroot command you leave the live enviroment and enter the newly installed system.
arch-chroot /mnt
Choose your timezone:
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Budapest /etc/localtime
Run hwclock to generate /etc/adjtime:
hwclock --systohc
Uncomment the needed locales in /etc/locale.gen (eg. en_US.UTF-8):
vim /etc/locale.gen
Generate the locales:
locale-gen
Set the LANG variable in locale.conf:
echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 >> /etc/locale.conf
Choose a hostname (eg. arch):
echo arch >> /etc/hostname
To edit the hosts file:
vim /etc/hosts
Enter the following information (replace arch with your hostname):
127.0.0.1 localhost ::1 localhost 127.0.1.1 arch.localdomain arch
pacman -S grub efibootmgr networkmanager wireless_tools wpa_supplicant dhcpcd os-prober mtools dosfstools base-devel linux-headers
Installing GRUB:
UEFI:
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/EFI --bootloader-id=GRUB
MBR (use the device name the system is installed on):
grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda
Creating the configuration file:
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Set the root password:
passwd
Create a user (replace username with your own username):
useradd -m username
Set a password for the new user:
passwd username
Add the user to some important groups (no spaces after the commas):
usermod -aG wheel,audio,video,optical,storage username
To let the new user gain root privileges when needed, we have to edit a file called sudoers. Open the file with the following command:
visudo
Uncomment this line:
%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
Save and exit the editor.
To exit the installation back to the live enviroment:
exit
To unmount all partitions:
umount -a
Ignore the warning messages about the busy partitions.
Now reboot the system and log in with the newly created user.
reboot
Starting and eanbling network services:
systemctl enable --now NetworkManager
Installing pre-requirements:
sudo pacman -S dkms git
Installing the wireless driver:
git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw88.git
cd rtw88
make
sudo make install
Installing the driver as a kerne module with dkms, so it will be rebuilt automatically at kernel updates:
sudo dkms add ./rtw88
sudo dkms install rtlwifi-new/0.6
The Arch User Repository - as the name suggests - is a repository which contains software made by the community. You can not access this repository directly with pacman. Install an AUR helper to be able to install packages from this repo. Install paru with the following commands:
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/paru.git
cd paru
makepkg -si
To install graphical drivers:
For Intel cards:
sudo pacman -S xf86-video-intel
For AMD cards:
sudo pacman -S xf86-video-amdgpu
Install xorg and xorg-xinit:
sudo pacman -S xorg xorg-xinit
I am going to install my build of DWM, which needs the following two fonts to work properly:
sudo pacman -S ttf-font-awesome ttf-dejavu
A notification daemon, called dunst, is also required:
sudo pacman -S dunst
To clone my config files from github:
git clone --bare https://github.com/laszloszurok/config $HOME/.cfg
/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME checkout -f
The .cfg folder will be a bare repo. This is a great way of managing config files, because you can basicly forget about it after the setup. You don't have to deal with the .cfg folder, just leave it there in your home directory.
Set an alias:
alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME'
With the alias, you can use commands like this to manage your files:
config status
config add .bashrc
config commit -m "updated .bashrc"
config push
Write this alias in your .bashrc or .zshrc to make it permanent. If you want to set up a new bare repo, you can do it like this:
git init --bare $HOME/.myconf
alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.myconf/ --work-tree=$HOME'
config config status.showUntrackedFiles no
Then set a remote url for the repository.
Cloning my suckless builds:
git clone https://github.com/laszloszurok/dwm.git source/suckless-builds/dwm
git clone https://github.com/laszloszurok/dwmblocks.git source/suckless-builds/dwmblocks
git clone https://github.com/laszloszurok/dmenu.git source/suckless-builds/dmenu
git clone https://github.com/laszloszurok/st.git source/suckless-builds/st
git clone https://github.com/laszloszurok/slock.git source/suckless-builds/slock
git clone https://github.com/laszloszurok/wmname.git source/suckless-builds/wmname
Go into the suckless-builds/dwm directory and execute the following command:
sudo make install
Execute the above command for all of my suckless builds to install them. Now that DWM is installed we need a way to launch it. For this, you have to copy a configuration file to your home folder and edit it, as follows:
cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc /home/youruser/.xinitrc
Replace 'youruser' with your username. Open the copied file and delete the last five lines containing twm, xclock, etc. Replace it with with the following:
exec dwm
Save the file and exit the editor. Now you should be able to launch dwm with this command:
startx
Make sure you have a terminal emulator installed before running startx. If you installed all of my suckless builds you have st.
If you don't want to launch the X server manually with the startx command every time you start up your computer, you have to install a display manager. I can recommend lightdm.
You will also need a greeter (a graphical login screen). My favourite one is called lightdm-slick-greeter. It's in the AUR, so you have to install it with an AUR helper, like paru.
You have to do some configurations to make lightdm work. Open the file located at /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf with a texteditor and uncomment the following line under the [LightDM] section:
[LightDM] ... sessions-directory=/usr/share/lightdm/sessions:/usr/share/xsessions:/usr/share/wayland-sessions ...
Under the [Seat:\*] section, set the default greeter to lightdm-slick-greeter and also set the user-session to dwm:
[Seat:*] ... greeter-session=lightdm-slick-greeter ... user-session=dwm ...
For the user-session to work we have to create a file called dwm.desktop. Place this file to the following location: /usr/share/xsessions/ . Open the file with a texteditor and write the following configuration into it:
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=dwm Comment=Dynamic Window Manager Exec=/usr/local/bin/dwm Type=Application
Now lightdm is configured, but you have to enable it with systemctl, so it will automatically launch after boot:
systemctl enable lightdm
If you want to set a wallpaper for the greeter, you can set it through the lightdm-slick-greeter configuration file, but there is a nice graphical tool in the AUR called lightdm-settings which lets you manage the greeter's settings in an easy way.
To lock the screen after inactivity, you can use light-locker (install it with pacman).
You can find slock between my suckless builds, which is a very lightweight screen locker utility, but I recommend light-locker if you use lightdm.
If you don't want a display manager you can just log in through the tty and use startx to launch a graphical session.
To install the ArcDark theme:
sudo pacman -S arc-gtk-theme arc-icon-theme
Use lxappearance to manage themes:
sudo pacman -S lxappearance
To apply a theme for every user, add these environmental variables to /etc/environment:
GTK_THEME=Arc-Dark QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2
To enable tap-to-click and natural scrolling, create a file, called 30-touchpad.conf at /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ with the following lines:
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "touchpad"
Driver "libinput"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Option "Tapping" "on"
Option "NaturalScrolling" "true"
EndSection
Restart the X server for the changes to take effect.
I'm using the ALSA sound system on my machine. Install alsa-utils with the following command. This will provide a program called alsa-mixer which you can use to control sound.
sudo pacman -S alsa-utils
I have media control buttons on my laptop (they can control for eg. switching to next/prev. song on Spotify). For these to work I'm going to install playerctl.
sudo pacman -S playerctl
I have alsamixer and playerctl commands binded to the volume level controlling and media controlling keys in my DWM config, thats how I make these keys functional.