These are my short notes on installing Arch on my laptop (an Asus Zenbook 14). It has UEFI Boot and a single hard disk of 500Gb. It has an Italian keyboard (it), a NVIDIA card and an Intel processor.

Mandatory disclaimer: Do not follow this guide. Follow the real guide over in the Arch wiki.

Get an installation ISO

Download from www.archlinux.org/download/ the latest ISO and ask a friend with windows to use Rufus to make a bootable USB stick with it. Say thanks and buy them a snack.

Plug that bad boy in and hold F2 as the pc is booting up. Enter the BIOS and set the USB stick to the highest boot priority. Once in the arch installation environment, continue on.

Setup the setup environment

# Set the language
loadkeys it
# Connect to wifi
iwctl

Inside iwctl you should use station wlan0 connect <some wifi>. It will ask for the password interactively. ping archlinux.org to see if it worked.

Set the time, so the mirrors do no fail because they are in the future:

timedatectl set-ntp true

Partition the disk

I assume that the disk is /dev/sda, but change it if it’s different under fdisk -l.

fdisk /dev/sda
> g # New GUID partition table
> n # New partition
> # Default ID
> # Default start sector
> +500M # Min BOOT is 300Mb
> t # Change partition type
> # Default ID
> 1 # EFI system
> n
> # Default ID
> # Default start sector
> +8G
> t
> # Default ID
> 19 # Linux SWAP
> n
> # Default ID
> # Default start sector
> # Default end sector - Rest of disk
> t
> # Default ID
> 20 # Linux filesystem
> p # Print table - check if everything is OK
> w # Write to disk

Make the filesystems. I assume that /dev/sda1 is boot, /dev/sda2 is swap, and dev/sda3 is root.

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sda1
mkswap /dev/sda2
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

Mount the filesystems:

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
swapon /dev/sda2

Pacstrapping

# Update mirrors
reflector --latest 100 --country 'Italy,Germany,' --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

# Pacstrap basic stuff:
pacstrap /mnt base linux-zen linux-zen-headers linux-firmware base-devel \
  sudo man-db man-pages texinfo intel-ucode \
  iwd neovim python git curl

# Generate an fstab file:
# This allows the kernel to know what to mount at boot, and do it automatically.
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Now we can chroot in the new environment with arch-chroot /mnt.

Setup the installation

While inside the new installation (previous step):

# Set the local clock
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Rome /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc

# `nvim /etc/locale.gen` and uncomment `en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8`.
locale-gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf
echo "KEYMAP=it" > /etc/vconsole.conf

# Give the machine an hostname:
echo "neutrino" > /etc/hotname

# Change the root password
passwd

If pac-strapping does not work due to keyring stuff, try:

pacman-keys --init
pacman-keys --populate
pacman -Syu achlinux-keyring
# Possibly follow with another pacman-keys --populate

Setup the bootloader

I use the simplest of the simple bootloaders, systemd-boot. It is already in the installation, as it is part of systemd. Install it to the boot folder:

bootctl install

Make the loader configurations. If you boot and the kernel tells you “You’re on your own, good luck”, you probably fucked up this step (you can fix it by returning to the live installation, with the usb key, and redoing this step). Edit /boot/loader/loader.conf:

default  arch.conf
timeout  5
console-mode max
editor no

Add the two main loaders for arch linux, the canonical one (arch.conf) and the fallback one (arch-fallback.conf). Edit /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf and enter:

title  Arch Linux
linux  /vmlinuz-linux-zen
initrd /intel-ucode.img
initrd /initramfs-linux-zen.img
options root=/dev/sda3

Then cp /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf /boot/loader/entries/arch-fallback.conf, and edit the copy (/boot/loader/entries/arch-fallback.conf):

title  Arch Linux
linux  /vmlinuz-linux-zen
initrd /intel-ucode.img
initrd /initramfs-linux-zen-fallback.img   <<< This is the only line that changed
options root=/dev/sda3

We can now reboot:

exit # exit the chroot environment
umount -R /mnt
reboot

If everything goes to plan, you should get a prompt asking for username (root) and a password (whatever you changed it to before).

Setup new installation wifi

The live image needs some fine tuning to allow internet access. Edit /etc/iwd/main.conf to:

[General]
EnableNetworkConfiguration=true

[Network]
EnableIPv6=true
NameResolvingService=systemd

Edit /etc/systemd/network/25-wireless.network to:

[Match]

[Network]
DHCP=yes
IgnoreCarrierLoss=3s

Edit the /etc/systemd/resolved.conf file to set some DNS addresses. Put some DNS servers from the examples (just the numerical address) to DNS= and fallback-DNS=. Leave a space between the different addresses. Enable the services:

systemctl enable --now systemd-resolved.service
systemctl enable --now systemd-networkd.service
systemctl enable --now iwd.service

Now you can use iwctl to setup a connection just like the installation environment.

Remember to set the NTP servers and enable NTP sync. Edit /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf and add any NTP servers you like (I use arch’s), and enable systemd-timesyncd.service if not enabled yet.

Post installation

Now the live environment boots and has internet access, but it is not really useful as-is.

Make a new user

groupadd docker
useradd -m -G wheel,docker -s /bin/zsh hedmad
passwd hedmad

Edit /etc/sudoers and uncomment the lines giving the wheel group access to sudo. This should be done with visudo:

export EDITOR=/usr/bin/nvim
visudo

Now we can restart and login with our user hedmad. zsh will ask some variables to be set, but we can just ignore it and select q (or 0) and skip this, as we’re gonna pull in the configs with chezmoi.

Setup yay

pacman -S --needed git base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si
cd ..
rm -rf yay

Xorg

Xorg is the most used display server. It is what renders the windows you see. Install the xorg package and the graphics card drivers. I use the proprietary drivers as the open-source ones did not play nice with PRIME rendering (for some reason I don’t really get):

# As we are using the zen kernel, the nvidia drivers need to be recompiled
# at every update. This is done automatically with `dkms`. To run a progam with
# accelleration, run `prime-run <executable>`.
sudo pacman -S xorg nvidia-dkms nvidia-prime

We need a wait to start X. We could use a display manager, but this is arch, so it’s bloat. We install xinit to start X:

sudo pacman -S xorg-xinit

Add to Xorg the keyboard layout. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "system-keyboard"
        MatchIsKeyboard "on"
        Option "XkbLayout" "it,us"
        Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
        Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys,"
        Option "XkbOptions" "grp:win_space_toggle"
EndSection

I use the it keyboard without dead keys as my main (built in) keyboard, but sometimes I need to swap to us to use my portable Corne keyboard (that uses the US layout).

Pull in the config files with chezmoi, so we can use them when needed:

chezmoi init https://github.com/MrHedmad/dotfiles.git

A desktop

The terminal is cool and all, but we would like a desktop. I choose plasma, from KDE. I also add NetworkManager to better handle GUI network manager. It also works with iwd after some configuration (refer to the wiki).

sudo pacman -Syu plasma networkmanager kde-applications

Get a web browser

To look at this guide more cleanly (and get off your phone), install a web browser. I choose firefox:

sudo pacman -S firefox

I use a theme found here.

Configure the terminal

The zsh shell is currently pretty boring. Install oh-my-zsh and Powerlevel10k to give it some zest.

# Follow the guide on their github.
# Keep in mind that pulling a script from github and passing it to `sh` from
# curl is a major security risk. Pull it first, then run it.
# Reccomended: install fira code nerd font
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k

Microphone

To enable the microphone, the specific module for Alsa has to be loaded manually. This should work out-of-the-box, but it does not. It’s an easy tweak though. Edit /etc/pulse/default.pa and add the following line after the line .ifexists module-udev-detect.so:

load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:0,0

Test the mic with pavucontrol (sudo pacman -S pavucontrol) or with this snippet (needs alsa-utils):

test-microphone() {
    arecord -vvv -f dat /dev/null
}
# Used with `test-microphone`. Shows the levels detected by the mic

:: WORK IN PROGRESS ::

Extras

Add some wallpaper (optional)

Install archlinux-wallpaper, then choose a wallpaper by right clicking > Desktop Options:

# They get installed in /usr/share/backgrounds/archlinux
# They are a bit old, but they check out.
sudo pacman -S archlinux-wallpaper

I use wave.

Audio management

You probably need these at some point:

sudo pacman -S alsa-utils pavucontrol

They are used to manage the low-level microphone and playback drivers/devices.

Other programs

There are many other programs which are useful to me.

# The set command here allows for in-line comments, so you can copy-paste
# this command as-is and run it.
set -k

sudo pacman -Syu \
  via polkit \ # VIA needs to do some setup. Run `pkttyagent &` before the first run. See `polkit` for info. 
  okular \ # PDF and more reader. This pulls is all qt deps, but... whatever.
  kwantum qt5ct \ # Edit qt apps looks. I use KT-Arc for the theme.
  engrampa \ # Graphical zip file manager

As a bioinformatician, I also need these:

set -k
sudo pacman -S \
  r gcc-fortran \ # gcc-fortran is needed to compile most packages
  python python-pip python-venv \
  rustup \ # Run the extra steps below
  docker \ # Run the extra steps below
  texlive-most \ # For latex, and R too (knitting). You can select just a subset of the whole package.

yay -S \
  rstudio-desktop-bin \ # Currently glitched. See the aur page
  visual-studio-code-bin \ # The proprietary one, to access packages easily. Has telemetry.

## Rust finalization
rustup default stable

## Docker finalization
sudo systemctl enable --now docker.service

Extra packages for some R packages:

sudo pacman -S proj