🐧 Arch Linux Installation

📆 2026-04-04 11:31

I use Arch, now, btw. So I thought that posting a tutorial on how to easily install it would be a nice addition to my capsule.

I assume you already downloaded an ISO and wrote it to an USB drive. If not

💾 Download Arch Linux

Plug in your USB drive and boot from it. Ready?

Let's get started.

📡 Connect to the internet if using a wireless card with the included iwctl utility

You can skip this step if you connect your computer to the internet via a wired connection.

Look for your device and connect to your WiFi network. In my case it's wlan0. To find yours run the Internet wireless control utility with:

Once inside iwctl run:

to view your wireless device. Once you know it you can easily connect to your SSID with:

Once connected to the internet we can carry on with the installation of Arch Linux.

🕰️ Update system clock

🛠️ Locate the installation drive

You can easily view all your available block devices, such as hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks, and partitions, in a tree-like format

My hard drive is /dev/sda. If your hard drive is at another location like /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc make sure the adapt the following commands.

✂️ Create partitions

I like the cfdisk utility more than fdisk. Using cfdisk create the following partitions:

UEFI with GPT

If your computer is somewhat new and uses UEFI make sure to create an EFI partition like I did below:

BIOS with MBR

If your computer is older and doesn't support UEFI you should create only 2 partition:

just like in the example below:

🗑️ Format partitions

Format root partition

Make SWAP partition

Format EFI system partition if it is present

📥 Mount partitions

📦 Install essential packages

Remove efibootmgr from the above command if you are not using an EFI system

I chose to install gvim instead of vim because it already comes with clipboard and clipboard_provider preinstalled so it's easier to copy/paste from and into vim. You can run the vim command to open vim cli or gvim for a GUI interface (once you have a window manager).

This can take some time ... grab a 🍺.

📑 Generate an fstab file

🪵 chroot to /mnt

We have left the live environment. Now we're inside the Arch Linux installation on the hard drive. Changes made here are permanent.

🌍 Set timezone

If you don't know your timezone you can search for it with

Once you found your timezone it's time to set it and forget it. In my case it's Europe/Bucharest:

replace Europe/Bucharest with your timezone

⏳ Run hwclock

This command sets the hardware clock from the system clock and generates /etc/adjtime:

🔐 Change ROOT password

🤖 Add your own user - in this case the user is sava

Parameters:

🛡️ Change your password

🔑 Enable wheel group to be able to use sudo commands

Scroll down and look for the line containing

and uncomment it by deleting the "#" at the start of the line.

🚀 Enable Network Manager at boot

This is necessary. Your WiFi SSID and password are not saved in the install. You can set these by using nmtui (explained in the "What to after the first reboot" section).

💽 Bootloader install: GRUB

Install GRUB

Make GRUB config

If GRUB installs with no errors you should now reboot !

Exit arch-chroot with `exit` and then

There you have it. A few "simple" commands and you have an OS.

👨‍💻 What to after the first reboot

>_ Login with your user and password. Do not use the root account

In my case I login with the user sava and my password.

✨ Run nmtui to permanently connect to your WiFi

Select your WiFi and enter your password. Your credential will now be saved and you'll always be connected.

🪟 Install a window manager

Now that your computer is ready to go with a fresh ARCH linux install you should choose a window manager. There are a lot of window managers: stacking, tiling and dynamic.

You can view a list of windows managers at:

Arch Linux Wiki - Window Manager

I like and recommend suckless's DWM.

🪟 Install DWM - Suckless's Window Manager

If this tutorial saved you time, sanity, or a mild existential crisis... consider fueling future chaos with a small donation:

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