I’m planning to install Arch Linux for the first time. Any recommendations on setup, must-have applications, or best practices? Also, what’s something you wish you knew before switching to Arch?
Those who are (wisely) suggesting snapshots, do you guys use a different partitions for data and OS? Because if you do revert to an older snapshot after a while, you’d loose new data, too (unless you recover it from current state)?
archinstall’s default btrfs layout has I think 4-5 separate subvolumes (I’m not running btrfs anymore so can’t check) but at the very least I remember it has:
- /
- /var
- /home
being separate subvolumes and mountpoints, you can just use a previous snapshot from 1 without rolling back others
Related to the snapshotting stuff, timeshift-autosnap is pretty helpful, hooks into pacman and takes a snapshot before installing/updating packages.
Personally I found btrfs and the snapshots helpful when starting to use arch, but now that I know how not to blow things up, it has been stable enough for me I just felt ext4 was easier.
Cool.
I can recommend using endeavourOS if you do not want to waste time
But if you want to learn, go for it! Make sure to have the arch wiki ready on a second device
And understand what chroot is, is very important 😆😌
Edit: Ah and don’t forget to install yet another yoghurt
If you go the EOS route, yay is already installed.
Yes, and I love it
Maybe I should have added “if going the arch route”…
I’m using manjaro-i3 for a pretty long time now (6-7 years) and I’m fully satisfied, I won’t change any time soon. It was not very difficult at first, even though I wasn’t a linux user when I moved to manjaro. I would just maybe move to sway instead of i3 which seems probably more modern now.
Only update your system if you have some time on your hands afterwards, in case something breaks. Happened to me a few times before.
This.
“Just do a quick update” and spend 1h trying to fix some broken updatesAlso look at https://archlinux.org/news/ before updating (or follow the RSS feed), some updates may need manual intervention
Paying close attention to news feeds is something I wish I did when I ran Manjaro.
- ALWAYS avoid partial upgrades, lest you end up bricking your system: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported
- The Arch Wiki is your best friend. You can also use it offline, take a look at
wikiman: https://github.com/filiparag/wikiman - It doesn’t hurt to have the LTS kernel installed as a backup option (assuming you use the standard kernel as your chosen default) in case you update to a newer kernel version and a driver here or there breaks. It’s happened to me on Arch a few times. One of them completely borked my internet connection, the other one would freeze any game I played via WINE/Proton because I didn’t have resize BAR enabled in the BIOS. Sometimes switching to the LTS kernel can get around these temporary hiccups, at least until the maintainers fix those issues in the next kernel version.
- The AUR is not vetted as much as the main package repositories, as it’s mostly community-made packages. Don’t install AUR packages you don’t 100% trust. Always check the PKGBUILD if you’re paranoid.
It doesn’t hurt to have the LTS kernel installed as a backup option (assuming you use the standard kernel as your chosen default) in case you update to a newer kernel version and a driver here or there breaks.
I had a similar issue that was resolved by swapping to the LTS kernel. Learning about using a bootable Arch USB and chrooting into your install to make repairs would be a good thing for OP to know
The whole arch advantage (imo) is that you have a full understanding of what’s in your machine and how it works.
As a beginner you won’t understand and that’s okay, but you should try different things (or don’t and just focus on what works for you) as long as the end result is you doing: pacman -Qe and going “hmm that makes sense”, and imo the undesired result is going “hmm what do these all do, why do I have 2000+ packages”
Make backups of your important files, or use a separate home partition. When I used arch, more than once I had a bricked install after doing updates. The last straw for me was when after updating my network completely went out. I switched to fedora and haven’t had issues for 2+ years. Also, (this goes for every distro, but more so arch than others) NEVER update if you don’t have at least some time in front of you in case something happens. Arch was definitely a good learning experience and it was fun at first tweaking everything, but the drawbacks in stability got a bit old after a while. The AUR is a godsend and it’s the best thing ever, you should also be using an AUR helper like Yay to make your life easier.
ditch it and go straight to NIxOS
“Arch” for people who think Arch is too easy.
lol Arch wasn’t hard and neither was vanilla NixOS, in fact NixOS was easier
Not if you have a weird app that only installs with a self-executing tarball. But for initial setup, sure.
I’ve been using Arch off and on for a long time, since it was horrible to install and updates did often break stuff. This is not the case now 🖖, and the Arch wiki is your friend.
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Consider using btrfs with automated snapshots using yabsnap. It includes a configurable pacman hook in case something goes awry. Also just nice to have snapshots in case you accidentally delete a file or something.
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Use paru, an AUR helper. Good for random things which may not be officially packaged. Expect to run into failures, and learn to diagnose them. Sometimes it’s just a new dependency the packager missed. For both paru and pacman, clean the cache once in a while or automatically, or things will get out of hand.
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Do the “manual” setup, at least the first time, so you have an idea what’s going on. Don’t forget to install essential stuff like iwd (if needed) when you do pacstrap, or else you might have to boot from live again to fix it. Once you’re done, take care to follow the important post install steps, like setting up a user with sudo, a firewall, sshd, etc.
As for general setup, I’ve recently embraced systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved. Might be worth giving it a shot, since there is no default network manager like application. You can even convert all your wireguard client configs into networkd interfaces.
Best practice: Keep a personal log of various tweaks and things you’ve configured, and set up automated backups (more of general guidance).
Have fun!
Paru is a yay alternative. You can use either one. Just pointing this out since yay is mentioned in a lot of the other comments. I am not saying not to use paru. I am just pointing out that it is not something different. You can use paru instead of hay in any of the other comments in this thread. Or use yay instead of paru in this one.
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- archinstall is one of the better/best distro installs around - it just does what it says it will and is pretty intuitive
- LUKS encryption is easy to set up in archinstall - strongly recommend encrypting your root partition if you have anything remotely sensitive on your system
- If you do use encryption but don’t like typing the unlock password every reboot, you can use tpm to unlock - yes, this is less secure than requiring the unlock password every time you reboot, but LUKS + TPM unlock is still MUCH better than an unencrypted drive just sitting there
- sbctl is a good tool for secure boot - If you want to get more secure, locking down bios with an admin password, turning on secure boot, sbctl works really well and is pretty easy to use. I would suggest reading up to understand what it’s doing before just installing/configuring/using it
- yay is a solid AUR helper / pacman wrapper
archinstall is still unstable as hell. I find that my best bet is to:
- Configure everything exactly like I want through the dialog
- Save the user and system preferences to their respective JSONs
- Mount a USB stick and copy the JSONs there
- Restart the archinstall process by loading from the JSONs, then hit commit
- When the above fails, restart the whole machine and jump to step 4, where it magically works
Ah, good to know. I haven’t really used that save configuration and reuse process, I just do the install directly at the end of configuring everything. But I can see the draw for using that, a shame it doesn’t seem to work that well.
Use EndeavousOS instead because the initial install process is simpler.
Start from the install guide on the wiki. It’ll branch out fast and just follow all the links and read. If something goes wrong, check if you missed something on the wiki. It’s an amazing resource.
Also, look up your hardware on the wiki before you start.
Install it in a VM. Create snapshots. When you fuck it up then revert the snapshot.
Once you’re decent at figuring out what to and not to do then try to get proficient at file system snapshots so you can do the same thing more or less on bare metal.
This, and take physical notes, or at least make notes in something you can refer to on a screen that is not your phone, ideally another desktop or a laptop computer with internet access in case something unexpected comes up during the physical install and you need to search the archwiki or the wider internet.
Lol
“The best way to run arch is to have a second non-arch computer at all times”
I think that sums it up
I mean, its useful regardless of the OS. When my Windows install broke and a system image restore got botched it was useful having a laptop.
Do yourself a favour and install it on a virtual machine first. Screwing up an install on Arch is frighteningly easy. The Arch Wiki is your friend, use it. Also, read the installation instructions before you begin the installation, not during. If this sounds like too much of a headache (understandably so), then give EndeavourOS a whirl.
It’s all automated now, it’s pretty hard to mess up a standard install. It’s not like the good old days.
funny you say that since I just did it (in virtualbox thankfully) and gave up until I heard about endavourOS a few minutes ago
You boot into your installation media and type archinstall then pick the options you want. You can do it the manual way but Arch install works great.
Alright I’ll try again and let you know, what DE do you recommend? I use cinnamon right now
The past 2 years I’ve only been using Arch with KDE plasma. It was the one that clicked with me and got me to stay using Linux. Before I ran pop! Os for a little while and didn’t really like it or gnome then I went back to windows.
Are you talking about archinstall or have they actually automated the default installation method?
That’s what I thought, but then when arch install fcks up it seems even harder to fix. I ised it because I have been getting new computers so it was easier to run run it. It messed up the SSD in a way, and trying to run it again wouldn’t work because it can’t find the SSD that it did something to. It took a while to manually fix all that.
Also idk why arch install doesn’t have easy way to partition home and root, the default suggestions’s root is too small, changing it requires manually making each partition, just take an integer(%) allocated for home and calculate from there.
Install slackware instead! But if you must, yay.
Any reason you would recommend Slackware specifically?
I’ve watched a few Youtube videos on the history of it and the advantages of it but I don’t recall much. It seemed like a lot of people who had used Slackware a long time ago simply continuing to use Slackware and people using at as a learning tool because of how user involved it is.
Would you recommend people start with Slackware itself or a Slackware-based distro?
Use Slackware to Linux like it is 1993. Nothing wrong with that.
