System Installation

If you haven’t installed Arch Linux yet, continue reading. It is recommended to start from scratch since the dotfiles are tightly integrated with how my system is set up. If you know what you are doing, you might want to skip to the manual or automatic customization steps.

I recommend that you read the Arch Linux Wiki’s installation guide instead since it is more updated and accurate than a guide that is maintained by one hobbyist like me. I also recommend reading arch.d3sox.me if you have trouble understanding the wiki.

Pre-Installation

Preparing the Installation Medium

I assume that you know how to boot into the Arch Linux ISO. You can download the ISO from their website, and use Ventoy to boot into your USB Flash Drive.

After this point, I assume that you are now in the live ArchISO system.

Preparing the Console

If you are not using a US keyboard, you might want to change your keyboard layout.

localectl list-keymaps  # list available layouts
loadkeys <keymap> # load a keymap. e.g., `de-latin1`

Verifying Internet Connection

Internet connection via Ethernet should be working out of the box. If you are using a wireless connection, perform the following commands:

iwctl
device list
# your device name might be different (replace wlan0)
station wlan0 scan
station wlan0 get-networks
# replace <SSID> with your network name from the previous command
station wlan0 connect <SSID>
exit

If you are having problems turning on your wireless NIC, make sure that it is not being soft-blocked by rfkill.

To make sure that you have an internet connection, ping the Arch Linux website.

ping -c 4 archlinux.org

Setting Up Time and Date

Make sure that the time and date is synchronized.

timedatectl set-ntp true

Check if The System Booted in UEFI

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

If the directory does not exist, you are in BIOS mode. It is most likely that you want to use UEFI, so check the wiki to know how to boot into UEFI mode.

Storage Preparation

Partitioning and Mounting the Disks

List all block devices by running the following command:

fdisk -l

In my case, my main storage device is located at /dev/sda. So we run the following command: (Your device might have a different name)

fdisk /dev/sda

Partition the device following the structure shown in Environment > Disk Partitions. If you have different needs, you can see more examples in the Arch Linux Wiki and d3sox’s guide. After saving the changes made by fdisk, create the filesystems.

mkfs.fat -F32 -n EFI /dev/sda1 # Create a FAT32 filesystem in `/dev/sda1` labeled "EFI"
mkfs.ext4 -L BOOT /dev/sda2    # Create an EXT4 filesystem in `/dev/sda2` labeled "BOOT"
mkswap -L ZRAM /dev/sdaX       # Create a SWAP filesystem in `/dev/sdaX` with label "ZRAM"
mkfs.btrfs -L ARCH /dev/sdaY   # Create a BTRFS filesystem in `/dev/sdaY` labeled "ARCH"
 
# Mount /mnt to create Btrfs subvolumes.
mount --mkdir /dev/sdaY /mnt
 
# Create Btrfs subvolumes
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@var_log
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@snapshots
 
# Unmount /mnt
umount /mnt
 
# Mount the partitions in their respective mountpoints.
mount --mkdir -o noatime,compress-force=zstd:3,subvol=@ /dev/sdaY /mnt
mount --mkdir -o noatime,compress-force=zstd:3,subvol=@home /dev/sdaY /mnt/home
mount --mkdir -o noatime,compress-force=zstd:3,subvol=@var_log /dev/sdaY /mnt/var/log
mount --mkdir -o noatime,compress-force=zstd:3,subvol=@snapshots /dev/sdaY /mnt/.snapshots
mount --mkdir /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot
mount --mkdir /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi

Regarding Btrfs Compression

The compression level of zstd may vary, depending on your storage type. For slower devices such as HDDs, it is better to optimize the file size so that the system will spend less time reading and writing. Meanwhile, the added compression/decompression time is (theoretically) slowing down I/O for faster devices.¹

Basically, set compress-force=zstd:N…

• Within 2-5 if you have a rotating storage device
• To 2 if you have a SATA SSD
• To 1 if you have an NVMe SSD

Depending on your needs, you can set the compression levels higher if storage space is more important or lower if latency or bandwidth is more important.

Installing Arch Linux

Rank the Mirrors

Use reflector to rank the mirror servers.

reflector \
	--latest 10 \
	--age 18 \
	--protocol https,rsync \
	--sort rate \
	--save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Perform the Base Installation

Use the pacstrap command to install Arch Linux into your system.

WARNING

To ensure system stability, append the microcode package for your CPU to the following command:

• amd-ucode for AMD CPUs
• intel-ucode for Intel CPUs

See Arch Linux Wiki > Microcode

pacstrap -K /mnt \
    base base-devel linux linux-firmware linux-headers \
    iwd networkmanager networkmanager-openvpn \
    networkmanager-pptp networkmanager-vpnc \
    wireless_tools wpa_supplicant ifplugd \
    sysfsutils usbutils btrfs-progs e2fsprogs dosfstools lvm2 \
    inetutils dhcping traceroute rsync \
    earlyoom nano less which tree sudo reflector \
    dialog man-db man-pages openssh \
    git git-lfs xdg-utils xdg-user-dirs

Append more package names as needed. For example, my laptop has Broadcom wireless devices so I have to install broadcom-wl as well. This command may take a while to complete.

Generate fstab

Generate an fstab file by running either of the following commands:

genfstab -L /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab  # Define by labels
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab  # Define by UUIDs

Check the /mnt/etc/fstab file for any errors.

Chroot into Your New Arch Linux System

arch-chroot /mnt

Configure Pacman

nano /etc/pacman.conf

Enable multilib Repository

Uncomment the following lines to make 32-bit libraries available to download.

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Enable Parallel Downloads

Uncomment the following line to enable parallel downloading of files. You can change the value to whatever you like.

ParallelDownloads = 5

Other Stuff

Uncomment/Add the following lines under Misc options:

1. Color
2. ILoveCandy
3. VerbosePkgLists

Post-Configuration

After editing the configuration file, you may now save and close it. Run pacman -Syu to update the repositories.

Add zram

Instead of having a swap partition, we are going to use zram instead.

pacman -S zram-generator

After installation, create/edit /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf and replace its contents with the following:

[zram0]
zram-size = min(ram, 8192)
compression-algorithm = zstd

ZRAM Backing Device

If you opted for using ZRAM’s writeback feature, get the partition UUID of your backing device partition (/dev/sdaX) by looking at the results of ls -lAh /dev/disk/by-partuuid, and add the following line in /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf, under [zram0]:

writeback-device = /dev/disk/by-partuuid/XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX

We can also optimize our zram configuration by creating /etc/sysctl.d/99-vm-zram-parameters.conf and adding the following in the file:

vm.swappiness = 180
vm.watermark_boost_factor = 0
vm.watermark_scale_factor = 125
vm.page-cluster = 0

Installing The Graphics Driver

First, install Mesa and Vulkan graphics drivers.

pacman -S mesa lib32-mesa vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader

Depending on your graphics card, run the appropriate command to install the graphics drivers needed:

Manufacturer	Command
AMD (New)	pacman -S xf86-video-amdgpu libva-mesa-driver lib32-libva-mesa-driver mesa-vdpau lib32-mesa-vdpau libva-vdpau-driver lib32-libva-vdpau-driver vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon
AMD (Old)	pacman -S xf86-video-ati libva-mesa-driver lib32-libva-mesa-driver mesa-vdpau lib32-mesa-vdpau libva-vdpau-driver lib32-libva-vdpau-driver vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon
Intel [See warning below]	pacman -S xf86-video-intel vulkan-intel
Nvidia (Nouveau)	pacman -S xf86-video-nouveau nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils libvdpau lib32-libvdpau
Virtual Machine (Hyper-V)	pacman -S xf86-video-fbdev
Virtual Machine (Others)	pacman -S xf86-video-vmware

Troubleshooting

Intel

According to Arch Linux Wiki > Intel Graphics > Installation, there are multiple problems when installing xf86-video-intel so you might want to not install the package.

NVIDIA

If you are having problems, read Arch Linux Wiki > NVIDIA.

initramfs Setup

Now, we need to edit our initial ram disk by running nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. Inside the parenthesis of MODULES=(), add the following (separated by a space):

• btrfs and ext4, since we are using Btrfs and EXT4 as our filesystems.
• amdgpu if you are running the new AMD GPU driver, i915 if Intel, or nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm if you use proprietary NVIDIA drivers.

As an example, my machine has a built-in Intel GPU so I have the following:

MODULES=(btrfs ext4 i915)

If you are running proprietary NVIDIA drivers, remove kms inside HOOKS=().

After editing, we run mkinitcpio -P to process all preset files.

Install Bootloader

In this step, I assume that you are installing on a UEFI system. Otherwise, check d3sox for more information.

GRUB OS Prober

If you want to automatically detect other operating systems, run nano /etc/default/grub and add/uncomment the following line:

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

pacman -S grub efibootmgr os-prober grub-btrfs
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

NOTE

If you forgot to perform grub-mkconfig and shut down/reboot the system instead (which I totally did not do while installing Arch), just boot into your live USB again, mount the partitions, and chroot into your system.

Setup Hostname

<YOUR_HOSTNAME> will be the name of your machine. Change it to whatever you like, but following RFC1178 is recommended.

printf '<YOUR_HOSTNAME>' > /etc/hostname
nano /etc/hosts

When the text editor opens, add the following to the file and save:

127.0.0.1   localhost
::1         localhost
127.0.1.1   <YOUR_HOSTNAME>.local  <YOUR_HOSTNAME>

Setting Up Locale

Uncomment the languages that you plan to use in /etc/locale.gen and then generate the locales.

nano /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
 
printf 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8' > /etc/locale.conf  # You can change the locale if you want
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Update the Time

# Replace `Region/City` with your region and city.
# tab-completion is available.
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc

Setting Up Users

It is recommended to use strong passwords for your user accounts.

Set Root Password

passwd

Add A Non-Root User Account

A common security practice is that you should not use the root account unless needed and you know that it is safe to run. To create a non-root user, run the commands below and change the parameters to the values you desire.

For more information, visit the Arch wiki.

# Change <USERNAME> with your desired username.
useradd -mG audio,video,input,storage,wheel,sys,log,rfkill,lp,adm -s /bin/bash <USERNAME>
passwd <USERNAME>

To enable sudo in the newly-created account, run the following command:

EDITOR=nano visudo

And uncomment the following line to allow members of the group wheel to execute any command:

%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Enable Networking-Related Services

First, create or edit /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi_backend.conf and insert the following configuration:

[device]
wifi.backend=iwd

Then, enable the NetworkManager service.

systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

More information: Arch Linux Wiki > Wireless

Enable Other System Services

Edit /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf and replace its contents with the following:

--latest 10
--age 18
--protocol https,rsync
--sort rate
--save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Lastly, enable the services:

systemctl enable reflector.service
systemctl enable earlyoom.service

Reboot

exit  # Exit the chroot environment
reboot  # Reboot the system

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• Previous: Environment
• Next: Automatic Customization

Footnotes

1. Source: Reddit - Which compression level should I choose? ↩