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?
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
ditch it and go straight to NIxOS
don’t use archinstall if it’s the first time, the manual installation is not that hard
I installed Arch like that. When I had to do a new install, I forgot everything, then I used archinstall with Xfce option and it worked fine.
Yea, I would say either go for arch manually or go straight to endeavourOS
I learned so much from just going wiki-diving at every step of the installation and post-installation
i don’t think i went wiki diving really, i just followed what it said but it gave me a nice overview of what does what in an arch system that i could expand on later
Be aware that some apps will install fine from the arch repo but some others will be better installed from flatpack (e.g. inkscape) or directly as an executable (e.g. Godot).
On steam you may need to specify your video card if you run an AMD card using the DRI prime command. Some games will require -vulkan to use vulkan rather than game settings.
Note: experience may vary by compositor (xorg/wayland), desktop environment, drivers, system hardware, and your willingness to dive into details.
What was your experience with Inkscape and Godot? I have those both installed from repo.
I’ve never felt the need to use flatpak at all on arch.
Godot had some driver issues. Inkscape had issues with the interface fonts.
Plasma 6/wayland
What exactly works better on flatpak version? Until now, for any packages that were somehow different, repo vs flatpak, were working better in repo version. (Due to container thingy, because flatpak version could bot see everything and I was zoo lazy to fix it using flatseal 😆)
Seems to be program by program. Usually an issue with plasma or wayland or drivers.
I’ve had Discord not be up to date in the AUR. Moved to flatpak and haven’t had that issue.
Huh, works well for me, ig updates come a little late sometimes but never unable to use it.
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Use EndeavousOS instead because the initial install process is simpler.
Don’t cheap out and use the hand holding script to ez mode the install. At least not the first time. You will learn a few things along the way.
- EndeavourOS is arch based with less hassle. Its more than good enough for most people. don’t get trapped by minimal install bs and other non-consequential opinionative approaches to software.
- Select btrfs as your file system and use timeshift. If you fuck up or if your updates fuck something up. There are other ways of doing rollbacks and this is just what I became familiar with. I’ve used it two times in the past year, its worth it.
- Bookmark the archwiki, 99% of the time the answer to the questions of ‘how to’ and ‘can i’ are in there
- There are multiple DE’s. Pick what works best for you before you toss that bootable USB installer. You of course can switch later down the line, but experimenting now will save you config troubleshooting later, just stick to what feels/looks best. Look around on the web to see what appeals to your workflow. There are others like Cosmic and Wayland that are not included in the arch gui installer, in which case, follow the install procedures for the DE you want and remove the old ones to avoid config overlap.
- Have Fun. If you are not, do something that is.
I 2nd this wholeheartedly! Been using endeavourOS for years at this point! Before endeavourOS I was distro hoping the classics. I tried Ubuntu, fedora, popOS, Debian and way more throughout my time on linux. When I tried endeavour the first time I just stuck with it. It just worked, the updates are seamless and I just like get along with it.
Wayland and Cosmic are not there yet for beginners, more like beta, watch videos from Brodie Robertson, I’ll wait half year at least to try that for newbies.
Check ArchLinux.org for news before you kick off an update. It’s got an RSS feed and a mailing list if that helps.
Read the Wiki, and turn to it first for any issues you have.
This one may be a special “me” problem, but if you’re manually interacting with wpa_supplicant, stop and go read the Networking page in the Wiki again.
Learn how to use journalctl (at least superficially) before something goes wrong.
Generally you want to restart after an update to the kernel or graphics drivers or things start degrading strangely.
I’m surprised it isn’t the norm to have a hook that checks it as part of pacman updating.
From the bottom of the installation guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/General_recommendations
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”
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.
The ArchWiki is amazing, probably don’t start by installing nothing but a window manager and adding things you need as you go
Probably don’t start by installing nothing but a window manager
Oops. I ran into a lot of problems by doing this, but boy did I run into a lot of tools too
I have learned so much but everything is so disfunctional because “I’ll get to it later” means never
Don’t?
Arch is good for tinkering with to make it your own, but can sometimes require tinkering to do things other distros can do straight away, e.g. adding udev rules to use certain devices or setting up zeroconf to be able to discover printers on the network automatically
If you want to be able to roll back changes easily you could set up your root and home partitions as btrfs subvolumes and use snapper to take snapshots, which can be combined with pacman hooks to automatically take snapshots when updating/installing software and can even be set up to allow booting into the snapshots which could be useful if you break your system
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.
Couldn’t get nano to work to change sudoers after using archinstall, I’ll just stick to mint until I learn how to properly use my computer
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.
Are you talking about archinstall or have they actually automated the default installation method?
EndeavorOS if you want to have an easy time. Also be comfortable reading documentation.
Why EndeavorOS over
arch-install?Mostly BC its low effort. The most intimidating thing about arch for me was the troubleshooting when things go wrong. I’m cool with that in general operation but not during the installation process. Endeavor makes it painless while still being a minimalistic install
What issues were you having with arch-install that you had to troubleshoot?
Manually resizing/replacing the efi partitions for Windows dual boot was where I decided to stop and switch to a graphical installer.
Partitioning is something I don’t mess with on the terminal. Last time I set up a new drive I used SystemRescueCD first just to use gParted before installing arch (manually)
If you don’t mind AI slop wallpapers every time you upgrade your system. I can’t wait to get rid of eOS on my desktop and just use regular Arch
I’ve only seen this on a system I hadn’t changed the wallpaper on. But agreed the stock ones suck
I don’t know why but even if I am setting my own wallpapers I still get to see the stock ones (when booting, etc), it pisses me off because it is clearly AI made and it seems the community around eOS likes them and even make worst ones on their forum
