Installing Arch for dummies (me)

Arch Linux is a lightweight and flexible Linux distribution that provides full customisation options with minimal pre-install configuration options and less bloatware. The installation and setup process, however, is a bit complicated and different than most daily dirving Linux Distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, etc…

Even though there are custom ISOs with GUI installers available, its safer to use the officially released ISOs version. This blog is a walkthrough for steps involved in installation of the OS with the i3-wm desktop environment. All these instructions can be found on The Installation guide with some difference in commands used.

!!! note The screenshots are from a VirtualBox setup for a clearer demonstration of the process. The installation process is same.

My dotfiles: @externref/dotfiles

Installating the OS

Creating an Installation Medium

To install arch you need to load it into an installation medium like a USB Drive, Optical Disc or any memory device.

• First, download the ISO file from one of the sources listed on the download page. You need the file with .iso extension from the respective sources.
• Setup your utility for creating the bootable drive, we are going to use Rufus which is a lightweight tool for flashing USBs. (You might want to use the Balena Etcher utility on a linux distribution.)
• Download and launch the rufus executable and select the USB device and the ISO image that you downloaded. Click on Start and proceed further with the recommended options.

??? screenshot

Booting and Pre Install configs.

Restart the System to open the BIOS menu and select the device that was flashed with the Arch ISO.

!!! warning Make sure to disable Secure Boot option from your system settings during the installation process, you can re-enable it after installing.

On booting, you should enter into a Grub screen with Arch Linux Installation medium and other options.

Upon booting you should see the arch installation terminal with some instructions.

Connect to internet

Before anything, you should be connected to the internet. Run the iwctl utility to open an interface to connected to the desired network.

• Use the device list to list all the available devices, if you’re using a WIFI network it should be a wlan network.
• Scan the station using station [wlan_name] scan.
• Connect to the desired network using station [wlan_name] connect [device_name].

Verify internet connection

Use the ping command to check internet connection. It should produce an output like this

Paritioning and Formatting Disks

You need 2 disk partitions in order to install Arch Linux.

disk	recommended memory	mount point	fs
boot	1GiB	/mnt/boot	FAT32
root	~30-40GiB	/mnt	EXT4

Disk partitions

Use the lsblk command to check the current memory condition.

Remember the address of the disk where the system is to be installed.

Use the cfdisk command to create partition. You need an unallocated space of around 40 GiB minimum to install daily driving arch.

Use cfdisk /dev/<disk_name> to open the cfdisk interface.

You can see the empty patition in the screenshot, we’ll be using this to create our arch patitions.

• Create a 1GiB partition and give it type EFI System.
• Allocate the rest to the linux filesystem partition.

??? Screenshots

Creating filesystems

Now, format the partitions into the required filesystem types.

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/<boot_partition> 
mkfs.ext4 /dev/<root_patition>

This command formats the disks into the required fs types.

Mouting the filesystems

Now, we mount the filsystems on the disk.

mount /dev/<root_parition> /mnt
mount --mkdir /dev/<boot_partition> /mnt/boot

This was all the manual configuration, in further steps, we’ll be using the archinstall script for easier installation.

Arch Install

Run the archinstall command in the terminal. It will open an interface stating various install options with some pre-set ones.

• Go to the Disk Configuration option, and use the pre configured mount option from create partitions option. Enter /mnt as the value and press enter. Confirm and exit.
• Select Grub as the bootloader.
• In the User settings create a new user with desired configurations.
• Profile configs [below]
• Select Pipewire or Pulseaudio for the audio server.
• Use NetworkManager for the network configs.
• Select your timezone by searching it throught /.

Profile

We’ll be using i3-wm for this installation, you can choose the desktop environment you want and continue with it.

• Go to Profile and select Desktop.
• Select i3-wm (using Tab) in the desktop environment options.
• Select ly as the login screen.

Save and go back to main screen.

This is what your configs should look like after setting up everything.

Select Install and press enter and watch the magic happen!.

You should be greeted with this screen once you’re done installing arch.

Enter in prompt if you have anything else to configure.

Your Arch Linux installation is not completed and can be booted into.