archie - my Archlinux installation

This document is written solely for me because I keep forgetting things. Always judge and use at your own risk. Nevertheless I accept suggestion.

Overview

I prefer my Archlinux to be lightweight with a small amount of eye candy. Some overview of what packages I will use for my installation:

Bootloader: rEFInd
Display: NVIDIA
DE: XFCE
WM: XFWM
DM: LightDM with slick-greeter
Compositor: XFWM / Compton
AUR Helper: yay
Shell: Zsh with Oh-My-Zsh

Installation

Base Installation

Follow the ArchWiki Installation guide but do not reboot and make sure you are still in the chroot environment.

Bootloader

Install rEFInd:

pacman -S refind-efi

Configuring Stanzas

Example stanza to put into esp/EFI/refind/refind.conf. Replace XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX with your root partition PARTUUID.

...

menuentry "Arch Linux" {
    icon     /EFI/refind/icons/os_arch.png
    volume   "XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX"
    loader   /boot/vmlinuz-linux
    initrd   "/boot/initramfs-linux.img"
    options  "root=PARTUUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX rw add_efi_memmap"
    submenuentry "Boot using fallback initramfs" {
        initrd "/boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img"
    }
    submenuentry "Boot to terminal" {
        add_options "systemd.unit=multi-user.target"
    }
}

menuentry "Windows 10" {
    icon /EFI/refind/theme/icons/os_win8.png
    loader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

TIP: Do blkid to see your root partition PARTUUID.

Configuring Boot Manager

Head over to ArchWiki UEFI#efibootmgr.

Post Installation

Before rebooting, you may want to install wifi-menu dependencies to make your life easier:

pacman -S dialog wpa_supplicant
exit
umount -a
reboot

Creating User Account

useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash <your_username>
passwd <your_username>
EDITOR=nano visudo

Scroll down and uncomment # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL. Exit and save.

exit and login with your user account.

AUR Helper

I choose yay as my AUR helper, feel free to choose yours:

sudo pacman -S git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si

Desktop Environtment

Upgrade your system and install XFCE:

sudo pacman -Syy
sudo pacman -S xfce4

Display Manager

Install LightDM and slick-greeter:

sudo pacman -S lightdm
yay lightdm-slick-greeter
sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service
sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target

Set slick-greeter as default greeter in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf:

[Seat:*]
...
greeter-session=lightdm-slick-greeter

Display Driver

I'm using NVIDIA GTX 1050 Mobile card, you can refer to ArchWiki for AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA old model.

sudo pacman -S nvidia

To avoid any problem, please read these:

To fix screen tearing issue, create a new file /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-drm.conf:

options nvidia_drm modeset=1

Multimedia

Sound Server: PulseAudio
Audio Mixer: pavucontrol
Framework: GStreamer (what and why?, what??, bad and ugly?)
Screenshooter: xfce4-screenshooter (alt)
Image Viewer: ristretto (alt)
Raster Graphic: GIMP, Pinta (alt and more)
Video Player: SMPlayer (alt)
Audio Player: I use SMPlayer as my audio player. You can choose yours here.

# Sound Server
sudo pacman -S pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa alsa-utils alsa-plugins alsa-firmware xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin

# Audio Mixer
sudo pacman -S pavucontrol

# Framework
sudo pacman -S gstreamer
sudo pacman -S gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-plugins-ugly

# Screenshooter
sudo pacman -S xfce4-screenshooter

# Image Viewer
sudo pacman -S ristretto

# Raster Graphic
sudo pacman -S gimp pinta

# Video Player
sudo pacman -S smplayer

Bluetooth

I prefer Blueman as my bluetooth manager.

sudo pacman -S blueman
sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service
sudo systemctl start bluetooth.service

To be able to use bluetooth headphones or speakers:

sudo pacman -S pulseaudio-bluetooth

Printers

CUPS is the standars and Gutenprint provides drivers for Canon, Epson, Lexmark, Sony, Olympus, and PCL printers.

sudo pacman -S cups cups-pdf ghostscript gsfonts gutenprint foomatic-db-gutenprint-ppds
sudo systemctl enable org.cups.cupsd.service

If you can't print with Gutenprint drivers, try foomatic:

sudo pacman -S foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db foomatic-db-ppds foomatic-db-nonfree-ppds

Still can't print? See CUPS/Printer-specific problems.

Laptop

See TLP and the documentation. Skip if you are not using laptop.

sudo pacman -S tlp
sudo systemctl enable tlp.service
sudo systemctl enable tlp-sleep.service

Shell

Installing Zsh and Oh-My-Zsh:

sudo pacman -S zsh
chsh -s $(which zsh)
zsh
sh -c "$(wget https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh -O -)"

To Be Continued..

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Shivelight / archie