BAMBY to Arch¶

Flashing the USB¶

You can use rufus for Winslows or KDEImageWriter from Linux (or dd)

Select mbr/gpt according to your hardware (usually gpt for newer hardware)

Then when pressing "start" use dd mode for full copy.

After install, do not forget to remove or change boot orders in motherboard settings. This is usually f2, f10, f12 or DEL or other combinations depending on manufacturers.

Do check that you are using your best hub/USB keys (usually blue USBs are for 3.x+ or even better in USB-C) If install speed matters to you (Current best 1m55)

Take your time, installing is fast, make sure you went through everything you need.

Tip

Looking up your motherboard model, CPU/GPU, memory, disks, etc... Can often save you lots of headaches. You can use lspci and lsusb. On certain hardware you may need to select Firmware > vendor (Ex: Marvell WiFi cards)

You may view main schema here: Menu-Preview

Typing lets you search in multi-select menus.

ARROW keys lets you move around.

CTRL + C allows you to clear the current menu

CTRL + H shows the full help

When setting up a user you can also clone dotfiles directly and will be in /home/user/.stash

Desktop vs Window Manager¶

If you are brand new to archlinux full desktops are simpler to handle (KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, Cosmic and the likes) Since a lot can be handled through GUI and not config files.

Note

You may want to install one of these first instead of a WindowManager where more manual work is expected. If you do want a WM, we recommend using your own config files instead of the "dotfile" culture, you'll learn more and have a system tailored to you.

Languages compat¶

You can add Google fonts for extended language support and setup multiple keyboards once you have a basic system working.

noto-fonts-cjk         # Chinese, Japanese, Korean
noto-fonts-extra       # Full extended symbols

In additional packages section.

Maintaining your system¶

I am stuck stepbro:

CTRL + ALT + Fx
# x being an F key nbr

This should let you access a tty, from there you can try to kill the problematic process or fix the issue.

I dont know what I'm looking for:

pacman -Qi pkg
# pacman -Ql pkg
pacman -Q | grep <pkg>

You can also | (pipe) to other useful stuff like less, head, tail, etc...

I want to learn about something:

pacman -S man-db
man <pkg>

I want to have a clean system:

pacman -S pacman-contrib
# tools for pacman
paccache -r
# cleans cache
checkupdates
bash-completion 2.17.0-1 -> 2.17.0-2
mkinitcpio 40-3 -> 40-4
# visit archlinux.org/news ideally before updating
# limit AUR usage to strictly necessary

I have slow mirrors:

sudo reflector --protocol https --latest 20 --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
sudo pacman -Sy