I use ArchLinux on my 2 dev machines. One is an old Alienware M17xR4 that somehow is still alive and that I can only use plugged in (or on battery for like 20 minutes) and a powerful desktop machine that I share with Windows for playing videogames.
The reasons why I use Linux for development are basically because I enjoy it. I've never used Windows for development so I don't know if I would enjoy it and I've used Mac... and I just don't like it. I feel MacOS gets in my way all the time and doesn't always allow me to do what I want to do.
The reason why I use Arch? ... I don't know and I honestly ask myself this question every time I need to reinstall the system. But whenever I try something else I end up coming back to my Arch setup. It is just customized the way I like it.
Installing Arch isn't easy or straightforward, you normally need to know what you're doing and last time I tried it took me around 3 hours because I'm dummy and lazy and I still don't understand EFI or how to make Grub work with it (spoiler: I used refind).
In order to avoid this pain again I've decided to write this down so that I don't need to go through the same again 🤷
Most of it is just copied from the awesome Arch installation guide, with just a pinch of what I want and explaining the same steps just for myself (if you want to install Arch please go and use the installation guide instead of this!)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide
1. Bootstrap from the live USB
2. Get internet
If wifi just works
wifi-menu
If not, make sure your Ethernet cable or mobile tethering is connected. Arch will enable DHCP for the Ethernet devices it finds them (that includes USB tethering) while it boots. You only need to:
systemctl restart dhcpcd@enps0swhatever
check you have ping to ping archlinux.org
3. Sync time
timedatectl set-ntp true
4. Partition
Use cfdisk. Important, make sure /var
is not on the SSD. There's probably no reason for that on modern SSDs? I don't know, it just scares me.
Laptop
I use these partitions. /dev/sda
is the normal HDD and /dev/sdb
is the 32GB SSD.
/dev/sda1, 1G, /boot/efi
/dev/sda2, 1G, /boot
/dev/sda3, 100G, /var
/dev/sda4, all, /home
/dev/sdb1, all, /
Desktop partition schema
-
/dev/sda
is the Windows installation disk on SSD -
/dev/sdb
is the Windows storage HDD -
/dev/sdc
is the Linux SSD -
/dev/sdd
is the Linux storage HDD
EFI exists already from the Windows partition, don't format it, just mount it.
/dev/sda2, /boot/efi
/dev/sdc1, all, /
/dev/sdd1, 300G, /var
/dev/sdd2, all, /media/store
/dev/sda4, exists, /media/windows
/dev/sdb2, exists, media/store_win
5. Bootstrap the system
pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware neovim vi zsh networkmanager sudo
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
On desktop remember to add linux-headers base-devel broadcom-wl-dkms
to the list of pacstrap packages. Because I have a broadcom wireless card and otherwise I don't have wifi on my first boot (and it is a pain to configure it later!)
6. Chroot
arch-chroot /mnt
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Madrid /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
nvim /etc/locale.gen # uncomment en_US.UTF-8 and es_ES.UTF-8
locale-gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf
echo "my-hostname" > /etc/hostname
Setup hosts nvim /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.1.1 my-hostname
passwd
7. Boot manager
I tipically install grub, but last time I wasn't able to do it and ended up installing refind.
Install grub
This just worked on the laptop 🤷
pacman -S grub efibootmgr
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --bootloader-id=GRUB --efi-directory=/boot/efi
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Or refind
pacman -S refind
refind-install
Edit /boot/refind_linux.conf
and make sure it has a line that refers to the /
partition
"Boot using default options" "root=PARTUUID=978e3e81-8048-4ae1-8a06-aa727458e8ff rw quiet splash"
PARTUUID can be found with blkid
Sometimes I add this theme https://github.com/bobafetthotmail/refind-theme-regular
8. Restart!
Exit from chroot
umount -R /mnt
reboot
9. Connect wifi
systemctl enable NetworkManager
systemctl restart NetworkManager
nmcli device wifi rescan
nmcli device wifi list
nmcli device wifi connect SSID-Name password wireless-password
10. Create my new user
visudo # to enable sudo to members of wheel group
userad -m -G wheel -s /bin/zsh username
passwd username
Then exit and login with this new user
11. Bootstrap the new system
If you're here and you're not me, ⚠️stop⚠️. This is how to install my own personal dot-files and you don't want them, believe me.
sudo pacman -S python python-pip python-neovim git base-devel
git clone https://github.com/franciscoj/dot-files ~/Documents/src/dot-files
cd ~/Documents/src/dot-files
./boostrap/linux.sh
sudo DIFFPROG="nvim -d" pacdiff
sudo pip install dotbot
dotbot -c install.conf.yaml
Enable lightdm
sudo systemctl enable lightdm
Done!
Enjoy!
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