Arch Linux as your Day-to-day Desktop (2020)
Linux Distribution Hunt
I'm using Linux distribution for my day to day life, I started to use Linux distribution fully as my primary and only OS in 2017 at work, it was hard to migrate from Windows though I have been using Linux in VMs I never thoughy using it as my Daily driver.
To be honest it was a fun switch and exciting adventure, I started to use Fedora 28, back it was smooth and encourage everyone on my team to try it. only 3 out of 20 is using Linux distributions today sad to say.
So I started Fedora 28 upgraded to Fedora 29 and Fedora 30, but when I had to use a new laptop that's where things got messy I have now a Lenovo Legion Y540, Intel Core i7-9750H, 32GB of Ram, and 1x 2.5" Samsung EVO SSD 1TB, 1x m.2 nvme Lenovo ssd (stock), and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile as GPU,
When I installed Fedora 30 back then it was smooth an installed also the proprietary driver for NVIDIA, when I updated in Fedora 31 and had a new kernel that's where the things break, I realized there is no seamless upgrade in Fedora that involves a Proprietary driver thus it broke easily, thus I needed to change from Fedora 31 to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Ubuntu 18.04 is good, it great as a distribution that "just works", upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 with the NVIDIA driver installed was way smooth than my experience with Fedora, then the crazy happens when I was trying to learn Ansible and Containers, Cri-o was a mess in Ubuntu, it keeps on shutting off my containers if not in used as if it is a serverless platform, it turns out Cri-O works best in Red Hat distributions (Centos/Fedora) when I tried it in a VM it worked well.
Then it was time to shift again from Ubuntu 18.04 to Fedora 32 it went well until the horror happened when upgrading 5.6.11 the kernel broke again due to the NVIDIA driver, I thought that they already sorted it out bacause Lenovo already has a Fedora OEM, but it seams there is still a gap.
Thus a Distribution hunt is on it's way.
I need to have a distribution that doesn't break while upgrading using the NVIDIA drivers like Ubuntu, But let me use Cri-O and other container technologies freely like Fedora thus concluded I have 2 options.
- Linux from scratch
- Arch Linux
Linux from scratch is not a Linux distribution but I could have all the freedom that I could, however it really takes a long time, thus I went to Arch Linux.
As it reputation Arch is sought as a "hard" distribution and wanted to check if it is really a challenge, and I succeded.
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Installation of Arch Linux in a Laptop
To install I had to consider these things:
- My laptop boots on UEFI i needed to install it in EFI mode.
- I have 2 disks I need to be carefull in my partitioning.
- I need to install it via wifi since I don't have an ethernet cable.
- Install it with GUI since this will be my day-to-day driver.
- NVIDIA GPU, I needed to install the NVIDIA Driver.
Booting it up
Booting the Arch Linux is simply using dd the iso to my USB flash drive.
(Note: I was still using Fedora this time)
[aj@fedoralaptop] dd bs=1M if=archlinux-2020.05.01-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdb status=progress
Plug the Flash drive and booted in the Arch Linux ISO.
upon booting use your arrow keys to choose Arch Linux archiso x86_64 UEFI CD
the Live CD will automatically login as root and you will have zsh shell to use.
root@archiso ~ #
Partitioning
I have 2 disks /dev/sda and /dev/nvme0n1 and I will parition it like this:
| Disk | Parition | Mount Point | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| /dev/sda | /dev/sda1 | /home | 931.5 G |
| /dev/nvme0n1 | /dev/nvme0n1p1 | /boot/efi | 300 M |
| /dev/nvme0n1p2 | swap | 32G | |
| /dev/nvme0n1p2 | / | 444.7G |
I use parted command for ease of use to accomplish this table
For /dev/sda
root@archiso ~ # parted -s /dev/sda \
mkalabel gpt \
mkpart primary ext4 0% 100%
For /dev/nvme0n1
root@archiso ~ # parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 \
mkalabel gpt \
mkpart primary fat32 0% 300MiB \
set 1 esp on \
mkpart primary linux-swap 300MiB 32GiB \
mkpart primary ext4 32GiB 100%
to check if we succeeded:
root@archiso ~ # lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
└─sda1 8:1 0 931.5G 0 part
nvme0n1 259:0 0 477G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 300M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 32G 0 part
└─nvme0n1p3 259:3 0 444.7G 0 part
Then formating the partitions
root@archiso ~ # mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
root@archiso ~ # mkswap /dev/nvme0n1p2
root@archiso ~ # mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p3
root@archiso ~ # mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
Use wifi in the installation
To install Arch you need a stable internet connection, since I don't have an ethernet cable, logic dictates me to use Wifi instead.
To enable wifi, first remove any rfkill blockers
root@archiso ~ # rfkill unblock all
then set the wireless lan to up
root@archiso ~ # ip link set dev wlan0 up
try to do a scan
root@archiso ~ # iwlist wlan0 scan
if there is an output of ESSIDs then you succeded, turn your wireless lan interface off
root@archiso ~ # ip link set dev wlan0 up
Now to configure the ssid use wifi-menu
root@archiso ~ # wifi-menu
After you choose an SSID and put a password you will be connected.
(Note: The password might be in plain text be aware in your surroundings)
try to ping a cool website
root@archiso ~ # ping -c 4 ajohnsc.com
If you have connected it is a success then.
Install Arch with GUI
mount the / and swap partitions first
root@archiso ~ # mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt
root@archiso ~ # swapon /dev/nvme0n1p2
Start the base installation using pacstrap
root@archiso ~ # pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware vim
It will take sometime depending on your internet connection.
now mount the /home partition since everything is installed and inplaced
root@archiso ~ # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/home
Then generate your fstab file.
root@archiso ~ # genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
root@archiso ~ # cat /mnt/etc/fstab
# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/nvme0n1p3
UUID=82d9b252-e602-4c71-a3f1-0f91069027d4 / ext4 rw,relatime 0 1
# /dev/sda1
UUID=46ed0850-0343-49db-96c1-345ef43de826 /home ext4 rw,relatime 0 2
# /dev/nvme0n1p2
UUID=0a5d8118-e51f-46a0-a03f-6698ad00bd82 none swap defaults 0 0
To configure the new installation we need to chroot in /mnt, use arch-chroot to do that.
root@archiso ~ # arch-chroot /mnt
[root@archiso]#
Add your hostname in /etc/hostname
[root@archiso]# echo "AJCanlas-PC" > /etc/hostname
Configure the system language by editing /etc/locale.gen,use "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" and "en_US ISO-8859-1" for english.
[root@archiso]# sed -i s/"#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8"/"en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" /etc/locale.gen
[root@archiso]# sed -i s/"#en_US ISO-8859-1"/"en_US ISO-8859-1" /etc/locale.gen
Generate the system language layout.
[root@archiso]# locale-gen
Configure persistently your system language and use it.
[root@archiso]# echo LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
[root@archiso]# export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
Configure your local time, for my case I use "Asia/Manila", and set the hardware clock to UTC.
[root@archiso]# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Manila /etc/localtime
[root@archiso]# hwclock --systohc --utc
Then create your user for your new system, and root password
[root@archiso]# passwd
[root@archiso]# useradd -G wheel,storage,power -s /bin/bash -c "Aaron John S. Canlas" aj
[root@archiso]# passwd aj
Configure sudoers
[root@archiso]# pacman -S sudo vim
[root@archiso]# visudo -f /etc/sudoers
edit this line from:
#%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
to:
%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
then save
Next is to install my ddesktop environment,
first install NetworkManager and all wireless utilities.
[root@archiso]# pacman -S wireless_tools iw wpa_supplicant iwd
[root@archiso]# pacman -S networkmanager
enable network manager for reboot
[root@archiso]# systemctl enable NetworkManager
Install X Windows System
[root@archiso]# pacman -S xorg xorg-server
then install Gnome desktop environment
[root@archiso]# pacman -S gnome
Then enable gnome dekstop manager
[root@archiso]# systemctl start gdm
Last is to install the Boot loader, to install GRUB with UEFI capabilities you need the following packages
[root@archiso]# pacman -S grub efibootmgr dosfstools os-prober mtools
then create a /boot/EFI directory and mount your EFI parition there
[root@archiso]# mkdir /boot/EFI
[root@archiso]# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot/EFI
Then install grub with uefi.
[root@archiso]# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --bootloader-id=grub_uefi --recheck
Then create the grub configuraiton file
[root@archiso]# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Install the NVIDIA Driver
Arch suprised me since they have the simplest way to install their NVIDIA Driver, to install It:
[root@archiso]# pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils nvidia-settings xorg-server-devel opencl-nvidia
Then blacklist the nouveau driver in modprobe
[root@archiso]# echo "blacklist nouveau" > /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
Finishing it
All is setup the only thing left is reboot
[root@archiso]# exit
root@archiso ~ # umount -a
root@archiso ~ # telinit 6
Remove your flash drive and you have your new Arch Linux in Gnome Desktop.