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Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

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Re: Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

#31

Post by Iku_Tri »

saghm wrote: post #18
AlphaJack wrote: post #2

This is the step-by-step process I followed to install Arch Linux on my laptop with the following features: - Wayland - Plasma 6 - Plymouth - PipeWire - LVM on LUKS - Unified Kernel Image - TPM PIN unlock - Secure Boot Let me know what you think!

Nice write-up! My install process is slightly different (I suspect everyone who uses Arch ends up having their own little procedure built up over the years that varies slightly, since the flexibility is part of the appeal), so I'll try to focus on substantive feedback rather than feedback on hyper-specific choices that don't matter: * For something as nebulous as specific cryptographic settings, I think it's worth el…

Not OP, but thank you for real feedback. Most of these posts are just noise to the less-informed.

Re: Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

#32

Post by arendtio »

freeqaz wrote: post #21

Nit picking a bit but I prefer btrfs even if it's slower. Easier to work with. What bootloader is this using? Or is it just straight EFI booting? I helped write a guide a few years back that still is what I do using systemd-boot. https://github.com/lunasec-io/lunasec/blob/master/docs/blog/... How is Wayland support these days? I love i3 but I know Sway promises to be close enough.

Well, Plasma 6 made it the default. Some things are better with Wayland (e.g., performance), but others are worse (e.g., no session restore so far...).

What bothers me is that I have the impression that when I switched from X11 to Wayland a few months ago, Wayland was a bit more stable when it came to suspending and restoring the pc. But after a few months, I had the same problems (crashes) as with X11. It feels like someone fixed something in the wrong direction.

Maybe it is just bad luck.

Re: Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

#33

Post by Levitating »

Levitating wrote: post #23

These types of posts are often more harfmul than helpful. ArchLinux already has proper installation instructions and those who cannot follow them aren't recommend to run it. The main installation issues the ArchLinux forum sees is from people following outdated third party installation guides.

Just as an example, this guide suddenly assumes that "yay" is installed. Even though AUR helpers like yay aren't officially recommended by ArchLinux and also aren't trivial to install.

Re: Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

#34

Post by adhamsalama »

Jnr wrote: post #20
lukan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After years on Ubuntu, then Arch I also just recently discovered Fedora as a well polished alternative. I do love the Arch community. But I feel less motivation to tinker nowdays and Fedora was a pretty nice works out of the box experience so far.

I set up Fedora for family but I still use Arch myself, because there is no good alternative to AUR on Fedora and there are more packages that I need for software development. Sometimes Arch saves so much time, that even the infrequent necessary manual maintenance after updates makes it worth it. And even when trying to run stuff on distros other than Arch, I frequently look up instruction on Arch Wiki and in AUR PKG…

I'm using Nix package manager on Fedora and it's OK.

Re: Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

#35

Post by calepayson »

semiinfinitely wrote: post #27
Levitating wrote: post #23

These types of posts are often more harfmul than helpful. ArchLinux already has proper installation instructions and those who cannot follow them aren't recommend to run it. The main installation issues the ArchLinux forum sees is from people following outdated third party installation guides.

these days I ask chatgpt for help to install arch instead of using the docs which are designed as a gate keeping mechanism to discourage the uninitiated by making them feel stupid. chatgpt just tells you how to do and turns out its really not that hard.

[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68z11VAYMS8) was a godsend when I first got started and I recommend it for anyone installing arch.

Re: Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

#36

Post by SadTrombone »

If people want Arch with a GUI installer I would recommend EndeavourOS instead of Manjaro. EOS offers a much more native/close-to-Arch experience while Manjaro has many more of its own repos/packages/OS modifications (and issues) and is more of a Linux Mint to Ubuntu situation.

Re: Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

#37

Post by calepayson »

exe34 wrote: post #10
seba_dos1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing Arch is just boring and uneventful. You follow the guide from the wiki and that's it. I had more fun installing Debian manually with debootstrap some 15 years ago or so, as it wasn't as well-documented back then and the process left some space for me to screw things up. The most interesting thing to figure out was when I forgot to set the loopback network interface up. All sorts of random things were broke…

nixos is even worse, I have a configuration.nix that I only look at when I'm upgrading, to fix one or two warnings about deprecation. I don't even look at it more than once per major version upgrade, as I've never had to wipe and re-install. stay away if you want a bit of excitement in your installs.

I had plenty of… fun, trying to write a mix config file from scratch. But I also didn’t know a thing about the language when I got started. :)

Re: Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

#38

Post by dingnuts »

semiinfinitely wrote: post #29
scandox wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think that's unfair. The install docs are quite long but they try to give people options. It's not gate keeping to provide a lot of detail.

I actually agree that the Arch docs are absolutely excellent in their level of detail, precision and helpfulness. I also think its possible for them to simultaneously be a gate keeping mechanism and stand by what I said

well if you stand by them, do you plan to present actual evidence of the alleged conspiracy or are you just making these statements to troll?

Re: Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

#40

Post by neilv »

Levitating wrote: post #23

These types of posts are often more harfmul than helpful. ArchLinux already has proper installation instructions and those who cannot follow them aren't recommend to run it. The main installation issues the ArchLinux forum sees is from people following outdated third party installation guides.

I think the post title is understated, since I had a related thought: it's not hard to install most Linux distros on a laptop, and this post will intimidate people.

This post is about how one person did it on hard mode, to get it just how they want it. That's fine.

I suspect that most of the people on HN could pretty easily install Debian, without documentation (just write this file raw to a USB flash drive, boot the laptop from it, and mostly accept the defaults from the menus):

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/d...

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