How to install Arch Linux on your laptop or desktop quickly and easily? Step by step guide

The initial release of Arch Linux it was made in the first quarter of 2002 and, during the following years, improvements have been made to it that have kept it as one of the safest, most stable and fastest systems currently available.

We must clarify that Arch Linux is not a distro for newbies, as some specific knowledge is required to perform the installation on the computer. It is not one of the OS that you install and when finished you can use with the rest of the applications. In this case, only the base system comes. The user you have to determine the settings and tools to install.

In this course, we are going to teach you the requirements you need to install Arch Linux on your computer And secondly, you will have a step-by-step explanation of how to install it without errors on your PC.

What are the requirements and capabilities that my computer must have to install Arch Linux?

Almost any computer will do to install this free distribution from its official website, which has a weight of 650 MB.

The minimum requirements that must be met are the following:

• CPU with 32-bit or 64-bit architecture.
• 512 from RAM.
• At least 2 GB of free space.
• Internet connection functional to download the packages.

Learn step by step how to install Arch Linux on your desktop or laptop without errors as an expert

Above we mentioned that to use this distribution, it is necessary to have some computer knowledge, since the use of commands is required to get it installed perfectly. But don’t be discouraged We are going to show you what the commands are and how to execute them.

By following the steps to the letter, it will be a little easier for you to install:

Download the image

Before going into details of the installation, it is necessary that from the official site of archlinux.org/ perform the download, selecting one of the options that they offer you. It is recommended that the image is “x86_64” because it is compatible for both 32-bit and 64-bit and in the ISO format, which you must record on a USB memory and from there you will run it later on the computer.

To record the image, you have to use a program that allows you to do it, some options are Unetbootin, Balena Etcher or any other similar program you have worked with.

The steps to burn the ISO image are as follows:

• We download the program Etcher.

Download Balena Etcher for Windows

Download Balena Etcher for Linux

Download Balena Etcher for MacOS

• We proceed to install it on the computer.
• After installation, we open the program and we select the ISO image, either from the computer or from a web link.
• When loading, the next step is activated which is bring the image to the USB device.
• With the device installed, we indicate to the program what is the drive where you are going to record the picture.
• You have to press the button “Flash“To start the process.
• A window appears to confirm the operation and we click on “To accept“.
• And ready, in a few minutes we will have the image ready.

Set the keyboard to your language

So that installation is more comfortable, you can configure the keyboard to work on Spanish.

To do this, use the following command:

• loadkeys es

Later, we will update the date and time so as not to have problems when connecting.

We will do it with the following code:

• timedatectl set-ntp true

Partition the disk

Each one determines how many partitions you want to perform to the hard drive according to your needs.

To begin with this process, we must find in which sector we are going to install the distro using the following command:

• fdisk –l

Is required a partition for the root file, as for the rest of the mount points.

The commands to use for the partition are the following:

• Use the command fdisk /dev/sda for manage partitions.
• We type “n” for create a new partition.
• With “p” we choose the primary partition.
• We choose “1”, which is the first partition, we can change the default size or leave it as is.
• With the command “w“ we will save the changes made.

This will be the partition where the root will be mounted. It is important that it is in the “EXT4” format because otherwise we will not be able to mount it.

To do the verification we enter this command:

• mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1

Now we have to mount the partition, in this case we enter:

• mount /dev/sda1 /mnt.

If we have made other partitions more, we will use the command mount to mount them.

Arch Linux installation begins

With the above steps, we leave the computer ready to install the operating system.

Now we do the following:

• We execute the command: pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware
• We install the text editor that is not included. To do this we type the following: pacstrap /mnt nano
• We continue creating a file fstab with the following command: genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
• We check that all drives go fine with this command: cat /mnt/etc/fstab
• If everything is in order, the image will indicate that Arch Linux has the selected hard drive partition, but it is still necessary to carry out some configurations to start it normally from the computer.

First configurations

First, we will change the root or “chroot” directory so that the configurations are saved in the Arch Linux installed in the computer and not in the USB memory.

To do it correctly follow these steps:

• Run arch-chroot /mnt
• Once inside the endsl, we set the time zone: ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/continente /ciudad /etc/localtime
• To change the time and date, we insert this command: hwclock --systohc[7code] followed by [code]nano /etc/hostname

Configure idiom

To set the language that will be used in the distro, we are going to generate the packages with this command:

• [code]nano /etc/hostname

Now we edit this code:

• [code]nano /etc/hostname and then we will add LANG=es_ES.UTF-8

Then we change “/etc/locale.gen” with the following command:

• nano /etc/locale.gen

With these steps, we fill in the language format in the distro. We look on the screen for the command we have added and remove the symbol “#” that appears to your left.

To check that everything is in order, we execute the command:

• locale-gen

GRUB boot manager

So that the new distribution installed on the computer can start, a bootloader is required. In our guide we are going to use GRUB and we will do it manually employ this command: pacstrap /mnt grub-bios. To configure it, it is necessary to enter the chroot. For it we type arch-chroot /mnt and we proceed to configure.

Being inside chroot, we execute grub-install /dev/sda. In seconds it will be installed and we will have to generate a new file that will tell Arch Linux that it should appear on boot.

We do it with this command:

• grub-mkconfig –o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

Set password

With all the process that we have done, the distro is almost ready to use.

We only need to configure a user password and we will do it with this command: “passwd”:

• We left chroot using the function “Exit”, we remove the USB drive and restart the computer.
• When turning on, we will observe on the GRUB home screen showing boot option Arch Linux.
• We select that option and cWe will locate the user “root” and the password that we set previously.

Enable functions

Default, the network is not enabled and it is one of the steps that we must leave configured in the first boot.

We do it with this command:

• systemctl enable [email protected]
• Now touch create a new user: adduser.

AND we will have to choose the groups we want to belong to, which are the installation permissions for audio, video, printers, games, scanner and storage, among others.

After we give the permissions, we restart again and the system will be complete. Remember that the rest of the configurations depend on the needs you have and the use that you are going to give the system. In this case we are talking about the graphical environment and the application packages for Arch Linux. Installation is a process that seems complicated, but Doing it calmly achieves the objectives set.