[HN Gopher] Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop
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Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop
Author : AlphaJack
Score : 50 points
Date : 2024-09-14 19:11 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (giacomo.coletto.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (giacomo.coletto.io)
| AlphaJack wrote:
| 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!
| saghm wrote:
| 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 elaborating on _why_ you pick the settings
| you did for `cryptosetup`. I'd imagine it's probably very
| possible for someone to pick a bad set of arguments that either
| degrade security or don't improve it but make it much slower. I
| suspect you didn't do this though, so as someone who just uses
| the defaults that `cryptsetup luksFormat` uses, I'd be super
| interested to hear how you decided on the options you used!
|
| * It looks like you linked to another post explaining your use
| of `yay` as a pacman wrapper/AUR helper, but I'd worry that a
| lot of people this guide would be useful too (i.e. newer people
| to Arch) would be confused when they try to follow it and
| suddenly run into the issue where they don't have anything
| called `yay` installed or know how to install it (since it's
| not something you can get from the default repos). From what I
| can tell, the only two AUR packages you reference in this post
| are `plymouth-git` and `plymouth-theme-arch-breeze-git`. Maybe
| for the purposes of this post, you could stick with `plymouth`
| and `breeze-plymouth` in the main repos (and possibly link to
| the section of your other article where you detail AUR stuff)?
|
| * The stuff about how to configure secure boot is super
| interesting; I've never found it worth the hassle and just turn
| it off on all of my machines, so I wasn't aware of all of the
| tooling available like `sbctl` and `sbsigntools`. A standalone
| post on how to configure secure boot on Linux would definitely
| be worthwhile!
|
| * I love the section on the specific packages for each GPU
| combination. This is definitely something where a lot of people
| will benefit from a concise list rather than having to comb
| through the details in the wiki (which are useful when you need
| them! but often you just want the packages to install)
|
| * For unmounting all of the stuff post-install, you can use
| `umount -a /mnt` to recursively unmount all of the nested
| mounts. Super small change, but it's nice not to have to type
| all of it!
| Iku_Tri wrote:
| Not OP, but thank you for real feedback. Most of these posts
| are just noise to the less-informed.
| Keppl8R wrote:
| ArchWiki: your source for Arch Linux documentation on the web.
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page
| elromulous wrote:
| This was the process I followed:
|
| 1. Downloaded EndeavourOS
|
| 2. Installed it as easily as Ubuntu
|
| Edit: the arch documentation is second to none
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| 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 broken in
| peculiar ways, but the whole system worked well enough to make
| it seem you already succeeded :)
| exe34 wrote:
| 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.
| calepayson wrote:
| 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. :)
| Levitating wrote:
| > the arch documentation is second to none
|
| I am willing to argue that it's the best documentation of any
| distribution
| cubano wrote:
| Isn't the pain of installing Arch the point?
| elcapitan wrote:
| What's everybody's favorite distribution on the Frame.Work 13?
| Getting it next week, and toying around with
| Arch/Debian/Ubuntu/Suse/NixOS/etc in VMs while waiting for it. I
| think I'll have to throw a coin (or just take Debian).
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| I don't have a Framework machine, but my favorite distribution
| on any machines has been Arch, because especially if you follow
| the wiki install, you end up with a lot more knowledge of how
| modern Linux works, and you get to pick any/all of the the
| options (desktop env (or tiling window manager), bootloader,
| display manager, etc) available for modern Linux systems.
| moritzruth wrote:
| I've been using Void Linux for the last 1.5 years because I
| wanted an Arch-like experience but without systemd. I haven't
| had any unsolvable problems.
| lukan wrote:
| "I haven't had any unsolvable problems."
|
| That sentence can have a lot of meanings, when one thinks
| that everything is possible with enough effort ..
| ggpsv wrote:
| Fedora has worked flawlessly for me.
| lukan wrote:
| 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.
| Jnr wrote:
| 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 PKGBUILDs.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| I'm using Nix package manager on Fedora and it's OK.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Fedora was almost required on AMD framework for a while,
| because hardware was brand new and Debians were too old. Now
| with Mint updated, I'd recommend take Fedora or Mint and
| Cinnamon.
|
| Beware, I just realized my AMD does not support S3 sleep. Too
| late to return.
| ppseafield wrote:
| I'm running SUSE Tumbleweed. Fast package manager, up-to-date
| versions of just about every package you could want. Never had
| any driver issues or issues installing.
| ww520 wrote:
| After going through Centos, Ubuntu, Arch, and Mint, I'm
| settling down on OpenSUSE. The rolling updates just work.
| xelamonster wrote:
| Not a Framework but a System76 laptop, I got to a point where I
| couldn't stand any desktops based on Gnome and wanted something
| more predictable and better documented than PopOS or even
| Ubuntu.
|
| I'm enjoying AlmaLinux with KDE and not seeing any reason to
| switch so far, it's rock solid stable and RHEL docs are better
| than anything aside from maybe Arch. All the dev tools they
| tend to not have without fail have an `asdf` plugin, or they're
| written in Rust and `cargo` can install them from source just
| as easily. KDE might be bloated but not in a way you'd notice
| with a modern processor and I love the customization options.
|
| Arch is a great option too if you want all the latest and plan
| to stay on top of upgrading. I like `paru` as a package manager
| there. Most important thing you can do on Arch is add a quick
| search shortcut for the Arch Wiki, it's so good I'll reference
| it for help on any distro.
| i_use_arch_btw wrote:
| I use Arch, but I might be biased
| yndoendo wrote:
| I've had the same Arch installation between four laptops over 12
| years. Boot from a USB Linux distro and enter command line.
| Partition the new laptop, setup disk encryption, rsync the file
| system via USB external enclosure, modify the ftab, crypttab, and
| refind.conf, reboot. Don't have to re-install any software or re-
| setup and sync any accounts.
| geoka9 wrote:
| Same, but with Debian for almost 20 years. Don't remember how I
| did it before, but the last few migrations were just `dd
| if=/dev/sda.old of=/dev/sda.new` and then gparted to enlarge
| the root partition to fill out the new disk.
| jaredhallen wrote:
| This is how I do it also. Sometimes if I feel like changing
| the partition layout for some reason, I partition the new
| drive first and use dd offsets to copy the partitions one at
| a time. And of course you may need to resize the
| filesystem(s) as well. Works with Windows, too, although I
| usually change the storage driver to some generic ATA or
| something first to prevent it from blue screening on the
| first boot. And sometimes with newer versions of Windows you
| have to fiddle around with bootrec and whatnot.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Similar here, but I used a TB4 cable so didn't have to take out
| the storage.
| mrfinn wrote:
| I followed a very similar process a couple of years ago (time
| flies!) and I'm very happy with the results. I'm not even using
| Arch but Artix Linux but the system runs very smoothly, almost
| not a single problem updating in years, using all kinds of
| cutting edge software which is amazing.
|
| On top of what the article mentioned a few tips:
|
| - To achieve really good battery duration I installed powertop
| (which I run on every boot for auto-adjustment) and thermald
| which does a great job with Intel CPUs.
|
| - Suspension issues are common, in many cases often was about
| different part of the system overlapping. I ended up disabling
| hibernation which I never use anyway, but suspending after
| closing the lid for me is a must in a laptop.
|
| - Fusuma or something similar is also a must to take advantage of
| the touchpad.
|
| - Yet another gem, fprintd was a GREAT discovery. First time I
| autorized a sudo with my finger I couldn't help it but have a big
| laugh.
|
| PS. Bonus point: This is the second NVidia Optimus laptop that I
| own and even if Optimus support has gone a long way and now it
| almost works perfectly out of the box to achieve a really good
| performance eg in videogames, I use a script to switch between an
| Nvidia only mode or an Optimus mixed mode.
| freeqaz wrote:
| 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.
| arendtio wrote:
| 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.
| Levitating wrote:
| 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.
| semiinfinitely wrote:
| 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.
| scandox wrote:
| 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.
| semiinfinitely wrote:
| 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
| dingnuts wrote:
| 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?
| swasheck wrote:
| isn't gatekeeping inherently subjective? it's going to be
| hard to present objective evidence to a subjective
| expression of opinion.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Gatekeeping is an active effort to keep others out of
| something (out of a field, away from information, etc.).
| Where is the _active_ effort to keep people out of Arch
| when the documentation is made available for free?
| mlindner wrote:
| The install wiki is full of outdated information that
| causes people to install outdated and old methods of doing
| things. So I wouldn't advise people to use it, other than
| the fact there's no other option.
| calepayson wrote:
| [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.
| Levitating wrote:
| 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.
| mlindner wrote:
| The design decisions around AUR befuddle me to this day. It's
| utterly arcane in how to use it. Or rather it feels like it
| wasn't designed at all and simply evolved.
|
| I highly recommend people to use "yay" and similar helpers
| that make a lot of the problems simply go away.
| m463 wrote:
| I've always thought it was more for developers. You can get
| something into AUR easily, and it is basically the basis
| for a real package.
|
| So low effort for developers.
|
| Meanwhile I think the high effort for users of AUR is an
| appropriate barrier to entry.
|
| Every dangerous thing I've seen in life benefits from good
| situational awareness, and all the "learn makepkg" stuff
| plus "can't be root" seems to match the learning effort to
| the risk.
| m463 wrote:
| Only "suddenly" after he links to his other post describing
| AUR and installing yay:
|
| https://giacomo.coletto.io/blog/arch-conf/
| neilv wrote:
| 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...
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The article isn't about how to install a Linux distribution
| on your laptop. It's about installing _Arch_ on your laptop.
|
| The fact that installing Debian is easier is true, but also
| irrelevant.
| m463 wrote:
| nonsense.
|
| I learned the arch linux installation from the arch web page.
| I've stepped through it probably 50 times over the years to
| install various systems.
|
| It becomes this "choose your own adventure" style installation,
| and you quite quickly get worn down by the branches and start
| making expedient choices over more involved choices.
|
| So many of my laptop installs have had simple partitions,
| systemd boot, and on and on and ending with a text login.
|
| Each choice for a more capable system would require extensive
| learning and the risk of having to start over.
|
| These instructions take you through complex choices like secure
| boot, LVM, choosing a desktop, a graphical boot and more.
|
| This installation guide gives you a fully functioning system
| (like you would get with a full distribtion).
|
| The author had to learn from a fully-functional manjaro
| install, and then walked us through the same thing with arch.
|
| Having a full desktop os with arch in the end is a really
| wonderful goal, and might be worth the risk of having problems
| with the install (which I seem to get with arch anyway)
| SadTrombone wrote:
| 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.
| mlindner wrote:
| That sector size change is interesting. I got warned off of doing
| that for my SSDs with some vague statement that lots of software
| expects 512 byte sectors. Can anyone further comment?
| badgersnake wrote:
| "Modern" is an utterly meaningless word and this blog uses it a
| lot.
| mlindner wrote:
| Modern means "better designed with the current software usage
| environment in mind".
| okasaki wrote:
| I just use archinstall, which is similar in difficulty to GUI
| installers, i.e. not at all difficult.
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