Arch Linux Tips

Jonni Bidwell has spent years perfecting his Arch install,  and he’s begrudgingly going to share some insights…

You’ve carefully followed the lengthy install guide on the Arch Wiki and installed Arch Linux. Amazingly (or maybe as a result of hair pulling, shouting or other creative problem solving), everything works – network, display, your keymap is even correct. You’re all ready to use your fresh new install, but all it does is boot to a terminal prompt. This is, of course, expected behaviour: Arch is what you make it, after all.

But some guidance, after this arduous installation pilgrimage, on exactly what it can be made into might be helpful. You go back to the Arch Wiki, but the post-installation section links you to a somewhat overwhelming list of ‘general recommendations’. You should certainly study this list, and the Arch Wiki is truly one of the greatest Linux resources (alongside LXF?–Ed) out there. But if you want the LXF lowdown on how to quickly get going after a successful install, read on!

We won’t presume you’re an Arch expert, but even if you are you might find some handy tips to get your setup closer to perfection. For this tutorial we’re going to assume you’ve got a working Arch install. We’ll further assume you’ve done some bread-and-butter setup tasks: setting up a user, local mirrors, networking and getting all your partitions set up in /etc/fstab. All this is in the Arch Wiki if you need guidance – we will often refer you there throughout this article where appropriate, rather than parroting its contents.