Arch Linux – Best Tips for Beginners?

[superkret@feddit.org]

Read https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance before you go your first pacman -Syu

And when people tell you that you shouldn't use aur helpers like yay to blindly install/upgrade aur packages, there's a reason for it. Read the PKGBUILDs.

[justanotherkay@lemmy.world]

Probably don't start by installing nothing but a window manager

Oops. I ran into a lot of problems by doing this, but boy did I run into a lot of tools too

[nateswift@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

I have learned so much but everything is so disfunctional because “I’ll get to it later” means never

[uiiiq@lemm.ee]

Use btrfs with snapshots. Verify you know how to boot into snapshot after a failed update and repair the system. This is the most important thing and lets you experiment much more freely.

[mihies@programming.dev]

Those who are (wisely) suggesting snapshots, do you guys use a different partitions for data and OS? Because if you do revert to an older snapshot after a while, you'd loose new data, too (unless you recover it from current state)?

[witty_username@feddit.nl]

I wish I knew then that debbie does the trick for me

[gratux@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

Also, just paru is equivalent to paru -Syu

[z3ror0ne@lemmy.ml]

This, and take physical notes, or at least make notes in something you can refer to on a screen that is not your phone, ideally another desktop or a laptop computer with internet access in case something unexpected comes up during the physical install and you need to search the archwiki or the wider internet.

[pumpkinescobar@lemmy.world]

archinstall's default btrfs layout has I think 4-5 separate subvolumes (I'm not running btrfs anymore so can't check) but at the very least I remember it has:

• /
• /var
• /home

being separate subvolumes and mountpoints, you can just use a previous snapshot from 1 without rolling back others

Related to the snapshotting stuff, timeshift-autosnap is pretty helpful, hooks into pacman and takes a snapshot before installing/updating packages.

Personally I found btrfs and the snapshots helpful when starting to use arch, but now that I know how not to blow things up, it has been stable enough for me I just felt ext4 was easier.

[corrodedcranium@leminal.space]

I didn't read the documentation so I didn't know you weren't supposed to use sudo with yay.

-Ss can be added to pacman to search for packages. Pretty useful if you don't want to DuckDuckGo them every time.

As for applications one neat one I don't see recommended very often is xkill. You can use it to kill applications kind of like you would with the task manager in Windows. htop is probably a closer comparison to the task manager in general though.

There's a lot of Arch-based distros that are incredibly easy to install if you want a very easy setup process that doesn't involve a lot of terminal work.

[treadful@lemmy.zip]

Start from the install guide on the wiki. It'll branch out fast and just follow all the links and read. If something goes wrong, check if you missed something on the wiki. It's an amazing resource.

Also, look up your hardware on the wiki before you start.

[corrodedcranium@leminal.space]

And the neofetch print out

[corrodedcranium@leminal.space]

Why paru specifically?

[corrodedcranium@leminal.space]

It doesn’t hurt to have the LTS kernel installed as a backup option (assuming you use the standard kernel as your chosen default) in case you update to a newer kernel version and a driver here or there breaks.

I had a similar issue that was resolved by swapping to the LTS kernel. Learning about using a bootable Arch USB and chrooting into your install to make repairs would be a good thing for OP to know

[pumpkinescobar@lemmy.world]

• archinstall is one of the better/best distro installs around - it just does what it says it will and is pretty intuitive
• LUKS encryption is easy to set up in archinstall - strongly recommend encrypting your root partition if you have anything remotely sensitive on your system
• If you do use encryption but don't like typing the unlock password every reboot, you can use tpm to unlock - yes, this is less secure than requiring the unlock password every time you reboot, but LUKS + TPM unlock is still MUCH better than an unencrypted drive just sitting there
• sbctl is a good tool for secure boot - If you want to get more secure, locking down bios with an admin password, turning on secure boot, sbctl works really well and is pretty easy to use. I would suggest reading up to understand what it's doing before just installing/configuring/using it
• yay is a solid AUR helper / pacman wrapper

[abrasiveteapot@sh.itjust.works]

Great advice.

Btw you don't need -S to install a package, just

paru packagename

Works fine

[9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world]

Why EndeavorOS over arch-install?

[9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world]

Rust-based and actively developed

[tetris11@lemmy.ml]

archinstall is still unstable as hell. I find that my best bet is to:

1. Configure everything exactly like I want through the dialog
2. Save the user and system preferences to their respective JSONs
3. Mount a USB stick and copy the JSONs there
4. Restart the archinstall process by loading from the JSONs, then hit commit
5. When the above fails, restart the whole machine and jump to step 4, where it magically works

[chaoticnumber@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

So many tips, let me add mine.

• btop - for monitoring and process management
• pacseek - terminal UI for installing, searching packages (uses yay)
• chaotic aur - repo for prebuilt binaries that are generally ok

When installing use the archinstall the first time, unless you really want to go into the deep end and use the normal install.