Arch Linux – Best Tips for Beginners?

[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.

[ndondo@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Mostly BC its low effort. The most intimidating thing about arch for me was the troubleshooting when things go wrong. I'm cool with that in general operation but not during the installation process. Endeavor makes it painless while still being a minimalistic install

[loo@lemmy.world]

Only update your system if you have some time on your hands afterwards, in case something breaks. Happened to me a few times before.

[9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world]

What issues were you having with arch-install that you had to troubleshoot?

[azron@lemmy.ml]

Rust based is not a feature it is a slogan. Yay is the defacto standard and also actively developed. That being said use whatever works for you and AUR.

[twirl7303@lemmy.world]

Manually resizing/replacing the efi partitions for Windows dual boot was where I decided to stop and switch to a graphical installer.

[onlooker@lemmy.ml]

Do yourself a favour and install it on a virtual machine first. Screwing up an install on Arch is frighteningly easy. The Arch Wiki is your friend, use it. Also, read the installation instructions before you begin the installation, not during. If this sounds like too much of a headache (understandably so), then give EndeavourOS a whirl.

[9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world]

Pacman is the only standard package manager for Arch. Arch recommends against using third party package managers, including Yay.

[downhomechunk@midwest.social]

Install slackware instead! But if you must, yay.

[dima@feddit.uk]

Arch is good for tinkering with to make it your own, but can sometimes require tinkering to do things other distros can do straight away, e.g. adding udev rules to use certain devices or setting up zeroconf to be able to discover printers on the network automatically

If you want to be able to roll back changes easily you could set up your root and home partitions as btrfs subvolumes and use snapper to take snapshots, which can be combined with pacman hooks to automatically take snapshots when updating/installing software and can even be set up to allow booting into the snapshots which could be useful if you break your system

[_____@lemm.ee]

The whole arch advantage (imo) is that you have a full understanding of what's in your machine and how it works.

As a beginner you won't understand and that's okay, but you should try different things (or don't and just focus on what works for you) as long as the end result is you doing: pacman -Qe and going "hmm that makes sense", and imo the undersided result is going "hmm what do these all do, why do I have 2000+ packages"

[couldbealeotard@lemmy.world]

Lol

"The best way to run arch is to have a second non-arch computer at all times"

I think that sums it up

[ikidd@lemmy.world]

It's all automated now, it's pretty hard to mess up a standard install. It's not like the good old days.

[propter_hog@hexbear.net]

Print out the install guide on paper and have it with you while you go. If you fuck up networking, you'll have the directions there to get it back.

[onlooker@lemmy.ml]

Are you talking about archinstall or have they actually automated the default installation method?

[american_jesus@lemm.ee]

This.
"Just do a quick update" and spend 1h trying to fix some broken updates

Also look at https://archlinux.org/news/ before updating (or follow the RSS feed), some updates may need manual intervention

[jumuta@sh.itjust.works]

i thought yay told you to not run it with sudo?

[pumpkinescobar@lemmy.world]

Ah, good to know. I haven't really used that save configuration and reuse process, I just do the install directly at the end of configuring everything. But I can see the draw for using that, a shame it doesn't seem to work that well.

[templa@beehaw.org]

If you don't mind AI slop wallpapers every time you upgrade your system. I can't wait to get rid of eOS on my desktop and just use regular Arch