[To do] Things to do after installing ArchLinux

Things to do after installing ArchLinux

My main system is running Arch for the moment and I am loving it.

I decided to make this post a little different from the previous ones, because if you have installed Arch you have a good knowledge of Linux.

If you plan to install Arch

The installation of ArchLinux is not an easy thing. You can check this two guides that I followed to have an idea of what you will need to do.

Beginners' Guide - ArchWiki

Build a Killer Customized Arch Linux Installation - LifeHacker

You may want to try it in a different machine because you may not be able to make everything run the first try.

Why would I want to install Arch?

Random motivation meme

The idea behind Arch is to have a lightweight distribution that receives always the latests updates. So you will always run the latests kernels and the latests versions of everything.

Many users like ArchLinux because you do almost everything from scratch. You create your partitions and choose your filesystem, you enable your network...

I have been an Ubuntu user since I started using Linux, I have tried other distros but I wasn't fully satisfied with them. With Arch it has been different because I feel like I own the OS. I build it the way I like it and that feels actually great.

My desktop in Arch

Installing software, adding packages, using the Wiki

The two tutorials that I mentioned will allow you to install a very basic installation. But let's be honest the only thing you need to get everything you want, is a Terminal emulator.

In ArchLinux you will have to install new software using pacman it's very easy actually.

If you want to install something you only need to run

sudo pacman -S <package_name>

If you want to search for a package

sudo pacman -Ss <package_name>

If you want to remove a package

sudo pacman -R <package_name>

And if you want to update your system

sudo pacman -Syu

What I recommend you to do before starting installing everything that you want is to enable multilib repositories.

Go ahead and edit the pacman configuration file in /etc/pacman.conf

Uncomment the lines

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

The ArchWiki is your best friend while you are using Arch. If you want some information about how to install a package you can search information in the ArchWiki about Bumblebee for example, it will tell you how to install it and test it.

What is great about the ArchWiki is that it applies most of the time for Linux in general. It's a great source of documentation.

If you want a list of software you may want to install, you can check my posts about Top Things to Do for any distro.

For Ubuntu 13.04 for example:

Top things to do after installing Ubuntu 13.04

Using the AUR

If you don't find the program that you want in the repositories the easiest way to install what you want is to download a tarball from the Arch User Repositories (AUR) build the package and install it using pacman. It sounds very complicated but you get used to doing this.

The really first time you do this you need to install basic development tools:

sudo pacman -S base-devel

First search for the package that you want in the AUR website and download the tarball. Then you need to extract it:

tar xvf <the_tarball>.tar.gz

Go to the extracted directory and run makepkg, the -s option is used to install dependencies

makepkg -s

This will build the package and create a .tar.xz and the last step is to install that build with pacman

sudo pacman -U <the_build>.tar.xz

Some notes about problems I have encountered

I use a Broadcom Wireless device and I have to use the broadcom-wl package from the AUR. My interface gets renamed from time to time and NetworkManager isn't able to connect. I haven't figured out what is causing the problem yet. :(

EDIT (02/09/13): My problem with Network Manager and with the weird interface name was caused by a systemd service. In the wiki it tells you to enable dhcpd service if you don't have a network connection. I had to do it and that basically caused my wireless interface to have weird names like "eth0".
If you have that problem you need to disable dhcpd with

sudo systemctl disable dhcpd.service

If you enabled or installed another service, in my case netctl make sure you uninstall it in order to use Network Manager.

Then simply start Network Manager with:

sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager
sudo systemctl start NetworkManager

If you need a 3G connection install Modem Manager and enable it:

sudo systemctl enable ModemManager
sudo systemctl start ModemManager

Looking good Arch

When I was trying to install Steam I had a gpg signature problem what solved my problem was running the following commands:

sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys
sudo gpg --homedir /etc/pacman.d/gnupg --edit-key 182ADEA0 enable quit

Make sure you check the ArchWiki post about Steam. You may need some libraries , I needed the package lib32-intel-dri in order to fix performance issues.

If you use Bumblebee I recommend you to launch steam with primusrun:

primusrun steam

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