How to install Arch Linux without losing your mind

Arch Linux is one of the most stable and reliable operating systems on the market. The caveat to using Arch Linux is the installation is not exactly a point-and-click affair. It’s not nearly as hard as Gentoo, but it’s not even close to the user-friendliness of, say, Ubuntu.

That does not mean it’s impossible. In fact, the developers have added a handy script to make the installation of Arch Linux considerably easier than it once was. You no longer have to manually partition your drive and take care of several complicated steps … just to get to the point of installation.

Also: Archcraft is a solid, super fast distro for anyone ready to move beyond beginner Linux

Even better, that script is now included in the Arch Linux live image, which can be downloaded for free from the official download site. You’ll need to either have a virtual machine app (such as VirtualBox) or burn the ISO to a USB drive and boot your system from there. I prefer to go the virtual machine route because it’s the easiest way to test things.

Let me show you how to install Arch Linux without losing your mind.

How to install Arch Linux the easy way

What you’ll need: The only things you’ll need is the live image of Arch Linux booted and ready to go. It does not matter if you’ve chosen to install the OS as a virtual machine or on bare metal (aka, a standard computer). Of course, you’ll also need network connectivity for this to work.

archinstall

When the installer runs, you’ll be greeted by a text-based menu system.

Here’s a brief description of all the options you’ll need to take care of:

• Language – the language used for the installation.
• Keyboard – the keyboard layout you want to use.
• Mirror region – search for your country and select it.
• Local language – the language to be used for the operating system.
• Disk configuration > Partitioning – select the disk layout you’d like to use, for which I recommend going with “Use a best-effort default partition layout.” You’ll also need to select the filesystem type, which I would recommend using either btrfs or ext4.
• Bootloader – select Grub.
• Hostname – here you can set your hostname. The default is archlinux, which you can keep if you like.
• Root password – set a root password.
• User account – create a standard user. You can also define this users as an admin (superuser).
• Profile – select Desktop and then select the desktop environment of your choice.
• Audio – select pipewire.
• Additional packages – keep this to a minimum for now and type firefox.
• Timezone – select the timezone for your locale.

Once you’ve taken care of the above configuration, select Install and hit Enter. You’ll then be prompted to continue, so select Yes and hit Enter. When the installation finishes (it shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes — depending on the speed of your computer and network connection), select No (with regard to the chroot option) and then type reboot. You should now find yourself at the login screen of the desktop environment you chose.

Also: 10 Linux apps I can’t do without – and why

And that’s it. You’ve successfully installed Arch Linux. That wasn’t so bad, now was it?