Installing Arch Linux Hard Way

Posted Jul 6, 2025 Updated Apr 11, 2026

By Ashish Ghimire 6 min read

Before Installation

Backup your data
Download Balena Etcher & ISO of ARCH Linux
Burn ISO to a USB
Restart

Boot

Press DEL and load to BIOS mode
Change Boot Priorities to USB
Reboot

ARCH

Load ‘Arch Linux Install Medium’
Connect Your Arch to internet
iwctl --passphrase "$WIFIPASSWORD" station wlan0 connect $WIFINAME
ping 8.8.8.8
- If you get bytes back you are connected
Check if you are on UEFI mode
efivar -l
List your disks (Remember your diskname you want to install Arch to)
lsblk

for me its sdc

Split up Partition and Prepare your Drive
gdisk /dev/sdc

CHOOSE YOUR DRIVE CAREFULLY

`x` for 'expert'
`z` for 'Zap'
"Y" to WIPE DISK
"Y" again to Confirm

Verify partitions

lsblk

notice there is no partition on your disk

Partitioning

cgdisk /dev/sdc

Press any key to continue

We are using cgdisk because its easier, relatively.

Separate ROOT and HOME Partition
- Root Partition: Where all OS Files will be stored
- Home Partition: Where all General Files will be Stored

BOOT Partition

Use your keyboard and highlight “NEW” press “ENTER”
First Sector: (Default): (leave Blank and press “ENTER”)
Size in Sectors: 1024MiB
- 1 GB for Boot Drive
Hex Code for GUID: ‘EF00’
Name your Drive: ‘boot’

SWAP MEMORY

When you run out of RAM this memory is used. Make this regardless of your RAM Size

Highlight and go to BIG size ‘free space’ (probably 3rd option)
“NEW” again
First Sector: (Default): (leave Blank and press “ENTER”)
Size in Sectors: 16GiB
- 16 GB for SWAP Drive
Hex Code for GUID: ‘8200’
Name your Drive: ‘swap’

ROOT Partition

Highlight and go to BIG size ‘free space’ (probably last option)
“NEW” again
First Sector: (Default): (leave Blank and press “ENTER”)
Size in Sectors: 40GiB
- 40 GB for Root Drive
Hex Code for GUID: ‘8300’
Name your Drive: ‘root’

Home Partition

Highlight and go to BIG size ‘free space’ (probably last option)
“NEW” again
First Sector: (Default): (leave Blank and press “ENTER”)
Size in Sectors: (Default): (leave Blank and press “ENTER”)
Hex Code for GUID: ‘8300’
Name your Drive: ‘home’

FInishing Partitioning

Use your arrows key to select “Write”
Confirm with “yes”
And arrows key to “Quit”
clear

Formatting Drives

lsblk to confirm drives again
mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdc1
File Allocation Table
mkswap /dev/sdc2
To make swap format
swapon /dev/sdc2
Enable Swap
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc3
‘y’ to confirm if it asks
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc4
Hint: press up arrow and change sdc3 to sdc4

Mounting the drives

mount /dev/sdc3 /mnt

mkdir /mnt/boot

mkdir /mnt/home

mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/boot

mount /dev/sdc4 /mnt/home

Basically we are making folder and structuring it with proper drives and partitions we made earlier.

Update Mirrorlist

cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

We are just Backing up incase we mess something up.

Rank Mirrors

This is to find Fastest mirror suitable to YOU.

If you find error install rankmirrors

sudo pacman -Sy pacman-contrib

Press Enter to confirm

rankmirrors -n 6 /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

This will be working so system isn’t hang, Wait till it shows root@Archiso.

What it did was found best mirrors and copied it to your mirrorlist

cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

shows what we did earlier, so yeah ranked mirrorlist

INSTALLING NOW

pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware base-devel

We are installing Base Linux.

genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

setup all the drives and structure so hard drive is recognized while booting

Booting into Installation

arch-chroot /mnt

Install ‘nano’ and ‘bash-completion’

sudo pacman -S nano bash-completion

Enter to confirm

Enable Locales

nano /etc/locale.gen

Find your locale (for me its en_AU.UTF-8 UTF-8)
remove # from its front
hit ‘ctrl o’ and press enter to save
hit ‘ctrl x’ to close

locale-gen

echo LANG=en_AU.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf

export LANG=en_AU.UTF-8

TimeZone

ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/

From here select your country and press tab

It will list your Timezone

write few characters of your TZ and press Tab

Move to first part of your script and change, mine is Australia Sydney so i will be doing this:

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Sydney > /etc/localtime

hwclock --systohc --utc

We are syncing time with BIOS time so Your PC has right time every time you open it.

Hostname

echo archish > /etc/hostname

instead of ‘archish’ use whatever name you want

IF YOU HAVE SSD

systemctl enable fstrim.timer

Enable 32 bits packages

nano /etc/pacman.conf

Go all the way down to [multilib] and remove # from both line

sudo pacman -Sy

SET USER AND PASSWORDS

set root password
passwd

Type password enter, it wont show it but its writing

Add User

useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power -s /bin/bash ghost

instead of ghost write your own username

give that user password

passwd ghost

Type password and enter.

Modify sudo file

EDITOR=nano visudo

Opens sudo file

Search for %wheel

use ‘ctrl w’

find ‘%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL)ALL’

Uncomment it (remove # from front)

BootLoader

mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/

Install bootloader
bootctl install
Write entries for boot loader
nano /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

Write the 3 lines

title ARCH
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /initramfs-linux.img

save and exit (ctrl o and ctrl x)

Point to your harddrive

echo "options root=PARTUUID=$(blkid -s PARTUUID -o value /dev/sdc3) rw" >> /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf

This hardcode your UID of partition to your bootloader

ip link

Know your network

enable ‘dhcpcd’

sudo pacman -S dhcpcd

sudo sydtemctl enable [email protected]

install NetworkManager

sudo pacman -S networkmanager

sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

install linux headers

sudo pacman -S linux-headers

Follow ONLY IF YOU HAVE GPU

NVIDIA

sudo pacman -S nvidia-dkms libglvnd nvidia-utils opencl-nvidia lib32-libglvnd lib32-nvidia-utils lib32-opencl-nvidia nvidia-settings

sudo nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Inside MODULE=() add these in exact order, it should look like this
MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)
make sure they are loaded during boot time
sudo nano /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf
right after options line, after rw, in same line
nvidia-drm.modeset=1

Hook for pacman to update nvidia driver

sudo mkdir /etc/pacman.d/hooks

sudo nano /etc/pacman.d/hooks/nvidia.hook

Add

  
  [Trigger]
  Operation=Install
  Operation=Upgrade
  Operation=Remove
  Type=Package
  Target=nvidia

  [Action]
  Depends=mkinitcpio
  When=PostTransaction
  Exec=/usr/bin/mkinitcpio -P

Else, Continue…

exit

umount -R /mnt

reboot

You can plug out the USB

When the system boots up, use your credentials to login.

Internet

If you cannot connect to internet

nmtui

Activate a Connection and Connect

Install x11 for KDE

sudo pacman -S xorg-server xorg-apps xorg-xinit xorg-tvm xorg-xclock xterm

to test

startx

if clocks shows up its installed, click any terminal u see and