arch lin

y/n
- -
  - rolling release
  - minimal from the start
  - arch wiki
  - unique
    - pacman + AUR
    - independent fork
    - not really pushed by any corps
    - culture/community
- n
  - less transferable professional/enterprise skills compared to debian/fedora based distros
low level comps
- Package managers
- Firmware-Hardware
- Partitioning nd FS creation
- display server
  - x11
  - wayland - new, more secure, slim, still not much used
- init systems
  - runit - Minimalist, service supervision, potentially fastest
    - can easily run on non‑Linux kernels eg BSD
    - fairly popular, like 3rd place
    - Extremely fast boot, simple 3‑stage init, per‑service directories
  - BusyBox - minimalist, Tiny footprint, basic runlevels
    - very popular for embedded
  - OpenRC - Dependency‑based, lightweight
    - probably second-best by popularity
    - can easily run on non‑Linux kernels eg BSD
    - Parallel startup, service supervision, no hard ties to Linux‑only features
  - s6
  - system D - """bloated""" init system - LS
    - what? init system
      - first process that starts after booting, runs on bkg to manage services etc
      - launch what you need, in specific order
    - cons
      - one point of failure sunce it’s monolythic
      - kind of bloated
        
        it is modular but most people implement this all togheter
        
        at the same time, it’s fast
      - pushes other software to be dependant on it
        
        creates problems to distros not willing to use systemD
      - hides certain configs behind its own tools
        
        especially bad if you want to change text files
    - - mainly red-hat project
    - pros
      - still 1st place for enterprise level servers…?
      - popular if not most popular, used in
        
        RHEL, SUSE, Debian, arch, etc…
      - written in C
      - mantained
  - kinda legacy - slower even than sys D
    - sysV - slower & older
    - Upstart - event driven
      - Starts/stops services based on events
- kernel type - src
  - downlaod kernel linux-lts
    - 6.12.5-arch1-1 → you’re on the mainline linux package.
    - 6.6.54-lts → you’re on the linux-lts package.
    - uname -r - check which one u’re using currently
    - u pick which u want from GRUB menu
    - how to pin a kernel version - src
  - custom - gentoo
  - linux stable - 2 months stable
  - linux lts - 2 years stable
  - libre kernel - does not allow proprietary stuff
    - usually these proprietary stuff gives hardware support
      - so you might not be able to use this at all
    - released after a few days of linux stable
  - hardened kernel - non official more secure kernel
    - incompatible with systemd
    - might brake some software
  - android kernel - specific for mobile devices
  - real-time & low latency
    - reduce latency between input and output of task at the cost of… much, especially multitasking
    - applications needs to be tailored to this to be useful
  - zen kernel & xan mod - better performance
  - TKG kernels -
- firmware blobs
- UEFI vs legacy Bios
  - supports big storage
  - supports graphics when you boot
- Table partitioning
  - GPT
  - MBR - no more than 2TB
- boot loader/manager
  - grub
    - grub-install
    - grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
- file systems
- audio setup lin
Initial configuration
- archinstall
  - mirror
    - where software come from? better if close to phisical location like Italy
  - f
  - img
- exit (chroot) - sometimes you also need to reboot
  - especially if startx gives you permission denied. Reboot and log-in with default user like e
- locale
  - LC_ALL overwrites everything else
  - check
    - in use
      - localectl status
      - locale
    - available
      - locale —all-locales
      - localectl list-locales
    - save & generate
      - locale-gen
  - reload
    - $u n se t L A NG$ source /etc/profile.d/locale.sh
  - set
    - sudo localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
    - main file where locale will be read from FIRST
      - v ~/.config/locale.conf
    - secondary looked at files
      - v /etc/locale.gen
      - ~/.bashrc
      - ~/.profile
    - main script from where everything starts:
      - v /etc/profile.d/locale.sh
  - keyboard layout - src
    - localectl set-keymap uk
    - gb is great britain
- resolution
  - pacman -S xorg-xrandr
  - xrandr - see all devices
  - go to xinit
  - xrandr —output HDMI-1 —mode 1920x1080 —rate 60
- user & add password
  - useradd -m -g wheel myNewUserName
  - passwd myNewUserName
  - nano /etc/sudoers
- fonts
  - quick: pacman -S tff-dejavu
- xorg
  - pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit
  - add to ~/.xinitrc: exec dwm or whatever u using
  - xinit
  - kill xorg server: ctrl + alt + backspace
  - Fixing xinit/startx not running without sudo
    
    sudo usermod -aG tty username
    - Not sure if these stuff is useful
      
      sudo chmod 660 /dev/tty2 sudo chmod 660 /dev/tty3
      
      no screens found
      
      X -configure sudo cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
      
      cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/
    startx or xinit — :1 -nolisten tcp vt$XDG_VTNR that’s the enchanced way to do xinit needed in systemd -nolisten tcp optional but great
- default browser
  - xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/http
    - output: brave-browser.desktop
  - xdg-mime default firefox.desktop x-scheme-handler/http x-scheme-handler/https
    - to change it
- Bluetooth - arch tutorial
  - lsmod | grep btusb if it doesn’t give any output…
    - sudo modprobe btusb
  - sp -S bluez bluez-utils
    - can also install a GUI for this like blueman - src
  - sudo systemctl start bluetooth.service
  - sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service
  - continue follow tutorial or
    - try blueman-manager
- lin app dev tools
- lin App-Software
- Obsidian/Software offline → Obsidian
Smaller
- Customize startup settings
  - nano ~/.profile - these run after log-in
  - $PATH - path that lin check to run commands
  - if have bashrc, run it
  .bashrc && . ~/.bashrc
  
  export PATH=$PATH:&HOME/.scripts export EDITOR=“vim” export TERMINAL=“st” export BROWSER=“firefox”
- additional downloads
  - Helpers for AUR - needs base-devel & git
    - sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git
    - paru
      - rustup for cargo pkg
    - yay - mantainer ditched it and created paru
  - Paru needed
    - vscodium - paru -S vscodium-bin
      - if you get permissions errors is because it’s setup by default to use /run/user/0, the problem is that this directory changes based on who log-in first in the TTY
    - brave bin
- export LC_TIME=‘en_US.UTF-8’
  - if not, AM/PM won’t show!?
my experience
- 14/09/2025 - much more stable than I thought it would be
  - It almost broke but it was my fault every time
    - dependency hell
      - a package’s specific version was required by electron as a dependency and it prevented me to update
      - so I signed it to be skipped from the update
      - turns out it was essential for the system :)
        
        I couldn’t open apps because they were expecting a certain version of that package
        
        strangely enough the ones that were already open didn’t care at all
      - uninstalled electron since it was an orphan package, re-updated the system and it was fixed
    - chose too little space for the root partition
      - because of that the startup time was slower and it would become unusable out of nowhere 1 time every other day until I’d restart it
      - annoying, maybe it highs up the risk of loosing data (not that I lost anything) but nothing special
      - I know it was my bad because I had always less than 2gb of free space on the root partition…
  - every other time it was very minor
    - like not being able to install software until I update the system
  - maybe it’s because I never had a desktop environment here?
  - It’s been more than 1 year since I have arch and I update it 1 time a week or every two weeks depending on vibes, maybe I should automate it

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arch lin

if have bashrc, run it

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