Arch Linux Installation Guide (including BTRFS, QTile, ZRAM, disk encryption, timeshift)
Welcome to my step-by-step guide on manually installing Arch Linux. In this video I will cover BTRFS, Timeshift, ZRAM, encryption, Qtile and many other packages to form the foundation of a robust Arch system. By manually installing Arch the hard way, you will better understand how your system works, and how to fix issues if they arise.
In this video, we’ll cover:
– Creating a bootable Arch media device and setting up our system with the Arch ISO: partitioning, disk encryption setup, and mounting filesystems.
– Working within our new system: configure your new Arch installation, including setting up users, installing essential packages, and configuring services.
– Tweaking our new Arch system: Explore advanced configurations such as ZRAM setup for memory optimization, the paru AUR helper, Timeshift for system backups and auto-cpufreq for better power management.
Timestamps:
00:00 – introduction (BTRFS, cryptsetup, zram, timeshift, QTile)
03:00 – download Arch Linux ISO
03:40 – writing the ISO to USB
04:55 – booting into Arch on the target machine
06:30 – connect to WiFi with iwctl
09:00 – create root password and ssh into target machine
09:25 – set locale, keymaps, time
14:22 – partition the target disk (efi, btrfs)
17:54 – encrypt disk and format partitions
20:45 – open encrypted disk and create btrfs subvolumes
22:10 – mount partitions
24:55 – update mirrorlist with reflector
25:38 – install base packages
26:20 – generate filesystem table
27:19 – arch-chroot into new system
27:48 – setup locales, timezone
30:53 – create user (add user to groups and sudoers)
32:13 – install additional packages
36:30 – update mkinitcpio.conf
37:40 – setup grub bootloader
41:54 – enable system utilities
43:16 – reboot into our freshly installed system
44:46 – logging in for the first time + installing paru, zram, auto-cpufreq, timeshift
51:10 – Outro, thank you!
Let’s go!
Links:
Full Guide here:
Writing Arch ISO to USB:
Arch Wiki Installation Guide:
BTRFS:
Cryptsetup:
ZRAM:
Timeshift GitHub:
Qtile:
Thank you to all of the maintainers who make this system and GNU/Linux possible!
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Great guide!
A good thing to mention perhaps is that the "@" and "@home" subvolume names are absolutely REQUIRED for timeshift to work, which tripped me up.
I tried to use it but my btrfs subvolumes had different names, and so I was unable to use timeshift to create snapshots.
Thanks for this! On my last install I ran into issues with systemd-boot having /boot on a non-snapshotted partition and thus making snapshots unbootable after a kernel update.
Was racking my brain trying to find a better way and not having much experience with grub.
Thank god i found this I updated arch and got super lost trying to fix it. Id input my password and it would restart my system. My timeshift didnt work bc I didnt set it up right, gave up and lost all my stuff. Nvr again im about to study the fuck out of this video. RIP my rice hyprland 😢. I was doing so well at least thats what i thought
Just a small advice , when you write command in terminal please wait at least 3sec before hitting enter. Sometimes I cant even stop it with spacer because you hit enter to fast.
Nice video mate, I definitely learnt bew things: like automatic mirrors update. Intresting thing, whu do you prefer timeshift over snapper. Im using snapper and it saved me from failure 4 times without even going back to live usb stick.
Wish you posted this video way before, configured my arch with btrfs but forgot to do the subvolumes 'cause I was following another video and I'm new to BTRFS.
Now I'm kinda lazy to redo all lmao
based
Smell like a waste of time, grow up and go the nixos way.