Written on 2023-09-07
I decided I needed to use a recent version of KDE for fractional scaling, since I have a 4k monitor.
This guide follows https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide. Refer to this document for more information.
Use Ventoy if you would like to try other distributions as well. Ventoy has to be written once to an empty usb-stick. Mount the Ventoy USB-stick. Drop the ISO image on the usb-stick.
Boot the USB. Configure time zone and keyboard.
localectl set-keymap be-latin1
timedatectl
Follow the instructions from Arch Linux to install the Linux kernel.
pacstrap linux
To be able to specify the uuid of the root disk partition to mount, you have to use lsblk
lsblk -dno UUID /dev/nvme0n1p4
Follow Arch instructions to generate fstab.
Then enter your future installation as guest using arch-chroot.
arch-chroot /mnt
Make sure the keyboard and time zone is correct.
localectl set-keymap be-latin1
Install refind
Then configure it using
refind-install
Later, in case there are problems, you can repeat the previous and then vim /boot/EFI/refind/refind.conf
You can add the root partition UUID then to fix boot problems.
root=PARTUUID=.... # to refind entry
Add an unpriviliged user. Then you have to install sudo, since it is not default in Arch.
pacman -S sudo
visudo
Uncomment the wheel group
adduser -aG wheel wvhulle
In case, you want to go for plasma:
pacman -S sddm kde-applications plasma-desktop plasma-wayland networkmanager bluez-utils
You have to enable the network manager
systemctl enable networkmanager sddm enable bluetooth
Replace enable with start in the previous to start it immediately.
For X11 and SDDM you have to set the keymap externally with:
localectl --no-convert set-x11-keymap be
Install bluetooth management for KDE
sudo pacman -S bluez-utils
Open the configuration for bluetooth
sudo vim /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
Find the line about autoconnect, and uncomment it.
In case you have Fish installed, adjust the Fish configuration with fish_config and switch the prompt to a VCS compatible prompt.
For file system mounts
sudo pacman -S fuse2
In case you will be developing Node.JS software, you need PNPM for efficient package management.
sudo pacman -S pnpm
pnpm env use --global 19.4
This will install the version of node that is specified. No need to install Node.JS separately.
For other software, you can install yay and octopi.
sudo pacman -S yay octopi
yay -S vscodium