A Guide to Install Arch Linux Using Archinstall Script

Arch Linux is one of the most popular, if not the most popular GNU Linux distro. Arch was first released back in 2006 by Judd Vinet and if we take a look at distrowatch we can see that this distribution uses a rolling release cycle is rated 60 (180 hits per day) on the popularity count.

But it is notoriously hard to manually install this distribution onto your main machine, seeing this few Linux enthusiasts have put forward a guided arch linux installer script called archinstall, and using this script instead of the manual method, it’s a breeze to install Arch! So let’s not waste any more time and move forward to the installation guide!

Downloading and Booting the Arch ISO

To install Arch using the archinstall script, first download and boot the Arch ISO. Then, run the archinstall script with the commands ‘sudo pacman -Syy’, ‘sudo pacman -S archinstall’, and ‘archinstall’.

Follow the prompts to configure settings such as language, keyboard layout, disk partition, filesystem, bootloader, swap, hostname, accounts, desktop environment, audio, additional packages, and network configuration. Once all settings are confirmed, proceed with the installation process.-

After installation, reboot the system and log in with the created user account.

First visit this link and install the Arch Linux ISO. Now you will also need an 8GB or higher capacity Flash Drive, connect it to your computer and make sure it is empty. Now you can use Rufus or Balena Etcher to create the bootable Flash Drive.

Once created, plug in the Flash drive to the computer you want to install arch on, boot up the machine and look for boot from Installation Media or the name of the Flash Drive. You can see it will boot into the Flash Drive and there, you will be greeted with the shell.

Ensure your computer has a stable internet connection before proceeding to the next step.

Using Archinstall Script to Install Arch Linux

Now give the following command to install and run the latest version of the archinstall script.

sudo pacman -Syy
sudo pacman -S archinstall
archinstall

Now, after you launch the script, the first option is going to be the language settings. By default, it is set to en-us, which is fine for our purposes, and we’ll leave it at that.

Next, we have the keyboard layout and the Mirror region, both of which we will also leave as is. Now you can choose your own locale language for us, we’ll choose English USA. Now go to the drive menu and select it.

It will show you all the drives that are connected to your computer, and you will have to choose your drive carefully. Be cautious when selecting the drive, as any data on the chosen drive will be wiped and may be difficult to recover. You can also manually partition the drive, although be careful otherwise it may cause data loss.

Now select the Disk Layout option and then choose the second option, which is to wipe the disk and use a best-effort default partition layout. Next we’ll go with an ext4 filesystem. Additionally, you can also choose a disk encryption and set up a password for that.

Next, leave the bootloader settings as is and move on to the Swap settings. You can choose to have swap enabled or disabled, we’ll go with the default. Now choose a hostname for your archlinux machine. Then set up a root password and keep a note of this password as it will be very important.

Now, create a new user, and you can then choose to give the user root privileges. It is recommended to keep one user as non-root and one another user as a root user.

You can now move on to the Profile settings, where you can choose some pre-defined settings for the desktop environment. You have many choices here. We went with the GNOME desktop. Also choose the graphic drivers in this step.

Next, you can choose the audio tab and choose the pipewire or Pulseaudio package. Now under additional packages you can list out the packages you want on your system, for us, it would be: neofetch, vim, Firefox.

Then, under Network configuration, choose Network Manager. Finally set your timezone and you’ll be done.

Completing the Arch Linux Installation

Now check through all the setting and see if you have missed out on anything, once confirmed go ahead and hit the Install option. Next you will be prompted to press Enter to continue, do that and wait for the installation to finish.

Now a popup might appear about chroot, ignore it for now and choose no. Next, reboot the system and log in with the user you have created. And that’s how you install Arch in just 5-8mins in your main machine!

Now, the installation is complete!

Conclusion

So there you go guys! The script made the installation of Arch way simpler than the other methods. For more such tutorials, be sure to follow LinuxForDevices! Check out this article if you are finished with the Arch Linux installation and move on to the terminal for further configuration.

References

ArchWiki on the ArchInstall script

FAQs