Ted's Arch Linux / Xfce laptop installation notes

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Ted's Arch Linux / Xfce laptop installation notes

Updated 2/11/2022 (originally 11/11/2018)

Introduction

This page is derived from my personal notes from setting up Arch Linux with Xfce on a laptop computer, in this case a Toshiba Tecra M6. It's a modernist, non-partisan, GUI-oriented setup that I originally worked out for someone who really isn't all that into computers.

This document is not a how-to or a tutorial, but if you are setting up Linux on a not-too-old laptop, you might find it useful. If you are using this as a "cheat sheet", you will of course need to adapt it to your system.

[Feb 11/2022] Updated! A lot has changed since 2018. For example, wifi-menu isn't used anymore, linux-base package no longer has a text editor included. Basically the 2018 instructions no longer worked at all and someone let me know about it. So, I've updated everything and it should work now. The 17 year old Toshiba laptop is still going strong.

Comments to haneda660@gmail.com

Initial installation

References:

Arch Linux Installation Guide

USB flash installation media

Arch Linux Downloads

The first thing to do after booting the thumb drive is set up networking.

(Wireless) During the install, I'm using iwctl to set up wireless networking.

Find out what the interface is with

# iw dev

# ip link

For this computer, it's wlan0. Follow the instructions for iwctl to get connected to the wireless network, here: Arch page for iwctl.

(Wired) If wired ethernet is available, it should work with out doing anything.

Check the connection, eg.

# ping tedsims.com

Note: The particular computer we are setting this up on, already has 2 partitions of equal size, /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2. I'm installing on /dev/sda2 and there's another Arch install (one definitely not for civilians) on /dev/sda1.

The laptop has BIOS, doesn't have a EFI system partition. Typically any computer made in the last 10 years uses UEFI and not BIOS. I'm sorry I don't cover UEFI booting here.
.
Setting up partitions is not covered here. I use parted and there is plenty of documentation online.

Prepare a partition for installation. In this case, it's /dev/sda2. We're going to make an ext4 file system on it and get started:

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
# pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware nano

Create fstab. We'll edit it later to add the swapfile information:

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

Entering the chroot environment

Enter the Arch chroot environment:

# arch-chroot /mnt

Set the root password:

# passwd

Set time zone:

# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Kentucky/Louisville /etc/localtime
# hwclock --systohc

Uncomment 'en_US.UTF-8' in /etc/locale.gen:

# nano /etc/locale.gen

Generate locales:

# locale-gen

Tell the system which locale to use (though we only made one):

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

This computer is named after the cat:

# echo kittypet > /etc/hostname

Create or open /etc/hosts -

# nano /etc/hosts

and add the following:

127.0.0.1		localhost
::1			localhost
127.0.1.1		kittypet.localdomain kittypet

Setting up a swapfile and hibernate

We need to set up swap to have hibernate working. Hibernate is a really, really useful thing to have working on a laptop.

Make a swapfile the same size as RAM, in this case, 4GB:

# fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
# chmod 600 /swapfile
# mkswap /swapfile
# swapon /swapfile

Append the swap information to the end of /etc/fstab:

# echo /swapfile none swap defaults 0 0 >> /etc/fstab

We don't really need swap, except that we are going to use it for hibernate, so let's make sure it stays out of the way:

# echo vm.swappiness=10 > /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf

Edit mkinitcpio.conf to add a hook for resume:

# nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

Add resume somewhere after udev but before fsck like this:

HOOKS="base udev autodetect modconf block filesystems keyboard resume fsck"

Regenerate the initramfs:

# mkinitcpio -p linux

Take a look at /etc/fstab and write down the uuid of root device.

Then find the first large number reported by

# filefrag -v /swapfile

under "physical offset" and write that down too. This is the offset number to be used for resume.

Installing the grub bootloader

Need grub, os-prober and some other packages we will use later:

# pacman -Sv grub os-prober polkit dialog wpa_supplicant iwd dhcpcd openssh

Now we are going to edit the grub config file so it knows where to resume from:

# nano /etc/default/grub

Replace
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT = "quiet"
with
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT = "resume=UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx resume_offset=xxxxxx"
using the uuid and offset numbers written down earlier.

Uncomment GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

Mount the partition with the other system so that os-prober can find it:

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Generate the grub.cfg file and install grub to MBR (note if this is the first time running grub-mkconfig, you need to create the directory /boot/grub) :

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# grub-install /dev/sda

Booting the system for the first time and adding users; continuing installation

Shutdown (exit out of chroot first), remove the thumb drive, boot and log in to the new system. Check hibernate with:

# systemctl hibernate

Add a non-privileged user:

# useradd --create-home ted
# passwd ted
# usermod -aG power,users,storage,wheel	ted

Note: If you don't want a user to be able to make system changes, don't add them to group wheel, because we are going to enable sudo for group wheel. However, you need to add at least one user to group wheel, to complete installation.

Set up sudo for users in wheel group:

EDITOR=nano visudo

Uncomment out %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Now enable networking services so networking starts right up after booting. We only need to do this until we get Network Manager going in a GUI environment:

# systemctl enable dhcpcd iwd

Reboot and log back in as the non-privileged user. Log in to the wireless again if you need to.

Under user directory, create Documents, Music, Pictures directories

$ mkdir Documents Music Pictures Video temp

Installing pamac

Install pamac to use as a GUI package manager, and for installing packages from AUR (Note this installs a lot of other things as dependencies of pamac, so if you decide not to install pamac, you could possibly have to install some of these explicitly at some point.):

$ sudo pacman -Sv git
$ cd ~/temp
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/libpamac-aur.git
$ cd libpamac-aur
$ makepkg -si

$ cd ~/temp
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/pamac-aur.git
$ cd pamac-aur
$ makepkg -si

Note: yay is very good if you don't like pamac, but you should like pamac.

Make sure alsa is working properly

Before installing Xorg, make sure alsa is working:

$ sudo pacman -Syu alsa-utils

$ alsamixer

(Use 'm' to unmute pcm, master, etc and turn the volumes up)

$ speaker-test -c2

Installing Xorg

We'll try X by itself before setting up xfce. This laptop has integrated Intel video, so it's pretty easy. We're also going to install some things we need later:

$ sudo pacman -Syu xorg xf86-video-intel mesa xorg-twm xorg-xclock xterm xorg-xinit

$ startx

Xorg should start right up. If it doesn't, go figure out what went wrong. If it's working, ctrl-D out of all the windows.

Installing xfce

$ sudo pacman -Syu xfce4 xfce4-goodies gvfs catfish ttf-dejavu ttf-liberation ttf-droid gspell

Make a simple .xinitrc in the user's home directory and make it executable:

$ cd
$ echo exec startxfce4 >> .xinitrc
$ chmod +x .xinitrc

Start up xfce:

$ startx

Spend some time admiring what a virgin xfce install looks like.

Open the Power Manager under settings, and turn on "Status Notifications"

Installing lightdm display manager.

$ sudo pacman -Syu lightdm-slick-greeter
$ sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Under [seat:*] change greeter-session to read as follows:
greeter-session=lightdm-slick-greeter Make sure the line is uncommented. Save and close.

Enable lightdm service

$ sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service

Reboot, and lightdm should come up. There will be an icon for pamac-manager in the notification bar. Click on it to start pamac-manager. Open preferences and enable AUR support.

Installing Network Manager

$ sudo pacman -Syu network-manager-applet

$ sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

Turn off some things we don't need anymore:

$ sudo systemctl disable dhcpcd iwd

Then reboot the computer. When you come back in, the Network Manager should be active on the task bar. Make sure it's working properly.

Installing a browser

This is probably a good point to install a browser. I suggest Firefox:

$ sudo pacman -Syu firefox

If you want Google Chrome, you have to install it from AUR. It takes a while to build.

# pamac build google-chrome

Getting Bluetooth working

Install Bluetooth packages along with pulseaudio. Install the following packages:


bluez
bluez-utils
pulseaudio
pulseaudio-alsa
pulseaudio-bluetooth
pulseaudio-zeroconf
libcanberra-pulse
pavucontrol
blueman

Create the file /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/51-blueman.rules using the instructions on the Arch web site under Permissions.

Bluetooth service will usually need to be restarted after coming out of hibernate or suspend. This script will make that happen automatically (thanks, Dennis Field). Be sure to make the script executable.

/lib/systemd/system-sleep/00bluetooth

	#!/bin/sh
	if [ $1 = post ]
	then
		systemctl restart bluetooth
		echo "Hello, I'm resuming from $2"
	fi

Enable the bluetooth service:

$ sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service

Reboot and make sure Bluetooth is working, for example, by pairing with a Bluetooth speaker. Bluetooth and expecially Blueman has a deserved reputation for being flaky. You might have to play with it. If you are having trouble, a good place to start is by seeing if it works using the command line utility bluetoothctl.

Getting printing working

Install the following packages:

Note: This is a "well-tinkered" setup for printing. Among other things, it can find networked printers and set them up as automagically as possible.

cups
cups-pdf
bluez-cups
cups-pk-helper
gutenprint
hplip
sane
python-pyqt5
splix
system-config-printer

Enable cupsd:

$ sudo systemctl enable cups.service
$ sudo systemctl start cups.service

Open Print Settings under Applications --> Settings and add your printers.

Adding search to thunar

Use the instructions at How to make xfce's file manager more usable to add catfish search to thunar file manager.

Some useful applications

Install the following useful applications (office, mail, etc.):


libreoffice
audacious
audacity
vlc
atom
emacs
vim
gimp
gthumb
unzip
noto-fonts-cjk
ttf-ms-fonts [from AUR]
ttf-ms-win10-auto [from AUR]
etcher-bin  [from AUR]

Recently, I'm using webmail. If you want to install a mail client a good lightweight one is claws. I also have used sylpheed a lot but I don't think it's maintained anymore. I've heard thunderbird is easier to set up but I haven't used it. You're on your own. There is a possibly useful, but surely outdated guide to setting up sylpheed on my home page.

Setting up the fingerprint reader for lightdm

$ pamac build fingerprint-gui

Add the following line to /etc/pam.d/lightdm

auth 	sufficient 	pam_fingerprint-gui.so

For each user that going to be using the fingerprint reader,

$sudo gpasswd -a user plugdev

Reboot. Open the "Fingerprint GUI" setup application in the settings menu, following the instructions. Note, we have it set up for lightdm only, not sudo.

Enabling Avahi

This enables Avahi (Bonjour), if you should need it (I can't imagine why anyone needs this and you can probably skip it. I used it once for something):

$ sudo pacman -S nss-mdns
$ sudo nano /etc/nsswitch.conf

Add mdns_minimal after hosts: files in /etc/nsswitch.conf

$ sudo systemctl enable avahi-daemon

Setting up network time synchronization using systemd-timesyncd

Follow the instructions on the Arch wiki page on systemd-timesyncd.

Setting up Japanese language entry

Use Mosc and Fcitx. Obviously you can skip this part if you don't need Japanese language text entry.

sudo pacman -Syu fcitx5-im fcitx5-mozc

Log out and log back in. Follow the Instructions for fcitx5 on the Arch site

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