I’m planning to install Arch Linux for the first time. Any recommendations on setup, must-have applications, or best practices? Also, what’s something you wish you knew before switching to Arch?

  • onlooker@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Do yourself a favour and install it on a virtual machine first. Screwing up an install on Arch is frighteningly easy. The Arch Wiki is your friend, use it. Also, read the installation instructions before you begin the installation, not during. If this sounds like too much of a headache (understandably so), then give EndeavourOS a whirl.

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It’s all automated now, it’s pretty hard to mess up a standard install. It’s not like the good old days.

        • PancakeBrock@lemmy.zip
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          1 day ago

          You boot into your installation media and type archinstall then pick the options you want. You can do it the manual way but Arch install works great.

            • PancakeBrock@lemmy.zip
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              8 hours ago

              The past 2 years I’ve only been using Arch with KDE plasma. It was the one that clicked with me and got me to stay using Linux. Before I ran pop! Os for a little while and didn’t really like it or gnome then I went back to windows.

      • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        That’s what I thought, but then when arch install fcks up it seems even harder to fix. I ised it because I have been getting new computers so it was easier to run run it. It messed up the SSD in a way, and trying to run it again wouldn’t work because it can’t find the SSD that it did something to. It took a while to manually fix all that.

        Also idk why arch install doesn’t have easy way to partition home and root, the default suggestions’s root is too small, changing it requires manually making each partition, just take an integer(%) allocated for home and calculate from there.

      • onlooker@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Are you talking about archinstall or have they actually automated the default installation method?