Arch Linux XFCE Installation Guide

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                                                                      INSTALL GUIDE

For Arch Linux
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  Make sure Internet is working with

        ping archlinux.org

  CTRL+C to stop testing

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If you currently have an installation of Windows or other distribution, and are following this guide, this guide will be teaching you how to remove those installations and replace it with a fresh installation of Arch Linux using the XFCE Desktop Environment. Before doing this, please understand that this is DESTRUCTIVE, and will permanently destroy all partitions/data that is currently on the disk. With that warning out of the way, use

        lsblk

to find all of the partitions/drive currently detected by the system. After finding out which drive/partition you want to use, you will then proceed to use

        cfdisk /dev/[drive]

to start partitioning the drive (where [drive] is the placeholder for the actual drive name from the lsblk command). Delete all of the current partitions, then, make at least two partitions: 1G and one with the remaining free space. If you do not want to use a swapfile or pagefile, make a third partition for swap space, the amount of space reserved for swap should be dependent on your physical RAM, and how much you need over and above your physical RAM that you currently have installed. I, myself, would recommend 16 GB at minimum if you have 32 GB of RAM as an example. You can allocate more before finishing partitioning (if you aren't using a file) if you need to. After creating your new partitions, write the partition tables and exit cfdisk. You can confirm the blocks are the right size using the lsblk command from before. Once the block/partition sizes are correct/confirmed, you should format them using

        mkfs.ext4 /dev/[Largest Partition]
        mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/[1G Partition]

and if you decided to make a swap partition, you would use

        mkswap /dev/[Swap Partition]

afterward. Starting from here on, we will begin tinkering with the contents within these partitions, so we will need to mount them starting with the largest partition using

        mount /dev/[Largest Partition] /mnt

once that is done, you will need to make the boot directory and mount it to the 1 Gigabyte Partition using

        mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
        mount /dev/[1G Partition] /mnt/boot/efi

if you elected to make a swapfile / pagefile instead, this is where you would execute the following,

        mkswap -U clear --size ??G --file /swapfile

where ?? is the amount of Gigabytes you would allocate to the swapfile / pagefile. Once you have finished these, you will need to turn on swap using one of the following commands based on whether or not you chose to use a partition...

        swapon /dev/[Swap Partition]

...or using a swapfile / pagefile...

        swapon /swapfile

once swap has been turned on, you will then need to install the base packages for the installation to function,

        pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-headers linux-firmware sof-firmware base-devel efibootmgr nano networkmanager

there will be a lot of output on the screen once it is finished, so if you feel the need to, you can clear the screen with CTRL+L after the command has finished. Then, you will have to generate the fstab using

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

once it is generated, it should have entries for everything created up to this point, including swap and the partitions created earlier using cfdisk/etc. But if you desire to confirm if all of that is contained within, use

        nano /mnt/etc/fstab

From here on, we will be entering the installation itself, this requires the use of the command

        arch-chroot /mnt

now we will be setting up the time-zone and localization. You will need to check if your timezone is available using

        dir /usr/share/zoneinfo/

and then, once you have found it (by further using the dir command in an appropriate subfolder like America), you can set it using

        ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime

as an example. America/Chicago is the timezone I choose, hence its inclusion. The reason why this method has to be used rather than the command timedatectl, is because that command cannot be used during chroot. After setting your time, you may find it useful to sync the system clock to the hardware clock by using

        hwclock --systohc

Afterward, we will be choosing the locales. For the purpose of this guide, I will be choosing English (US) and Japanese. But you may need to adjust this for your own locales. First,

        nano /etc/locale.gen

which will bring up a file on screen with a list of locales. Find (without quotation marks) "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" for English (US) and "ja_JP.UTF-8 UTF-8" for Japanese. Uncomment them by hitting the DEL (Delete) key with the cursor on the pound/hash symbols before them. Then, press CTRL and O at the same time then after, press Enter, to write the changes to the file; and then press CTRL and X at the same time to exit nano. Once you have done this, you will then need to execute

        locale-gen

to generate the appropriate locale configurations. After it finishes,

        nano /etc/locale.conf

and put "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" (without quotation marks) into the file. Like before, press CTRL and O at the same time then after, press Enter, to write the changes to the file; and then press CTRL and X at the same time to exit nano. Next, we will be choosing the hostname for our system. This is what your computer will identify as to the network and other devices. Use the command

        nano /etc/hostname

and write your desired hostname in the file. it should be all one-word. Such as "localhost" or "SaekoMeinaShrine" (without quotation marks.) Make sure you DO NOT place a trailing space or extra line at the end or bottom of the file. Like before, press CTRL and O at the same time, then press Enter to write the changes to the file, and then press CTRL and X at the same time to close nano. We will now create the user account to be used for the system. But before we do that, it is recommended to set a root password using,

        passwd

putting this command in will either show a blank line, or ask to enter a password. When you start typing, you will notice nothing seems to be inputting, but this is normal. All of your inputs are being read, and if you make a mistake, you can even hit backspace like normal. Hitting enter at any point will then continue, and it will ask you to confirm the password by typing it again. Once it is set, we will then add the user you will be using. This is an example user, so it will be using a name I choose,

        useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash ian

we will need to create a password for this user like we just did for root,

        passwd ian

like before, you will need to type in the password, then hit the enter key and type it again, then enter to confirm. Now, we will need to give the user sudo access by first using the command

        EDITOR=nano visudo

and finding "%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL" (without quotation marks) in the file. Once found, make sure the text cursor is over the pound/hash symbol, and hit the DEL (delete) key to remove both the pound/hash symbol and the space that came after the pound/hash symbol. Once done, press CTRL and O at the same time, then press Enter to write the changes to the file, and then press CTRL and X at the same time to close the program. Now we will enable the network service,

        systemctl enable NetworkManager

and then install our appropriate microcode. I have an AMD CPU, so I will be using

        pacman -S amd-ucode

but if you have an intel CPU, you can simply change the command to say intel-ucode instead of amd-ucode. Afterward, we will be installing the boot manager for systemd using

        bootctl install

and then once finished open the following file (which nano should say it will be creating by saying "new file" or similar),

        nano /etc/pacman.d/hooks/95-systemd-boot.hook

and change the contents to

[Trigger]
Type = Package
Operation = Upgrade
Target = systemd

[Action]
Description = Gracefully upgrading systemd-boot...
When = PostTransaction
Exec = /usr/bin/systemctl restart systemd-boot-update.service

Once done, press CTRL and O at the same time, then press Enter to write the changes to the file, and then press CTRL and X at the same time to close nano. Now that we have successfully installed the base arch installation, we can finally exit the mounted installation with

        exit

then unmount everything with

        umount -a

and finally reboot the system with

        reboot

After the system has rebooted, and everything seems stable, you will notice that you will be booting into the installed system rather than what we had before. On the prompt given, it will ask for a username, give it the username you created before. After giving the username, it will then ask for the password. Like before, when we created the password, the password prompt will not show anything being typed in, but it will still be reading all of your inputs as if you were typing it in. This is a standard security feature of the terminal. Once logged into the system after pressing enter once the correct username and password has been given, you will want to next install all of the packages needed for XFCE and the like. A lot of these packages come down to my preferences, but it's a pretty basic XFCE installation without some of the extra programs most distros give alongside XFCE. This will be a long command, so I hope your typing fingers are ready for this,

        sudo pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies seahorse blueman system-config-printer cups-pk-helper vlc gimp gscan2pdf discord firefox qt5ct qt6ct pipewire-alsa pipewire-pulse pipewire-jack transmission-gtk pavucontrol ntfs-3g lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings light-locker geany noto-fonts noto-fonts-cjk noto-fonts-emoji noto-fonts-extra ttf-liberation ttf-droid ttf-dejavu gnu-free-fonts ttf-junicode ttf-gentium otf-crimson adobe-source-sans-fonts ttf-opensans cantarell-fonts gsfonts otf-libertinus unzip zip unrar p7zip engrampa nss-mdns cups cups-pdf gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-plugins-ugly ffmpeg imagemagick gvfs ffmpegthumbnailer webp-pixbuf-loader poppler-glib libappindicator-gtk3

note that, as soon as you press enter after this command, it will ask you for your password. This will become common when using a sudo command. Once everything above has been installed, you will then need to enable some services for booting alongside the system,

        sudo systemctl enable lightdm
        sudo systemctl enable cups
        sudo systemctl enable avahi-daemon

lightdm is the display manager, which will greet you when you login, and is responsible for starting the whole graphical boot rather than the terminal. The cups service is the printer system. The avahi-daemon allows your desktop to talk with other systems and devices basically. Now that those have been enabled, we can move onto some janitorial work. Firstly, we need to make sure that this system can discover other devices on the network properly, like network printers. So, we will need to enable mdns,

        sudo nano /etc/nsswitch.conf

On the hosts line, add "mdns_minimal" (without quotation marks) just before "[!UNAVAIL=return]" (without quotation marks.) Then, add mdns to the end of the line. Then, press CTRL and O at the same time, then press Enter to write the changes to the file, and then press CTRL and X at the same time to close nano. Now, we will need to enable LightDM's Greeter, or else LightDM will fail to start in the first place.

        sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

In this file, you will need to change "#greeter-session=" (without quotation marks) to be "greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter" (without quotation marks.) Once more, press CTRL and O at the same time, then press Enter to write the changes to the file, and then press CTRL and X at the same time to close nano. Now, we will need to configure GTK and QT to sync each-other up,

        nano ~/.bashrc

within that file, above "# If not running interactively, don't do anything" (without quotation marks) add "QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct:qt6ct" (without quotation marks), and make sure there is a line above and below it. So it looks like so...

#
# ~/.bashrc
#

QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct:qt6ct

# If not running interactively, don't do anything

afterward, press CTRL and O at the same time, then press Enter to write the changes to the file, and then press CTRL and X at the same time to close nano. Now we will need to enable 32-bit packages for certain programs like steam, and windows binaries and applications. So first,

        sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf

and within that file, find the section...

#[multilib]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

...with the text cursor over the pound/hash symbols, press DEL (delete) to remove them so they are uncommented. BOTH lines must no longer have the pound/hash symbol for this to work. Once that is done, press CTRL and O at the same time, then press Enter to write the changes to the file, and then press CTRL and X at the same time to close nano. Now that the multilib repository is enabled, you will need to do an update to get that repository's information, do the command

        sudo pacman -Syu

to perform a system update. There may be new package updates available too. Make sure they are updated before continuing. Once they are updated, if you have an NVIDIA GPU, use the following command

        sudo pacman -S lib32-nvidia-utils lib32-opencl-nvidia opencl-nvidia nvidia-open-dkms nvidia-utils nvidia-settings steam mangohud protontricks

if you instead have an AMD GPU, use

        sudo pacman -S vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon lib32-mesa lib32-vulkan-icd-loader vulkan-tools llvm lib32-llvm lib32-llvm-libs llvm-libs steam mangohud protontricks

this will install the necessary 32-bit libraries and GPU drivers for your system, and also install Steam. MangoHud is an overlay program that works similar to RivaTuner Statistics Server, which is usually installed alongside MSI Afterburner on Windows systems. If you want to configure MangoHud, first, you should get the generic configuration file from the MangoHud GitHub using the following commands,

        mkdir -p ~/.config/MangoHud/
        curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud/master/data/MangoHud.conf --output MangoHud.conf --output-dir ~/.config/MangoHud/

the curl command basically downloads a file through the terminal. If you open the MangoHud.conf file in nano or otherwise, you can read all the commented sections to see what each setting/configuration does. Now that all of that is done, and the XFCE System is basically installed, we need one last part to get full use out of Arch and its community, the Arch User Repository. In order to enable the Arch User Repository, we need something called an AUR Helper. For the purposes of this guide, I will be using the yay AUR Helper. To get it installed and working, run the command

        sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel && git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay-bin.git && cd yay-bin && makepkg -si

and allow it to finish. Once it is finished, you can then install some extra packages not in the standard arch repository, such as

        yay -S mugshot geany-themes ttf-ms-fonts proton-ge-custom-bin

the mugshot package, is an old GUI front-end for managing user information for XFCE and certain other Desktop-handling systems, and allows changing your "face" picture seen in the whisker menu. Without mugshot, using the whisker menu may return an error when clicking on your face icon next to your username. ttf-ms-fonts are Microsoft fonts, like Impact and Arial. The proton-ge-custom-bin package is a script/package that manages the latest Proton GE version for steam, rather than having to manually download the latest Proton GE version. Proton GE is a community maintained version of Proton that includes more bug fixes and updates than Steam's own Proton normally has, and often maintains higher compatibility than Steam's own Proton.

After everything above is completed, you can use the reboot command to reboot the system and finally enjoy your XFCE system.

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If you need any extra information, it's highly recommend you peruse and bookmark the Arch Wiki at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page as it is a great resource. The Arch Wiki can even be used as a reference for other Linux Distributions too. Most of this guide was written using the information compiled there.