Top 10 things to do after installing Arch Linux

Top Things to do after installing arch linux.

Arch linux is the lightweight linux distro targeted for experienced user. It comes with minimal installation and rest can be customized as required. Arch Linux is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose GNU/Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a rolling-release model. The default installation is a minimal base system, configured by the user to only add what is purposely required. You can find all info about Arch linux here.

 
arch linux with xfce desktop environment

  1. Install Linux Kernel

    Arch linux comes bundled with linux_4.16 kernel. This is first thing to do because the bundled kernel may or maynot support the hardware you have. I had trouble with dim backlight and tried may solutions like changing grub command-line but that didn't solve the problem. After a long research I found that the problem was with kernel. As i changed the default kernel to LTS most of the hardware related issues were gone. It is common with almost all linux system like opensuse, fedora, etc.

    To install Linux LTS kernel run following commands

    • Check kernel version
      uname -r
    • To install linux kernel
      sudo pacman -S linux-lts
      sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
      • Now Reboot and check which kernel you are using with uname -r
    • Remove old kernel
      sudo pacman -Rs linux

  2. Install microcode

    • For intel processors with grub bootloader
      sudo pacman -S intel-ucode
      sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
    • For Amd processors install linux-firmware
      sudo pacman -S linux-firmware
      sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

  3. Install Desktop Environment

    A desktop environment bundles together a variety of components to provide common graphical user interface elements such as icons, toolbars, wallpapers, and desktop widgets. Additionally, most desktop environments include a set of integrated applications and utilities. Most importantly, desktop environments provide their own window manager, which can however usually be replaced with another compatible one. As you may have seen the arch linux does not come with any desktop environment. You can install desktop environment you may like

    List of desktop environments

    Officially supported

    • Budgie — Budgie is a desktop environment designed with the modern user in mind, it focuses on simplicity and elegance.
    https://budgie-desktop.org/ || budgie-desktop
    • Cinnamon — Cinnamon strives to provide a traditional user experience. Cinnamon is a fork of GNOME 3.
    http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ || cinnamon
    • Deepin — Deepin desktop interface and apps feature an intuitive and elegant design. Moving around, sharing and searching etc. has become simply a joyful experience.
    https://www.deepin.org/ || deepin
    • Enlightenment — The Enlightenment desktop shell provides an efficient window manager based on the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries along with other essential desktop components like a file manager, desktop icons and widgets. It supports themes, while still being capable of performing on older hardware or embedded devices.
    https://www.enlightenment.org/ || enlightenment
    • GNOME — The GNOME desktop environment is an attractive and intuitive desktop with both a modern (GNOME) and a classic (GNOME Classic) session.
    https://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/ || gnome
    • GNOME Flashback — GNOME Flashback is a shell for GNOME 3 which was initially called GNOME fallback mode. The desktop layout and the underlying technology is similar to GNOME 2.
    https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback || gnome-flashback
    • KDE Plasma — The KDE Plasma desktop environment is a familiar working environment. Plasma offers all the tools required for a modern desktop computing experience so you can be productive right from the start.
    https://www.kde.org/plasma-desktop || plasma
    • LXDE — The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment is a fast and energy-saving desktop environment. It comes with a modern interface, multi-language support, standard keyboard short cuts and additional features like tabbed file browsing. Fundamentally designed to be lightweight, LXDE strives to be less CPU and RAM intensive than other environments.
    http://lxde.org/ || GTK+ 2: lxde, GTK+ 3: lxde-gtk3
    • LXQt — LXQt is the Qt port and the upcoming version of LXDE, the Lightweight Desktop Environment. It is the product of the merge between the LXDE-Qt and the Razor-qt projects: A lightweight, modular, blazing-fast and user-friendly desktop environment.
    http://lxqt.org/ || lxqt
    • MATE — Mate provides an intuitive and attractive desktop to Linux users using traditional metaphors. MATE started as a fork of GNOME 2, but now uses GTK+ 3.
    http://www.mate-desktop.org/ || mate
    • Sugar — The Sugar Learning Platform is a computer environment composed of Activities designed to help children from 5 to 12 years of age learn together through rich-media expression. Sugar is the core component of a worldwide effort to provide every child with the opportunity for a quality education — it is currently used by nearly one-million children worldwide speaking 25 languages in over 40 countries. Sugar provides the means to help people lead fulfilling lives through access to a quality education that is currently missed by so many.
    https://sugarlabs.org/ || sugar + sugar-fructose
    • Xfce — Xfce embodies the traditional UNIX philosophy of modularity and re-usability. It consists of a number of components that provide the full functionality one can expect of a modern desktop environment, while remaining relatively light. They are packaged separately and you can pick among the available packages to create the optimal personal working environment.
    http://www.xfce.org/ || xfce4

    Unofficially supported

    • EDE — The "Equinox Desktop Environment" is a DE designed to be simple, extremely light-weight and fast.
    http://equinox-project.org/ || edeAUR
    • Liri — Liri is a desktop environment with modern design and features. Liri is the merge between Hawaii, Papyros and the Liri Project. Highly experimental.
    https://liri.io/ || liri-shell-gitAUR
    • Lumina — Lumina is a lightweight desktop environment written in Qt 5 for FreeBSD that uses Fluxbox for window management.
    https://lumina-desktop.org/ || lumina-desktopAUR
    • Moksha — Fork of Enlightenment currently used as default desktop environment in Ubuntu-based Bodhi Linux.
    http://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/ || mokshaAUR
    • Pantheon — Pantheon is the default desktop environment originally created for the elementary OS distribution. It is written from scratch using Vala and the GTK3 toolkit. With regards to usability and appearance, the desktop has some similarities with GNOME Shell and macOS.
    https://elementary.io/ || pantheon-session-gitAUR
    • theShell — theShell is a desktop environment that tries to be as transparent as possible. It uses Qt 5 as its widget toolkit and KWin as its window manager.
    https://vicr123.github.io/theshell || theshellAUR
    • Trinity — The Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) project is a computer desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems with a primary goal of retaining the overall KDE 3.5 computing style.
    http://www.trinitydesktop.org/ || See Trinity

  4. Disable GRUB delay

    • To disable grub delay that will help you achieve fast boot add the following line in /etc/default/grub
      GRUB_FORCE_HIDDEN_MENU="true"
      Regenerate the grub.cfg file with sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

  5. Check for updates

    Make sure your system is up to date with sudo pacman -Syu

  6. Enable Multilib repository

    7. If you want to run 32-bit application on your 64-bit systems, uncomment/enable the multilib repository to achieve it. 
    # nano /etc/pacman.conf
[multilib]
include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlis

  7. Enable Yaourt Package Tool

    8. Yaourt stands for Yet Another User Repository Tool is a package wrapper which is used to install packages from AUR repository. AUR stands for Arch User Repository, it’s big community-driven repository and contains 44,000+ packages. 
    # nano /etc/pacman.conf
[archlinuxfr]
SigLevel = Never
Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch

[Install Yaourt]
# pacman -Syu yaourt

[Use Yaourt]
# yaourt -Syu

  8. Install Web Browsers

    9. Web browser is important one for computer, we can’t do anything without web browser such as browsing, checking mails, accessing bank account, etc., There are lots of different web browser available in pacman and yaourt repositories. I recommend installing Firefox or Chrome but you can install any of these that you may like.
    $ sudo pacman -S firefox
    $ sudo pacman -S seamonkey
    $ yaourt -S palemoon-bin
    $ sudo pacman -S chromium
    $ yaourt -S google-chrome
    $ sudo pacman -S opera
    $ yaourt -S vivaldi
    $ sudo pacman -S qupzilla
    $ yaourt -S otter-browser
    $ sudo pacman -S midori

  9. Install Media Player : KODI

    Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub that can be installed on Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. These can all be played directly from a CD/DVD, or from the hard-drive. Kodi can also play multimedia from a computer over a local network (LAN), or play media streams directly from the Internet. It can also be used to play and record live TV using a tuner, a backend server and a PVR plugin. You can also install other media players like VLC. To install kodi media player run following command

    yaourt -S kodi

  10. Install LibreOffice

    Libreoffice is a powerful open source office suite. LibreOffice embeds several applications that makes it the most powerful Free & Open Source Office suite on the market like Writer, the word processor, Calc, the spreadsheet application, Impress, the presentation engine, Draw, our drawing and flowchart application, Base, our database and database front end, and Math for editing mathematics.

    11. $ sudo pacman -S libreoffice

With these I conclude my top things to do after installing arch linux.

Thank you for reading my post

Please do leave comment if you find it helpful.

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