These notes assume that you finished the basic install from the install live CD, which I have notes for here. At this point you are expected to be able to login to the Arch system installed on the local hard drive as the root user.

Create a Non-Privileged User

Now it’s time to create a user for the system and also add some groups to it as it’s not recommended to run as root.

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useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power -s /bin/bash jonasg

Then set the password for this new user:

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passwd jonasg

Now we have to allow this user to do administrative tasks (assuming that we already installed mg and sudo when we ran the pacstrap script):

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EDITOR=mg visudo

Next, uncomment the following line in the sudoers file:

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%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

From this point on you should become the new user you just created and do everything as that account and using sudo.

As an extra security item, you can also remove the root password so that no one can login as the root user (Note: don't use passwd -l because the recovery root login won't work any longer):

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passwd -d root

Update pacman

Edit /etc/pacman.conf and uncomment [multilib].

Update packages, db, and system:

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pacman -Syu

At this point you can also install some utilities that allow you to access and install software from the AUR. There are 2 packages you will need to install by hand in order to accomplish this task. They are package-query and yaourt.

1. Download the package-query tarball from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/package-query/
2. Download the yaourt tarbal from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/yaourt/
3. Move to a temporary folder like /tmp/aur
4. Unpack each of them with tar -zxf <package-name>.tar.gz
5. Go into the package-query directory and build it with makepkg -s
6. Install package-query with sudo pacman -U package-query-1.5-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 above for the yaourt package

Remember to install package-query first because yaourt depends on it. Also install wget at this point with pacman -S wget

Install X Window Server

To install a basic X Window GUI environment, execute the following:

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pacman -S alsa-utils xorg-server xorg-server-utils xorg-xinit xorg-twm xorg-xclock xterm

Then you can test your X installation:

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startx

That will bring up a TWM session and you can exit by entering exit in one of the XTerm instances.

Install a 'Real' Desktop Environment

We do have a very basic install of X, but we can make it look a lot nicer by installing a few extra packages:

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yaourt -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies gamin lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter

Enable a graphical login prompt:

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sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service

There are also a few extra packages you can install to make things look even pruttier... Icons and themes ...

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yaourt -S gtk-engine-murrine gtk-engine-unico faenza-icon-theme
          xfce-theme-blackbird xfce-theme-greybird xfce-theme-albatross
          xcursor-themes xcursor-aero xcursors-oxygen

Tweaks

Proprietary Video Drivers

The Linux kernel includes open-source video drivers and support for hardware accelerated framebuffers. However, userland support is required for OpenGL and 2D acceleration in X11.

First, identify your card:

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lspci | grep -e VGA -e 3D

You should see something like this:

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01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cape Verde XT [Radeon HD 7770/8760 / R7 250X]

You will want a proprietary driver that has better support for your hardware. For the above card you will want to install the catalyst driver from the AUR.

To configure X, you will have to create an xorg.conf file. Catalyst provides its own aticonfig tool to create and/or modify this file. For a complete list of aticonfig options, run:

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aticonfig --help | less

Now, to configure Catalyst. If you have only one monitor, run this:

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aticonfig --initial

Networking

First let's install some graphical networking tools:

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yaourt -S networkmanager network-manager-applet networkmanager-openvpn networkmanager-pptp

I enable the NetworkManager service to start at boot. However, by default, Arch Linux receives an IP address via DHCP by using the DHCP client daemon (dhcpcd). Since the two will conflict, I'm going to disable dhcpcd.

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systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
systemctl disable dhcpcd
systemctl disable dhcpcd@enp2s0

Fonts

Let's install some nice True Type fonts:

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sudo pacman -S font-mathematica freetype2 terminus-font ttf-bitstream-vera
               ttf-cheapskate ttf-dejavu ttf-droid ttf-fira-mono
               ttf-fira-sans ttf-freefont ttf-inconsolata ttf-liberation
               ttf-linux-libertine ttf-ubuntu-font-family xorg-xfontsel

User directories

To create all of the default directories in $HOME (e.g., Documents, Music, Pictures, etc...), run the two commands below.

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sudo pacman -S xdg-user-dirs
xdg-user-dirs-update

Codecs and DVD support

Unlike Ubuntu or Linux Mint, Arch Linux won’t support many codecs or DVD playback out-of-the-box. The packages below should cover most of what you need to do.

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sudo pacman -S alsa-firmware alsa-utils ffmpeg flac gst-libav
               gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gstreamer gstreamer0.10
               gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-good-plugins lame
               libdvdcss libdvdnav libdvdread libmpeg2 libtheora libvorbis
               mplayer pavucontrol pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa
               pulseaudio-equalizer pulseaudio-gconf vlc winff x264 x265
               xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin xvidcore

Unmute and test your speakers with the commands below. This is assuming you’re using ALSA and have a 2.0 setup.

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amixer sset Master unmute
speaker-test -c 2

Packages for daily use

Here is also a list of packages I'll need for daily use:

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yaourt -S arandr bash-completion bzip2 cabextract cdrkit chrony clamav
          conkeror coreutils dropbox dropbox-cli emacs evince exaile
          exfat-utils file-roller filezilla firefox fish freerdp galculator
          gimp gksu gvfs gvfs-afc gvfs-mtp gzip hardinfo haveged htop
          ipython libreoffice libvncserver linux_logo lsb-release mc mg nmap
          ntfs-3g openssh openvpn opera p7zip pptpclient remmina rsync samba
          scrot thunar-archive-plugin thunar-media-tags-plugin thunar-volman
          tigervnc tlp tmux transmission truecrypt tumbler unace unarj unrar
          unzip util-linux viewnior vim wget x11vnc xchat xfburn zip zsh
          zsh-lovers zsh-syntax-highlighting

Other

I have also written some documentation about Arch and Printing and Arch and Virtualbox. Check it out.

Reboot

You can now reboot the machine an use the newly installed GUI environment. The LightDM login manager will throw you right into a XFCE session. From here you can customize the desktop, add extra monitors and software...