Arch Linux Installation Guide Part 2
— Yash Agarwal4 minutesThis is a post in the “Arch Linux Installation” series.
2018-01-26 | Arch Linux Installation Guide Part 2 |
2018-01-24 | Arch Linux Installation Guide Part 1 |
In this post, I will continue from my last post and set up my newly installed Arch Linux for daily use. I am going to install some applications that I use on a day to day basis. Some of these applications are required for my current dotfile configuration setup to work properly. The choice of applications is highly opinionated and your preferences might be different.
If you had gone for installation via SSH option, then I would suggest you to edit your sshd_config
file and disable root
login. It can be a security risk otherwise.
Install a terminal based browser #
Terminal-based browsers are very handy in cases when you are required to login into a captive portal and you don’t have access to a graphical browser. We will install two different browsers, elinks
and w3m
.
sudo pacman -S elinks w3m
Install X server. #
sudo pacman -S xorg
This will install minimal X desktop environment with fonts, in case, you want to test your system before installing any desktop environment.
Enable multilib repository for 32-bit package support #
To enable multilib repository, uncomment the [multilib]
section in /etc/pacman.conf
.
[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Now upgrade your system.
sudo pacman -Syyu
Install video and touchpad drivers #
sudo pacman -S xf86-video-intel xf86-input-synaptics
Install pacaur to fetch and install packages from AUR #
sudo pacman -S expac yajl --noconfirm
cd /tmp
gpg --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu:80 1EB2638FF56C0C53
curl -o PKGBUILD https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/plain/PKGBUILD?h=cower
makepkg -i PKGBUILD --noconfirm
curl -o PKGBUILD https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/plain/PKGBUILD?h=pacaur
makepkg -i PKGBUILD --noconfirm
cd
Install graphical browsers #
pacaur -S firefox chromium
Install code editors #
pacaur -S sublime-text-dev atom-editor-git visual-studio-code-bin neovim neovim-drop-in leafpad
Setup LAMP stack #
Install Apache server #
sudo pacman -S apache
# Make your user-directory available to apache server
mkdir ~/public_html
chmod o+x ~
chmod o+x ~/public_html
chmod -R o+r ~/public_html
# To enable virtualhosts, uncomment the following line in `/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf`
Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
Add your virtualhost configuration in following file -
sudo vim /etc/httpd/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
To test the virtual hosts on you local machine, add the virtual names to your /etc/hosts
file.
Install PHP: #
sudo pacman -S php php-apache
To use PHP with apache, open /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
and uncomment following line -
LoadModule mpm_prefork_module modules/mod_mpm_prefork.so
and comment out the following line -
# LoadModule mpm_event_module modules/mod_mpm_event.so
Now add these lines to /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
:
# Add these at the end of `LoadModule` section.
LoadModule php7_module modules/libphp7.so
AddHandler php7-script .php
# Place this at the end of the `Include` section:
Include conf/extra/php7_module.conf
Install MySQL server #
sudo pacman -S mariadb
# Initialize the MariaDB data directory prior to starting the service. To do so, run:
sudo mysql_install_db --user=mysql --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql
# Then issue the commands to start the database server
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
# To apply recommended security settings to your database, run
sudo mysql_secure_installation
Install PHPMyAdmin #
sudo pacman -S phpmyadmin php-mcrypt
Enable mysqli
, mcrypt
, zip
and bz2
extensions in /etc/php/php.ini
.
Create the apache configuration file /etc/httpd/conf/extra/phpmyadmin.conf
Alias /phpmyadmin "/usr/share/webapps/phpMyAdmin"
<Directory "/usr/share/webapps/phpMyAdmin">
DirectoryIndex index.php
AllowOverride All
Options FollowSymlinks
Require all granted
</Directory>
Then include following in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
# phpMyAdmin configuration
Include conf/extra/phpmyadmin.conf
Now restart httpd
service to apply settings.
sudo systemctl restart httpd
Setup power management #
Install tlp
and some of its optional dependencies
sudo pacman -S tlp tlp-rdw bash-completion ethtool lsb-release smartmontools
Then enable tlp
services
sudo systemctl enable tlp.service
sudo systemctl enable tlp-sleep.service
# mask some services for tlp to work properly
sudo systemctl mask systemd-rfkill.service
sudo systemctl mask systemd-rfkill.socket
Install i3 and other tools #
All these tools are part of my i3
config with exception of the theme related packages. So installing them here will help me later while setting up the i3
window manager.
pacaur -S i3 rofi polybar xautolock powerline-fonts-git i3lock-fancy-git compton scrot feh dunst unclutter xfce4-power-manager numlockx lxappearance adapta-gtk-theme gtk-engine-murrine gnome-themes-standard termite
Fix Ugly Fonts 1 #
Fonts rendering is one area where Linux still lags behind Windows and OSX. It can be a nightmare for users to setup fonts properly in Linux. In Arch Linux, this is even worse. I found some tricks to improve the quality of font rendering on Arch Linux. Though this is far from perfect, it is manageable. Follow these steps on Reddit to fix font rendering. I use Noto Sans, Adobe Source Code Pro, and Microsoft fonts. My apologies, but I can’t help here. Some websites still use Microsoft fonts.
Setup Python Environment #
I use Python extensively and virtual environments are a must for my development setup. I use pipenv
to manage my virtual environments. To install pipenv
, you need to install virtualenv
first. To install it, run the following command.
sudo pacman -S python-virtualenv
Now you are ready to install pipenv
. Follow these instructions to install the tool.
Install some other common tools #
sudo pacman -S vlc openssh npm imagemagick git la-capitaine-icon-theme-git
Do not forget to setup npm
to install packages globally without requiring sudo
.
That’s all! Your system should be in working condition now. Do check out my dotfiles if you want to set up your system like mine.
Hope you enjoyed the article. Cheers 😄