Difference between revisions of "Beginners' guide/Post-installation"

Revision as of 21:01, 8 February 2013

zh-CN:Beginners' Guide/Extra

Extra

Congratulations, and welcome to your new Arch Linux system!

Your new Arch Linux base system is now a functional GNU/Linux environment ready for customization. From here, you may build this elegant set of tools into whatever you wish or require for your purposes. Most people are interested in a desktop system, complete with sound and graphics: this part of the guide provides a brief overview of the procedures to acquire these extras.

Go ahead and login with your user account.

Package management

See pacman and FAQ#Package Management for answers regarding installing, updating, and managing packages.

Service management

Arch Linux uses systemd as init, which is a system and service manager for Linux. For maintaining your Arch Linux installation, it is a good idea to learn the basics about it. Interaction with systemd is done through the systemctl command. Read systemd#Basic systemctl usage for more information.

Sound

ALSA usually works out-of-the-box. It just needs to be unmuted. Install alsa-utils (which contains alsamixer) and follow these instructions.

ALSA is included with the kernel and it is recommended to try it first. However, if it does not work, or if you are not satisfied with the quality, OSS is a viable alternative. If you have advanced audio requirements, take a look at Sound system for an overview of various articles.

Graphical User Interface

Install X

The X Window System (commonly X11, or X) is a networking and display protocol which provides windowing on bitmap displays. It provides the standard toolkit and protocol to build graphical user interfaces (GUIs).

To install the base Xorg packages:

# pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils

Install mesa for 3D support:

# pacman -S mesa

Install a video driver

If you don't know which video chipset is available on your machine, run:

$ lspci | grep VGA

For a complete list of open-source video drivers, search the package database:

$ pacman -Ss xf86-video | less

The vesa driver is a generic mode-setting driver that will work with almost every GPU, but will not provide any 2D or 3D acceleration. If a better driver cannot be found or fails to load, Xorg will fall back to vesa. To install it:

# pacman -S xf86-video-vesa

In order for video acceleration to work, and often to expose all the modes that the GPU can set, a proper video driver is required:

Install input drivers

Udev should be capable of detecting your hardware without problems. The evdev driver (xf86-input-evdev) is the modern hot-plugging input driver for almost all devices, so in most cases, installing input drivers is not needed. At this point, evdev has already been installed as a dependency of the xorg-server package.

Laptop users (or users with a tactile screen) will need the xf86-input-synaptics package for the touchpad/touchscreen to work:

# pacman -S xf86-input-synaptics

For instructions on fine tuning or troubleshooting touchpad issues, see the Touchpad Synaptics article.

Configure X

Xorg features auto-detection and therefore can function without an xorg.conf. If you still wish to manually configure X Server, please see the Xorg wiki page.

Here you may set a keyboard layout if you do not use a standard US keyboard.

Test X

$ pacman -Ss xf86-input | less

Install the default environment:

# pacman -S xorg-twm xorg-xclock xterm

If Xorg was installed before creating the non-root user, there will be a template .xinitrc file in your home directory that needs to be either deleted or commented out. Simply deleting it will cause X to run with the default environment installed above.

$ rm ~/.xinitrc

To start the (test) Xorg session, run:

$ startx

A few movable windows should show up, and your mouse should work. Once you are satisfied that X installation was a success, you may exit out of X by issuing the exit command into the prompts until you return to the console.

$ exit

If the screen goes black, you may still attempt to switch to a different virtual console (e.g. Template:Keypress), and blindly log in as root. You can do this by typing "root" (press Template:Keypress after typing it) and entering the root password (again, press Template:Keypress after typing it).

You may also attempt to kill the X server with:

# pkill X

If this does not work, reboot blindly with:

# reboot

Troubleshooting

If a problem occurs, look for errors in Xorg.0.log. Be on the lookout for any lines beginning with (EE) which represent errors, and also (WW) which are warnings that could indicate other issues.

$ grep EE /var/log/Xorg.0.log

If you are still having trouble after consulting the Xorg article and need assistance via the Arch Linux forums or the IRC channel, be sure to install and use wgetpaste by providing the links from:

# pacman -S wgetpaste
$ wgetpaste ~/.xinitrc
$ wgetpaste /etc/X11/xorg.conf
$ wgetpaste /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Fonts

At this point, you may wish to install a set of TrueType fonts, as only unscalable bitmap fonts are included by default. DejaVu is a set of high quality, general-purpose fonts with good Unicode coverage:

# pacman -S ttf-dejavu

Refer to Font Configuration for how to configure font rendering and Fonts for font suggestions and installation instructions.

Choose and install a graphical interface

The X Window System provides the basic framework for building a graphical user interface (GUI).

• Window Managers (WM) control the placement and appearance of application windows in conjunction with the X Window System.

• Desktop Environments (DE) work atop and in conjunction with X, to provide a completely functional and dynamic GUI. A DE typically provides a window manager, icons, applets, windows, toolbars, folders, wallpapers, a suite of applications and abilities like drag and drop.

Instead of starting X manually with xorg-xinit, see Display Manager for instructions on using a display manager, or see Start X at Login for using an existing virtual terminal as an equivalent to a display manager.

Appendix

For a list of applications that may be of interest, see List of Applications.

See General Recommendations for post-installation tutorials like setting up a touchpad or font rendering.

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