Beginners' guide/Post-installation
Contents
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.
Sudo
Sudo can noticeably simplify administering your system.
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 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:
Brand | Type | Driver | Multilib Package (for 32 bit applications on Arch x86_64) |
Documentation |
---|---|---|---|---|
AMD/ATI | Open source | xf86-video-ati | lib32-ati-dri | ATI |
Proprietary | catalyst-dkms | lib32-catalyst-utils | AMD Catalyst | |
Intel | Open source | xf86-video-intel | lib32-intel-dri | Intel |
xf86-video-i740 | – | (legacy driver) | ||
Nvidia | Open source | xf86-video-nouveau (+ nouveau-dri for 3D support) |
lib32-nouveau-dri | Nouveau |
xf86-video-nv | – | (legacy driver) | ||
Proprietary | nvidia | lib32-nvidia-utils | NVIDIA | |
SiS | Open source | xf86-video-sis xf86-video-sisimedia xf86-video-sisusb |
– | SiS |
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.
XkbLayout
key may differ from the keymap code you used with the loadkeys
command. A list of many keyboard layouts and variants can be found in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst
(after the line beginning with ! layout
). For instance, the layout gb
corresponds to "English (UK)", whereas for the console it was loadkeys uk
.Test X
$ pacman -Ss xf86-input | lessYou only need xf86-input-keyboard or xf86-input-mouse if you plan on disabling hot-plugging, otherwise,
evdev
will act as the input driver (recommended).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 -- vt$(fgconsole)
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.