Bare bones Arch Linux Install
Note: 1 of this post’s 5 links are now broken — mostly dead 2008–2013 feed-syndication infrastructure (FeedBurner, Gawker, AOL’s old blog network, Pheedo, Yahoo Pipes). Left as originally published.
Something to do at lunchtime to get you more familiar with Linux, create a barebones Arch Linux VM. Taken from this article at Lifehacker I've compressed it into the following steps.
- Download image from https://www.archlinux.org/
- Partition hard drives /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 with GParted as ext 4
- Boot from ISO and check, setup network https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide#Wired
- Mount partitions mount /dev/sda1 /mnt ; mkdir /mnt/home; mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/home
- mkswap /dev/sda3 ; swapon /dev/sda3
- Edit Mirror List vi /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
- Install base pacstrap -i /mnt base
- genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
- arch-chroot /mnt
- nano /etc/locale.gen
- echo LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
- export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
- ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime
- hwclock --systohc --utc
- systemctl enable dhcpcd@eth0.service
- passwd
- useradd -m -g users -G wheel,storage,power -s /bin/bash alastair
- passwd alastair
- pacman -S sudo
- visudo to uncomment wheel group sudo access
- pacman -S grub-bios
- grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda
- grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
- exit, unmount, reboot
- sudo pacman -S alsa-utils
- alsamixer ; speaker-test -c 2
- pacman -S xf86-video-vesa
- pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils xorg-twm xorg-xclock xterm
- sudo pacman -S ttf-dejavu
- pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies
- systemctl disable fam.service
- pacman -Rd fam
- pacman -S gamin
- cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~/.xinitrc ; vi .xinitrc
- pacman -S openssh
- startx