Why?

Not long ago, my knowledge of operating systems was limited. I only thought that Windows and MacOS were the only operating systems in existence,but little did i know that there was another universe out there. A universe packed with real freedom,better security, extreme customizability, faster and filled with an even larger community, than my brain could ever comprehend. I remember the feeling of excitement that ran across my face, when i first installed a linux distribution on my personal computer. I ws finally able to depart from the world of claustrophobia inducing windows and genetically modified apples, for a penguin? I was finally breathing the same air as the Xenial Xerus (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS). From that point onwards, i would participate in the treacherous act of distro hopping. I experienced just about every linux distribution listed in the distrowatch top 30 ranking at that time. I tasted various desktop environment flavors in search of more experiences and something tastier. I didn’t exactly know what i wanted, but trying new things was just pure fun. I encountered a wide variety of issues along the way, but the answers were only a simple search away. My displeasure for linux distributions gradually progressed and boiled down to confusion, which later turned to concern. Every linux distribution i tried came preinstalled and preconfigured with loads of packages. I wondered to myself, “is there a linux distirbution out there that’s minimal?” One question led to another and eventually i was reading about Arch linux. Arch linux was the answer that i had been looking for all this time, but the installation process was daunting. I feared that things could go wrong during the installation process, rendering my computer useless and being forced to buy a new computer. I never tried it, but the Arch linux principle of simplicity stuck with me. The Arch Linux wiki defines simplicity as without unnecessary additions and modifications . The closest thing to Arch linux without the daunting installation process was Manjaro, a distribution that i had never tried before. Instead of trying the official editions of Manjaro, i decided to try the community editions. I did try all the community editions, but the one that truly captured my heart was the manjaro awesome edition. It was the fastest out of all the other community editions, at least with my hardware. One thing i noticed right off the bat was that almost all the community editions were bloated wth XFCE packages. At that point, i was contemplating on whether i should switch to Arch linux or proceed with the last Manjaro version i would try, Manjaro Architect. This time i wanted something that i could customize from the ground up. If its installed on my computer, it’s because i put it there (simplicity). Upon searching for Arch linux based distros on duckduckgo, i stumbled upon one that had interesting wording, Artix Linux. Simple, fast and systemd free. The first keywords got me hooked in, but i was curious about this thing called Systemd. I did not find anything positive on the subject of Systemd. Almost every article that i read online despised this entity known as Systemd. The Arch linux wiki was neutral, as it simply stated what it is and nothing more. Why do people hate systemd? Turns out every distribution i encountered had systemd. What’s so special, about not having systemd? The only way to find out was to give it a try. I was scared to install Artix linux, but i knew that i had to try it. To ease my fear, i decided to look up an installation video on YouTube. To my surprise the Artix Linux installation videos were much shorter than that of Arch linux. I decided to takes notes during the process, so that if i messed up, i could know what i did wrong. With that long introduction, lets get to the fun part of how i installed Artix Linux. This guide will go over the same information that is available in the official installation wiki.

Installation (DRAFT)

• Detailed Notes required

User:root Password:artix

Unblock WiFi

rfkill unblock wifi

Wlan0 - WiFi card/adapter. Eth0 - Ethernet. Setup wlan0

ip link set wlan0 up

WiFi utility

connmanctl

Scan networks

scan wifi

See list of connections

services

Turn on agent

agent on

Connect to network

connect wifi_x_x_managed_psk

Exit WiFi utility

quit

Check connection. Ctrl + C to exit ping.

ping website or ip a

Check the disk

lsblk

Partition the disk

cfdisk /dev/sda

Press delete key until you see free space

new > 500M > type=EFI System > write > yes

new > enter > type=Linux Filesystem > write > yes > quit

Make a fat partition on the EFI System

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

Make an Ext4 partition on Linux filesytem

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

Check partitions again

lsblk

Mount root partition

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

Make an EFI boot directory in the root partition

mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi

Mount boot partition onto the EFI system

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi

Check to see the mounted partitions

lsblk

Install the base system

basestrap /mnt linux linux-firmware base base-devel runit elogind-runit intel-ucode nano

Fstab

fstabgen -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Check the fstab

cat /mnt/etc/fstab

Move from the installer into the iso

artix-chroot /mnt

For a more interactive experience, switch the shell

bash

Create a swap file

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1G count=2 status=progress

Change the permissions of the swap file

chmod 600 /swapfile

Make the swap partition

mkswap /swapfile

Mount the swap partition

swapon /dev/swapfile

Add the swap partition into the fstab

nano /etc/fstab

/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0

Change the time

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime

Sync system clock with your hardware

hwclock --systohc

Select your locale

nano /etc/locale.gen

Uncomment

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

Generate your locale

locale -gen

Add the locale to the configuration

nano /etc/locale.conf

LANG=en_US. UTF-8

Create a hostname

nano /etc/hostname

artix

Create a hosts file

nano /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost ::1 localhost 127.0.1.1 artix.localdomain artix

Change the root password

passwd

Install grub & other packages

pacman -S grub efibootmgr networkmanager networkmanager-runit network-manager-applet dosfstools linux-headers xdg-utils xdg-user-dirs

Grub install

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=grub

Configure grub

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Add a user

useradd -m user

Add password for user

passwd user

Change the sudoers file

EDITOR=nano visudo

Exit the chroot environment

exit & exit

Unmount system

umount -R /mnt

Reboot system & Remove installation media

reboot