My Arch Linux Install Experience

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

Numbers for nerds

Specs

  • Ryzen 9 7940HS w/ 780M iGPU
  • Radeon RX 7700S
  • 64 GB RAM @ 5600 MT/s
  • WD Black SN850X 2TB (windows)
  • WD Black SN770M 1TB (Arch)

Stats

  • Install time (from first booting to live to seeing my desktop environment): 6 hours, 47 minutes, 25 seconds, and 48 milliseconds.

  • Installation attempts: 8
    -Unsucessful: 6
    -Successful: 2

  • Times opened vim: 1

  • Times stuck in vim: 1

  • neofetch ran: 3


Prep

I didn’t do a lot of prep for the install despite the face that I have heard that it can take 5+ hours. All I really did was pre-read the install wiki, watch someone suffer through an install on youtube, and mess around in a live image for a bit.

One thing that I am still unsure of is what bootloader I should use to dual boot on separate ssds, I will likely end up using rEFInd based on this video with this theme.

As for my desktop enviroment I will probably end up using hyprland because I really like the way it looks.

As of writing this I haven’t started the Install yet but I am optimistic that I can get it done (without the archinstall script) in under 3 hours.


Installation

Attempts 1-4

My first 4 attempts went well until I had to go and boot the system, everything worked without any errors until I rebooted to the rEFInd boot manager and selected arch as my OS, It tried to boot and failed giving me an “emergency shell” that I had no idea what to do with. I followed the install guide for the next 3 attempts getting the same exact error each time. It is worth noting that I had the install guide open on my phone not another computer. This caused some of the commands to be formatted incorrectly so instead of entering

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime

I was entering

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City/etc/localtime

I am fairly certain that this is why It was unable to boot however I do figure out something else on my 6th attempt that might disprove this.

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Attempt 5

For my 5th attempt I loosely followed the second half of this and was presented with a different error the the same “emergency shell”. I am not sure what I did wrong here, it was probably a number of things.

Attempt 6

My 6th attempt was the first time I successfully installed and booted arch Linux after about 3 hours and 30 minutes, I followed this video and was able to get everything to boot using grub (I did not set up dual booting through grub) additionally I installed Hyprland in place of KDE plasma, enabled sddm and attempted to sign in to the account I had created, Upon signing in I did not the the screen I was expecting, instead I saw a waring that I was using an auto generated config file.

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After getting the OS to boot through grub I went back and tried to use rEFInd to boot the system and I got the same error that I got on attempts 1-4 which likely means that my previous attempts failed due to a misconfiguration or rEFIned

Attempt 7

On my 7th attempt I wiped my nvme drive and started over using the arch install instructions and what I had learned from the tutorial I followed on my 6th attempt, I was unable to get grub working as a boot manager.

Intermission

I am writing this at the 5 hour mark (5 hours, 15 minutes, 30 seconds, and 31 milliseconds actually, I’m timing it), I have paused the timer and am taking a break for my sanity (and to write what I have been through so far) my next attempt will hopefully be my last because I have just found out that I dont have to choose one WM/DE. I am going to follow the tutorial from my 6th attempt and get everything working in KDE plasma and I will figure out Hyprland later.

Also rEFInd is still in my bios as a boot option even after wiping the drive and I can figure out how to get rid of it. It seems to have installed itself to my windows drive and is the default bootloader for my system. I’m hesitant to leave it because I don’t know how it will interact with arch when it is installed but I’m planning on trying to use it at some point so I am going to look into how to configure it correctly.

Attempt 8

Attempt 8 was a success and I am now writing this from Arch Linux on my framework 16 laptop. There were a few hiccups when I messed up my grub configuration and managed to make my bios so slow that I was counting seconds per frame but a quick reformatting of my partitions fixed that.

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Thanks for reading this far, if you know anything about linux I would love some suggestions on my issues with rEFInd (its still there) or some help with configuring hyprland (although I just found the configuration page on the github so hopefully I can figure that out easily).


(Sorry for any spelling mistakes I’m really really tired right now)


Final Thoughts

Installing Arch is easier that exiting vim.

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Congrats on climbing the Arch mountain. Quite a bit of perseverance you have there, most people would have quit way earlier than that.

rEFInd + Arch + Hyprland is my daily driver, though on FW13 i5-13th.

If anyone wants an easier route into the Arch landscape, there’s EndeavourOS with a graphical installer, a range of DEs to choose from, extra packages already complied like yay, etc.

Looks like the emergency shell after rEFInd was due to not specifying your root partition correctly in the /boot/refind_linux.conf . Or, the extra_kernel_version_strings settings in /boot/EFI/rEFInd/rEFInd.conf not being set can cause this because rEFInd is trying to load a different vmlinuz and initrd variants. I have mine set to extra_kernel_version_strings "linux-hardened,linux-zen,linux-lts,linux"

You don’t actually need sddm to launch Hyprland. Hyprland launches fine from the command line, but it’s an atypical Linux binary, as it’s a capital H to start the command ( Hyprland , not hyprland). Configuration in ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf . It doesn’t come with a status bar out of the box, I use waybar for mine, as well as wlogout for graphical logging out and wofi for my launcher. I took a lot of inspiration from this YouTube channel and his dotfiles on github: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0sUzmZ0CHvVCVrpRfGKZfw

After 30 years working in Unix/Linux shells, I will never get used to vi / vim. Been a nano guy the entire time.

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rEFInd will not work if you install it in the chroot. You have to install it after which is a real pain. Learned this the hard way.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/REFInd#refind_linux.conf

Also you have to edit this line if you have more than one kernel such as arch-zen or arch-lts

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Do you use your laptop without a login manager?

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I’ve just switched to using Mint on my current Lenovo laptop (waiting for the next gen framework 16). I’m liking Linux so far and thought “That was easy, maybe I should have gone for Arch”…

…No offence, but I think you’ve done me a service in convincing me to stick with Mint. I commend your perseverance.

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When I installed it for the first time, it was in the back of a car while traveling and using my phone as a way to read the install guide. That install went flawlessly and is still running today. I don’t say that as some weird flex, I’m saying there’s quite a bit of variability in the experience someone may have during install, and that you may have a totally different experience if you were to try.

If that kind of troubleshooting doesn’t seem like something you’re willing to do though, then it’s likely not an operating system that meets what you’re looking for. I love mint as well, but the downside to using it on a new device like the Framework is that the libraries and kernel are often pretty out of date and there can be compatibility issues as a result. If you want the best out-of-the-box experience, one of the officially supported distros is likely the best bet.

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Thanks for letting me know about sddm not being needed, I broke this morning. Not sure exactly what I did wrong but from the kde lock screen I pressed switch user and it all I saw was a black screen with a curser. I tried adding graphics drivers and reinstalling sddm and kde but nothing worked. as far as I can tell the os is just fine the and the problem is sddm, I went ahead and removed sddm and plasma and it boots just fine. I’m going to attempt to get rEFInd and Hyprland working and just ignore my problems with sddm.

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Yea… You’re right about the kernels and the problem with not using a rolling release. I think I’ll still try mint first and then look at others (like Arch) if it is an issue.

Thanks and good luck with what you’re doing. I found your journey pretty interesting.

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Nowadays Arch install can be done in a few minutes with the ‘archinstall’ command.

Personally I prefer CachyOS, which jas a good installer and optimized packages and still its basically Arch in the base.