Prepare USB stick with core system, follow http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Official_Arch_Linux_Install_Guide. Boot from this USB and run /arch/setup
.
Partition the harddisk according to your needs. I have
Installed base and base-devel package groups. Did basic configuration and rebooted from disk.
Editted /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
(chose a convenient mirror) and updated system and installed new packages: kde, xorg, mesa, vim, gvim, xf86-video-intel, bash-completion, mc, firefox, fuse, sshfs, curlftpfs, xmms, mplayer, hugin, enblend, jhead, geeqie, texlive, fonts (artwiz-fonts, font-bitstream-speedo, gsfonts, texlive-fontsextra, texlive-genericextra, ttf-btistream-vera, ttf-cheapskate, ttf-dejavu, ttf-fireflysung, ttf-junicod, ttf-ms-fonts, xorg-fonts-100dpi, xorg-fonts-75dpi, xorg-fonts-alias, xorg-fonts-encodings, xorg-fonts-misc, xorg-fonts-type1), fontforge, audacity (+ plugins ladspa, swh-plugins, cmt), gimp, inkscape, go-openoffice, lsof, ntp, cups, jre and jdk, flashplugin, colorgcc, cmake, proj, gdal, xerces-c, most, dnsutils, parted, timidity++, sudo, kdesvn.
vimperator installed as a plugin to firefox.
From AUR: merkaartor, garmindev, qlandkartegt, gdigi, lib32-skype (required lib32), bin32-wine.
See http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSH#Allowing_others_in.
Look here for password-less configuration.
I'm using SSHFS and in particular this script to mount remote disks. The -o reconect
option is crucial if you want to use it along with suspend/hibernate.
To start, follow http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X#Xorg_-configure and then change graphics driver to intel
.
To set up KMS, look at http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_Graphics#KMS_.28Kernel_Mode_Setting.29.
Touchpad Install xf86-input-synaptics
. Here you can find hints for configuration and here is my configuration file (I don't like my touchpad producing 'clicks'). Recently (April 2011), I realized that this solution doesn't work any more. I've managed the same with the files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
, notably 10-synaptics.conf.
To disable the touchpad while typing, try this (taken from here)
syndaemon -i 2 &
For managing screens, I made this little script: screenManager.
Install HAL and D bus, see http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HAL#Step_1:_Install.
I tried autofs
, see http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Autofs, but not much success yet.
Install wireless_tools
and iwlwifi-5000-ucode
, more information on http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless#iwl3945.2C_iwl4965_and_iwl5000-series. Install netcfg
, see more on http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_Profiles. Install networkmanager
and kdeplasma-applets-networkmanager
, for set up follow http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NetworkManager.
In the end, the NetworkManager didn't really work for wireless connection. It failed to establish a default route. It could have been bypassed by doing it manually, but it was not really comfortable. A bit of googling unveiled that I'm not the only one with this problem. On of the suggestion was to try out the Wicd. I did so and it seems to work out-of-box.
The iwlwifi-5000-ucode
does not exist anymore, the drivers are now part of the kernel. Optionally, one can use compat-wireless package.
Install alsa-lib
and alsa-utils
, for configuration see http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture.
Disable pc speaker: MODULES=(… !pcspkr)
.
The annoying suspend/resume beeps can disabled in BIOS.
Install kernel26-headers
and then build openafs
package from AUR. Configuration hints here.
I followed this http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bluetooth.
To use it with a Nokia phone, try packages gnokii
and gnocky
(see more at Bluetooth_and_Gnokii). Use hcitool
to scan for active devices and obtain their addresses.
Try this: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_T400s#Power
I installed tp_smapi
according to http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Tp_smapi, acpid
according to http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acpid and pm_utils
according to http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pm-utils. Finally I added these handlers to /etc/acpi/handler.sh and a script to unmount network mounts on suspend.
I tried http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ThinkFinger, but unfortunatelly it doesn't works as I have AuthenTec 2810, see http://reactivated.net/fprint/wiki/Unsupported_devices#AuthenTec_AES2550_.26_AES2810
Install hplip
and foomatic-db
.
With no doubt it is good to have the system time well synchronized. For example AFS needs it. To achieve this, one can use NTP. Here is my ntp configuration file. Look here for NTP configuration with wicd (and substitute ntpd
for openntpd
). Don't forget to make the scripts executable.
The effect has been recognized automatically as a sound card after having it plugged. With a tool like Audacity, one can select which card to use for playback and recording.
With Audacity, I encountered a problem when I tried to have a playback and record through the effect simultaneously. Recording while having playback through the laptop sound card worked well. I played a bit with the settings of Audacity and it seems that setting
Audio to buffer: 20 ms Latency correction: -20 ms
(in Audacity Preferences/Recording) solves the issue.
Install gdigi from AUR to have an equivalent of X-Edit.