Install Archlinux on Raspberry Pi

Archlinux forums do not support official installation for Raspberry Pi 3. To make the partitions on the SD card follow this link. A useful command is lsblk to see the partitions on your system. On any linux distro make sure to be careful otherwise you may flash your hard drive.

All steps can be easily applied using sudo, make sure for the step 5 to login as root using sudo su.

After making the partitions on the SD card, remove the card from your PC and insert it to the Raspberry Pi. Go to this installation guide and follow the steps.

Basic steps for Archlinux installation

If you are not planning to make a headless installation login as root with password root.

  • Change the password using passwd. Then remove /etc/localtime file and symlink your local time using ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Athens /etc/localtime.
  • Open vi /etc/hostname and change alarmpi to your Pi's name.
  • Open vi /etc/hosts and change the line 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost yourhostname.
  • Switch to tty2 using Alt+F2 and run ls -R / && ls -R / && ls -R /
    • Go to tty1 and run pacman-key --init
  • Update your package manager using pacman -Syu

Installing secondary packages

  • Install sudo using pacman -S sudo
    • Run EDITOR=vi visudo and uncomment the line %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
  • Create user account
    • useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash newuser
  • Change user's password
    • passwd newuser
    • logout as root and login as regular user
  • Install fakeroot package to checkupdates for Archlinux updates
  • Install xorg using sudo pacman -S xorg xorg-xinit xorg-server xorg-server-utils xterm
  • Install xfce desktop sudo pacman -S xfce4
  • Install vim and emacs
    • sudo pacman -S vim emacs
  • Install python3, python2, gcc
    • sudo pacman -S python python2 gcc
  • Add to the bottom of ~/.xinitrc the line exec startxfce4 to enter to xfce using startx.
  • Install networkmanager and network-manager-applet for wifi
    • Enable and start service on systemd
      • systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
      • systemctl start NetworkManager.service
    • Connect to a wifi connection via command line
      • nmcli dev wifi connect <name> password <password>
      • WARNING In this case you will create two wifi connections

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