Installing Arch Linux the EASY WAY! – archfi Guide

Installing Arch Linux is an effort especially if you’re new to the whole process. If you don’t feel like jumping back and forth between the Arch wiki and spending hours just to not have a system that boots this guide is for you. With this said I would still recommend running though the official Arch wiki 4 and learning the proper installation process. Doing this will help you understand what archfi is doing in the background.

What is archfi? This is a simple installation script written in bash by the developer MatMoul 2. This will allow you to install Arch by selecting various options and packages instead of needing to run commands. The only commands you will need to run will be to download and launch this install script.

NOTICE: We will format and SSD/HDD and USB drive to do this. Following this guide may result in data loss if you do not properly back up or create snapshots. If you’re running Linux I recommend taking a look at this Timeshift tutorial 4.

Booting into Arch Linux and Launch archfi

Time needed: 20 minutes.

First we need to get the standard Arch Linux disk image, flash it onto to a USB drive, and boot in. Follow the steps below to get into the Arch installation medium.

1. Download Arch Go to the Arch Linux download page 29 and download the latest .iso file.
2. Flash Image to USB The Arch image you just downloaded is about 700mb so you’ll need a USB with at least 1gb of space. Also note anything on the USB will be erased when you flash Arch over. Next, lets get the software. I recommend Rufus if you’re on Windows, Popsicle if you’re running Linux, or you can just use Etcher. The applications themselves are fairly easy to follow so just go though the motions in the software and flash the image.
3. Booting to the Arch Installation Now that the USB is ready we can go ahead and boot in. Please refer to the notice above before moving forward. Plug the device into your computer and power on your computer. You’ll need to (quickly) press a key to get into your boot menu during the POST screen. Common keys are DEL, F2, F10-12, and escape. It should flash the button you need to press during the post screen. If you’re having issues look up your motherboard model to find the hotkeys. In your boot menu select the boot-able USB drive.
4. Download and Launch the Installer Now that you are booted into your Arch installation we will run the commands to download and launch the script.curl -L matmoul.github.io/archfi > archfish archfi

Using archfi to install Arch Linux

When the installation script is launched we will see the main menu with all all the major installation steps. Now we will run though them all. Moving around these menus is fairly simple; arrow keys to move between options, enter to select, and space to toggle options. First select the language option and make the right selection for you.

Once you hit enter while your preferred language is selected the script will take you to the main menu with the next step highlighted. Hit enter and select you keyboard layout. Once you hit enter the system will display “loadkey… Press any key to continue.” You’ll see this screen a few more times, when you do just continue passed these screens.

Next were going to partition the disk. Select “Disk Partitions”. For this guide were going to select “Auto Partitions (gpt,efi)”. For the rest of these steps follow along with the video. There are timestamps making navigation though the process fair easy. If you would like any tips or tricks featured in this article please comment them down below.

Install Arch Linux the EASY WAY – Archfi Guide (2021)

Dual Booting with Windows

1. Create a unallocated space partition in Windows;
2. Do exactly what he does until partitioning, and there you wanna go custom with cfdisk. In here you wanna use the free space from before, create a Linux Swap partition (don’t forget to change the type to Linux Swap) and the remaining space as Linux Filesystem, after that, write the changes.
3. When going to the part where you have to format the recently created partitions, you MUST cancel formatting when prompted about Boot partition, the others stays the same;
4. Now go normally following his video and when he talks about os-prober make sure to check that, otherwise it won’t work;
5. At the config part of archdi, where he skips systemd and boot, go to boot configuration and select the second option (grub-mkconfig);
6. That’s it, from the archfi script you can enable dual booting, 100% working!

Thanks to Evandro Rodrigues for this (dual booting) contribution!