Achintya Bera - ArchLinux

In an era where AI is deeply integrated into commercial OS, making a choice that prioritizes your privacy, freedom, and control is crucial. Linux OS stands out as an ideal choice, offering transparency, customization, community-driven innovation, and robust security. By opting for Linux, you not only take control of your digital life but also align yourself with a global movement that values openness and user empowerment.

Embrace Linux and experience the power of an OS that truly respects your privacy and freedom.

WHY ARCH LINUX ?

Well, they provide rolling releases; no wait for latest kernel. I used it for 7-8 years or so, no breaking. When you install desktop environment, you will get it with original version, no tweaking or so from other party. Moreover, its SNAP free.

Arch Linux OS : No Dual Boot

Backup Your Data:

Ensure you take a backup of any important data and your OS keys (if applicable) before proceeding.

Create a Bootable Drive:

Prepare a bootable USB drive with a live Arch Linux OS using software like Etcher, Ventoy, or Rufus.

Choosing the Right Hardware

Cost-Effective Hardware: There's no need to invest in a high-cost laptop. A good second-hand laptop will suffice. If possible, opt for a laptop without any pre-installed OS to save some money.

Installation Process

Terminal-Based Installation: The installation of Arch Linux is text-based and does not involve a graphical user interface (GUI).

Using Btrfs for File-system:

Format your drive with the Btrfs file-system for both root (/) and home (/home) sub-volumes. Typically, this is done on a single SSD.
Unlike the ext4 format, which requires separate partitions for root and home directories, Btrfs uses sub-volumes, offering a more modern approach.

Advantages of Btrfs:

Snapshots: One of the significant advantages of Btrfs is the ability to create snapshots of your entire OS and installed packages with a single command.
Quick Rollbacks: Snapshots are available in the GRUB menu, allowing you to quickly roll back to a previous safe state if you encounter issues with your system. The snapshot creation process is extremely fast, taking only a few seconds.
Efficient Storage: You can create numerous snapshots without worrying about storage space, as they use minimal space.
Better than Timeshift: This snapshot capability is far superior to traditional tools like Timeshift, providing more efficiency and convenience.

By following these steps, you'll have a robust, efficient, and easily recoverable Arch Linux system up and running.

The order of Partition of different drives:

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efi (512 MB) in FAT format

boot (2 GB) in EXT4 format

lvm : swap (8 GB)

: root (80 GB) in BTRFS format

: home (rest of your storage, for me it is 386 GB) in BTRFS format

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roughly, the main points during the installation processes are the following :

Before you do anything, use "dd" command to format the drive and write some random numbers so that there will be no data boundary. In this case, it will be hard for someone trying to recover data even for an technical specialist. So "dd" command does the both: formatting and writing Random data to it. And it takes long time, such as for 512GB SSD, roughly 1 hour or so.

"dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/nvme0n1 status=progress bs=4096"

Here, lvm partition is fully encrypted and you could do it via live USB. So that your data is safe even when someone takes your drive out of your Laptop. Here, you need to use password and remember it as it requires when you boot your device.

"cryptsetup luksFormat -v -s 512 -h sha512 /dev/nvme0n1p3"

Use three different passwords : (a) for encrypting your drive, (b) for your root (Admin password), and (c) as a user such as myself for daily usage and updates.

Take Snapshot of the installed OS

This is one of the main benefits of using btrfs-format file-system as I mentioned before while discussing installation procedure.

sudo pacman -S grub-btrfs
mkdir /. snapshots
sudo btrfs subvolume snapshot / /.snapshots/29-05-2024-snap-01
sudo /etc/grub.d/41_snapshots-btrfs
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

After this, you will see the created snapshot on GRUB menu, and you could check after login to one of the snapshots whether it is working or not.

Terminal-Based Clients

You could install all the packages as I mentioned for smartphone on TWEAK page

Quantum Espresso 7.3

Here it is very simple:

sudo pacman -S gcc-fortran
Download and Extract the packages in home directory
./configure
make pw
make all
make epw

Then add these lines in .zshrc (or .bashrc file, depending on your choice of shell) file

export PATH="~/qe-7.2/bin:$PATH"

Tex Live (Latex)

I prefer to install online; No need to download and keep the large 7GB ISO file. Make sure you have moderate internet connection and during installation, if you see interruption of internet connectivity, then no worries. It will try to attempt downloading those missing packages again.

sudo pacman -S wget curl
cd Downloads/
wget https://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/install-tl-unx.tar.gz
zcat < install-tl-unx.tar.gz | tar xf -
cd install-tl-*
sudo perl ./install-tl

After the installation, add these lines in .zshrc (or .bashrc file, depending on your choice of shell) file

export PATH="/usr/local/texlive/2024/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH"

export MANPATH="/usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/doc/man:$MANPATH"

export INFOPATH="/usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/doc/info:$INFOPATH"

Antivirus : Clamav

Here, someone disagrees with why we need antivirus if we are using a Linux system. Well, it is designed to protect even if someone tries to do some nasty stuff.

sudo pacman -S clamav

Then you could update the antivirus by running the command below:

sudo freshclam && sudo clamav-unofficial-sigs.sh

System as live images on USB sticks

After finishing installation and all, we do not want to do the same thing every time, or if we would like to install on another system, we could do so using this method. We will use Penguins-egg package and it is a command line tool to make the ISO image for live USB drive from your existing OS with all installed packages.

sudo pacman -Sy penguins-eggs
clean all caches before you run this tool, and make sure that you have enough /home drive free space as it will create the ISO file in that location.
just only root (/), i.e. only OS and no data from user (no data from /home drive), then run this command (it will create, after max compression , around 5GB ISO)

sudo eggs produce --basename=Arch-onlyOS-02 --max

If you want everything from root sub-volume (/) and home sub-volume (/home), then use the command (it will encrypt the /home data and remember the password). It could produce large ISO file (for my case, it is around 14GB or so) depending your /home drive.
sudo eggs produce --cryptedclone --basename=Arch29-05-2024-01 --max

Here, we are using --max (maximize the compression, it will take more time than the standard compression using --standard). Again it will be command line based installation to an another system or so.

Create a bootable USB drive using Ventoy software.