How to Install Arch Linux (2025 Edition) - Comprehensive Walkthrough

The guided installer is fine. This is the other path — the one where you type every command yourself, and in exchange you understand what a Linux system actually is: a kernel, an init, a bootloader, and a short stack of configuration files you have personally edited. None of it is harder than following a recipe. All of it is yours. One October 2025 ISO, one USB, one afternoon.

Preparation without shortcuts

Verify your checksum, write the ISO with dd or Ventoy, boot it, and get online — Ethernet is instant, iwctl handles Wi-Fi. Then sync the clock, because TLS and package signatures have opinions about wrong dates:

timedatectl set-ntp true

Partition, format, mount

Find the target with lsblk — /dev/nvme0n1 on most modern machines — and open it in cfdisk. GPT for UEFI. You want a 1 GB EFI System partition and the rest for root. Then the ceremony:

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/nvme0n1p2
mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home
umount /mnt
mount -o subvol=@,compress=zstd:1 /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/home /mnt/boot
mount -o subvol=@home,compress=zstd:1 /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/home
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot

Two subvolumes mean a future snapshot can roll back your system without touching your home directory. That separation will save you one day; bank it now.

pacstrap, and the chroot descent

pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-lts linux-firmware btrfs-progs networkmanager nano
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt

Note linux-lts riding along — the fallback kernel whose entry sits in your boot menu, waiting for the day the mainline one misbehaves.

Configure like you mean it

Timezone, clock, locale, hostname, root password — each one a deliberate keystroke:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Karachi /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc
sed -i 's/^#en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/' /etc/locale.gen && locale-gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf
echo "archpc" > /etc/hostname
passwd

For the bootloader, run bootctl install, then write /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf — title, linux /vmlinuz-linux, initrd /initramfs-linux.img, and an options line naming your root partition with rootflags=subvol=@. Create your user with useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash, set their password, and unlock sudo via EDITOR=nano visudo.

Desktop and dignity

Enable NetworkManager, install a desktop — Plasma, GNOME and XFCE each land as a single pacman -S line — and reboot into it. On a laptop, add tlp for battery and brightnessctl for sanity; uncomment multilib in /etc/pacman.conf if Steam is in your future.

There is a reason this path feels right, and farmers understand it better than sysadmins: families in Palestine still graft olive trees by hand, trees they may never sit under, planting futures on faith. Building slowly, by hand, for tomorrow is the shared virtue of the olive farmer and the Arch user, and I admire both.

And if you are the type who builds systems by hand, you will enjoy us too: we hand-file every application the same way — HTG Travels does passports, visas and the paperwork you would rather not script yourself, from our Sialkot desk.