Base Install

This blog is for my notes on setting up Arch from scratch to my liking. I use KDE Plasma as my desktop and my computers have a NVIDIA GPU (my Asus laptop also has an additional integrated GPU). I am not going to cover downloading the ISO, putting it on a USB, booting from the USB or running the Archinstall installer (selecting the Plasma desktop).

Get WIFI running

iwctl

station wlan0 connect xxxxxxx

May need: sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/nvme1n1 if you have btrfs on old installation

When running the arch installer:

1. Don't have a /home partition added! 

2. Don't forget desktop!

3. Install both linux and linux-zen kernels

4. Add additional packages:  wget git micro duf base-devel kde-applications

to log in the first time it may be helpful to create /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf with "options nvidia_drm modeset=1 fbdev=1"   (although cachyos-settings will overwrite later)

 

Installing yay

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si

 

Snapper support:

yay -Syu btrfs-assistant snap-pac snapper-tools grub-btrfs btrfsmaintenance snapper-support

Probably reboot and then run Btrfs-assistant

Install cachyos mirrors

wget https://mirror.cachyos.org/cachyos-repo.tar.xz

tar xvf cachyos-repo.tar.xz && cd cachyos-repo

sudo ./cachyos-repo.sh

You will want to run Cachy's 'sudo chwd -a' to auto detect hardware

Install All Packages (from prior installs)

Using a previously created package list from prior installs (pacman -Qqet > pkglist.txt), type yay -S --needed --noconfirm  - < YOURPKGLIST.txt with the downloaded package list below.  Current list: https://gist.github.com/whelanh/28f620a1f0890d73f2be251344658f9a

Check if Nvidia really installed

 sudo cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset

The response you get should by "Y".

For some hardware, the 555 Nvidia driver isn't working.  If that's the case, downgrade and choose the 550.90.07 version:

downgrade nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils opencl-nvidia nvidia-dkms lib32-opencl-nvidia

/usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf should look like:

options nvidia NVreg_UsePageAttributeTable=1 NVreg_InitializeSystemMemoryAllocations=0 NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x02
options nvidia NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1
options nvidia_drm modeset=1 fbdev=1

 

systemctl enable nvidia-suspend.service nvidia-hibernate.service nvidia-resume.service  
 

Install Cachyos kernel

yay -S systemd-boot-manager

yay -S cachyos-sysctl-manager

sudo sdboot-manage

Usage: /usr/bin/sdboot-manage [OPTIONS]... [ACTION]

Actions:

  gen     Generates entries for systemd-boot based on installed kernels

  remove  Removes orphaned systemd-boot entries

  setup   Installs systemd-boot and generate initial entries

  update  Updates systemd-boot

sudo pacman -S linux-cachyos linux-cachyos-headers
reboot
if you use systemd-boot-manager (in the Cachyos Repos....not AUR), it will create the boot entries for you