manual install vanilla Arch

[captain-sensible]

[a work in progress since my notes all over the place and needing a concat ]

Our daughter 16 September is going to college ; between the 2 kids they have each a H.P stream laptop with 32gig hard drive. My wife asked me to a) look at them both
b) make sure you can log in
c) Assess if its going to be of use for my daughter at college.

Well I decided for our 8 yrs old Windows 10 would remain - but what a nightmare i couldn't even install ccleaner from piriform due to "s" mode . I gave up

For my daughter i decided that with a full hd I needed to install Linux , so that a reasonable space was left.

Well might as well have a go at installing Arch -this time using vanilla Arch is with new "guided install".
after all its not going to wreck my laptop is it!

The guided install quite frankly was hopeless; so i reverted to manual. I decided to be easy on myself boot slackware live and use gParted. I went for new partition table gpt and wiped everything , then fat32 for efi , circa 27gig for root leaving 1.5 gig for swap. Finished that booted down from Slackware, then booted up from vanilla Arch iso

First thing is internet connection is going to be needed so i used command :

iwctl 
--help
station list [got wlan0]
station wlan0 get-networks
station wlan0 connect <my ssid for wifi>
exit to get out of iwctl
ping 8.8.8.8 //worked so
ctrl +c

first confirm partitions as seen from Arch installer

fdisk -l 

//got :

mmcblkop1  // efi fat 32
mmcblkop2   //main partition ext4 for root 
mmcblkop3   //linux swap 




# mount /dev/mmcblkop2       /mnt 
# pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware  base-devel      vim nano grub efibootmgr 

//note if you don't install base-devel you won't install sudo and you will find that your /etc/sudoers file is missing when you go to edit it 


# genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

# arch-chroot       /mnt
//arch-chroot is new to me , normally i just use chroot then cd into /mnt 
//i used pwd to confirm I was in context of "/" 

# timedatectl list-timezones
# timedatectl set-timezone Europe/London
# nano /etc/locale.gen   // i uncommented en_GB.UTF-8
# locale-gen 
# echo LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 > /etc/locale.conf
# export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
# echo darkstar  > /etc/hostname     //where darkstar will be my computers name (host) 
# touch /etc/hosts 

filed in with :


127.0.0.1
::1
127.0.1.1   darkstar.localdomain  darkstar 


# makedir /boot/efi

# mount  /dev/mmcblkop1   /boot/efi 

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --bootloader-id=GRUB --efi-directory=/boot/efi
//gave no errors
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

//confirm graphics 

# lspci -v | grep -A1 -e VGA -e 3D

//mines intel 

# pacman -S xf86-video-intel mesa 
# pacman -S xorg
#pacman -S cinnamon gnome-terminal kitty lightdm lightdm-greeter
# systemctl enable lightdm
# systemctl enable NetworkManager 

//add wife as user 
# useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash gina
 # passwd gina // follow your nose

# EDITOR=nano visudo

//uncomment # from
# %wheel ALL=(All) All

//i doubt my wife will do admin , but saves me time to do sudo from her account when hses loggedin

I think thats basically it - will have to check pencil notes all over the place

The other i did install was nemo-fileroller

 

[KGIII]

Barely related:

I recently bought a refurb for testing purposes. It has a Win 10 Pro refurb license. I never activated or even used said license. I have no idea if it can be transferred, but I believe Win 10 can be 'upgraded' by just changing the license key somewhere. All the versions are on the same disk, it's just the license key that decides what's installed/available.

If it will work for you, I'll happily send it along.

 

[arochester]

I am writing this from an HP Stream 11

Using a minimal Debian LXQt.

What I haven’t tried so far is to install the System onto an SD card, Boot from that SD Card and install the /Home on the free SDD.

There are pre-made distros which will install and run e.g. GalliumOS - https://galliumos.org/ ...an even more cut down version of Xubuntu.

I quite like to Stream for everyday use.

 

[captain-sensible]

I was about to say the H.P stream my kids have doesn't have an SD slot then I had another look with a magnifying glass and looks like it has a micro-sd card. On my H.P Notebook Laptop 14-cm0xxx that SD slot makes all the difference and i have one just for Timeshift backups . This is what Arch looks like on Stream I think the space left and with a mcro sd makes it useable

 

[captain-sensible]

Barely related:

I recently bought a refurb for testing purposes. It has a Win 10 Pro refurb license. I never activated or even used said license. I have no idea if it can be transferred, but I believe Win 10 can be 'upgraded' by just changing the license key somewhere. All the versions are on the same disk, it's just the license key that decides what's installed/available.

If it will work for you, I'll happily send it along.

I don't mind giving it a go David ! - arochester just prompted me to have another look around outer casing & it has a micro SD card slot

 

[KGIII]

I'll send you the key via PM in just a minute. I'm lazy, so you'll have to grab the key yourself from the image.