Arch Linux

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Arch Linux is the simplest way to gain complete control of your OS, without needing to be a genius.

The USB installation media contains a tiny Arch installation, which simply boots to a bash prompt. To install Arch, you first clone the USB media to your PC. Then you install the components you want, one-by-one, ensuring they are configured precisely as you wish.

The installation process is rather hands-on, but acts as a step-by-step learning experience; providing a full tour of Arch Linux, clearly demonstrating how everything works. This is perfect for beginners and, if you're a control-freak, you're going to love it!

You can install whatever Desktop Environment you wish (or none, or several). I'm a big fan of XFCE's intuitive and unobtrusive UI.

Arch with XFCE runs so much faster than Windows (and most other Linux distros). If you have a slow low-spec laptop that is practically unusable with Windows, you'll be amazed at how fast and responsive it is with Arch and XFCE.

Smartly-dressed magician with raised arms and a delighted expression, as if revealing a magic trick.

Stuff

The notes below are purely for my own reference. The official Arch Wiki should always be your primary source of information. You must decide for yourself, after thoroughly reading the Arch Wiki, whether my notes are relevant to your situation, and how to adapt them to your needs.

Extra Keyboard Buttons

Many keyboards have additional shortcut keys. Here's how to map the Calculator keyboard button to a program (such as /usr/bin/galculator):

Enable the Calculator keyboard button

Reinstall GRUB

Occasionally, an update (e.g. with pacman -Syu), will instruct you to reinstall GRUB.

Connect to a wireless network

I rarely use wi-fi. For better privacy and performance, I start Arch with the wireless adaptor disabled. It is easily enabled with modprobe, then iwctl can scan for and connect to nearby networks:

$ sudo modprobe rtw88_8821ce
$ iwctl
     station wl-wifi scan
     station wl-wifi get-networks
     station wl-wifi connect <SSID>

Remove EXIF metadata in image files

Image files typically contain metadata (data about data), which may include a timestamp and the GPS co-ordinates of the location a photo was taken. You can use exiftool to remove metadata.

For example, the script below will remove EXIF metadata from all .jpg and .webp files in the current directory:

#!/bin/bash
exiftool -all= -overwrite_original *.jpg
exiftool -all= -overwrite_original *.webp

Missing characters in XFCE notifications

If you notice missing characters in XFCE notifications, the font cache may have become corrupted. To rebuild the cache, run:

$ fc-cache -fv

Sometimes, font caches don’t clear properly with fc-cache. You can delete the cache files directly and regenerate them:

$ rm -rf ~/.cache/fontconfig/*
$ sudo rm -rf /var/cache/fontconfig/*
$ fc-cache -fv

Enable scroll-toggle buttons on the Logitech Marble Mouse

In my opinion, the Logitech Marble Mouse (also known as the Logitech Trackman Marble) is the most ergonomic input device ever invented. The only criticism is that it lacks a scroll wheel.

A good way to deal with this is to remap the small extra left/right mouse buttons so they behave as a middle-click. In many applictions, a middle-click toggles scroll mode. Assuming you are using systemd and the libinput input driver, you can remap your mouse buttons by creating a config file like this:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-libinput.conf

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier     "Marble Mouse via USB"
	MatchProduct   "Logitech USB Trackball"
	Driver         "libinput"
	Option         "ButtonMapping" "1 0 3 4 5 6 7 2 2"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier     "Marble Mouse via PS/2"
	MatchProduct   "ImExPS/2 Logitech Explorer Mouse"
	Driver         "libinput"
	Option         "ButtonMapping" "1 0 3 4 5 6 7 2 2"
EndSection