Choose Simplicity. Install ArchLinux

The article below provides simple steps to install ArchLinux on your host machine. If you are already familiar with the Linux OS, these steps should be straightforward and the entire installation process should take less than 10 minutes.

The installation process is simple and not much different from installing any other Linux distribution on a machine, except that there is no graphical interface, and everything is configured using the terminal.

Nonetheless, the process is super easy.

During the installation process, it is very easy to customize your setup and choose the graphical environment. I personally use Gnome, but you can install others if you prefer. It’s also very convenient that the Nvidia GPU is installed correctly right out of the box. I use a modern host PC with 32 cores CPU, 128GB RAM, and a GTX4800 Super GPU, and I was able to easily get all the available drivers and configurations without any issues.

I mostly use Docker, C++, Python, ROS 2, optimization tools, MATLAB and other tools and simulators for my research. If you’re interested in achieving a similar setup, I recommend trying ArchLinux. The system is excellent and very user-friendly, and I will show you how to get started.

Installation

First, download the ISO file from the official repository located closest to you. Later, you can use the BalenaEtcher software to flash your USB.

To install ArchLinux, you need to have access to the Internet. If your PC is connected by cable, you can move on to the next step. However, if your PC is connected to the Internet via WIFI, you will have to follow a few simple steps.
Please refer to the provided images, note that they are of poor quality.

Detect your IP connections:

ip addr show

On the image above, I see that I have wlan0, but the IP address is not available, only the MAC address.
Now we need to verify where we can connect with wlan0.

iwctl
station wlan0 get-networks

Results:

iwctl --passphrase "your_password" station wlan0 connect YOUR_NETWORK

# in my case I used insted of YOUR_NETWORK, BuchholzRobotics.

If you don't have any failures, you can verify your connection by running the same command again.

ip addr show

If you can see now the address you type:

exit

Having the Internet connection you can perform the installation.

archinstall

You will find the main menu where you can configure your installation.

In Disc configuration choose the location you would like to install Linux.

Choose the Use a best-effort default partition layout, and choose the disc or partition you would like to install. Choose ext4 file system

In mirrors -> Mirror regions, choose your location. Custom mirrors can be skipped:

In locales choose your keyboard layout.

I do not change Bootlader, Swap, Hostname.

In root password provide your password for sudo.

Add user;

In the profile choose Desktop

And later the desktop environment. I use Gnome (You can choose more than one, and all will be installed. During login, you'll be prompted to choose which environment to login to).

In the Graphics driver, depending on your GPU, you choose the correct one. I have the GTX4800 Super and fo for option: Nvidia (open kernel) module for newer GPUs, Turing+)

In Audio choose Pipewire.

In Kernels add linux-lts (additional kernel if the first will crash)

In Network configuration choose: Use NetworkManager

Adjust your Timezone.

Install.

Install common software for programming

Updating the ArchLinux:

sudo pacman -Syu

-S (sync): synchronize packages
-y (refresh): refreshes the repository databases. 
-u (upgrade): upgrades all packages that have newer versions available.

yay is an AUR helper that simplifies using the Arch User Repository, which contains community-maintained packages not available in the official repositories. yay automatically handles dependencies, downloads, and compiles packages from the AUR.

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

Install now Brave Browser:

yay -S brave-bin

Install programming environment

sudo pacman -S gcc cmake make python python-pip git docker
yay -S eigen

Starting and enabling Docker:

sudo systemctl start docker.service
sudo systemctl enable docker.service

Thanks for reading. I hope you will enjoy ArchLinux!