Arch linux is considered the best linux desktop distro by many. It is also considered difficult to install. I would consider a pure Arch install without using scripts a right of passage for a Linux user.

Why Arch? What’s so special about it?

Ok, you got me. Where do I start?

There are several steps to the base Arch install. They may seem overwhelming, but I’m going to walk through each step along the way.

Tip: If you want to try this in a safe environment before you go all in, try this in a VM first.

Make a boot disk

Get the ISO

You’ll want to grab the latest Arch ISO from here.

Make the boot disk

You can skip this part if you are installing in a VM. For a VM just add the ISO to the virtual CD/DVD drive.

I use one of 3 programs for making bootable USB sticks with Linux on them.

Balena Etcher

Very simple and cross platform. You can get it here.

dd

If you are on macOS or Linux, this one is pretty simple and likely already installed and available via CLI.

sudo dd if=/path/to/arch.iso of=/dev/sdc (or whatever the block identifier refers to your flash drive) bs=1M count=4096

Ventoy

This is my favorite. It allows you to setup a multi-boot USB drive very easily. Once the drive is setup, all you need to do is drag the ISO to it and it will be available in the drives boot menu. A word of caution with Ventoy, some ISO’s don’t play nice (Example: Windows 10 LTSC 2019 - HDD/SSD/NVME will not show up at the partition phase of install). I plan on doing a post and video on Ventoy.