Episode: 1356
Title: HPR1356: So, you've just installed Arch Linux, now what? Arch Lessons from a Newbie, Ep. 01
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1356/hpr1356.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:08:08

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Howdy folks, it's 51.54, hacker public radio, and a few months ago, I first installed
a CIN archerminal laptop.
I've discussed doing maybe a series of observations where I learned just getting into arch from
a newbie perspective.
I thought that might be more accessible to someone who wanted to move from another distribution
safe at door, or Debbie, or even to over to arch, and I really haven't followed through
on that.
I'm now to a point where I'm pretty comfortable with the package management system, which
really, that seems to be the thing you have to learn when you get into a new distro.
At least you're going to do it from command line, so the pre-packaged graphical installer
it seems to me when you jump from one family of Linux to another family of Linux, basically
what you have to learn is the package management system, and I'm going to go back and do that,
but I'm going to call this episode one of a series for HPR that I've decided to call,
so you've just installed arch Linux, now what?
Arch Lessons from a newbie, so this would be episode one, and of course, last spring,
I said, I installed Synarch, and well, I start off this laptop, I've related this before,
I installed for arch, and got it running from the command line, I mean went through the
whole arch wiki got, got it working install, and then when I booted back into the hard drive
with my wired network connection, ethernet card, which were just fine through the installation,
it didn't work, and I'd taken, I wanted to take it, took two days, I mean it was part
of several days with failed starter temps and what, I mean actual last install when I
instead are signaling to call hours, but it's been a few days on the mess around on the
project, and that was kind of last straw that couldn't get right back into it, and so
the machine set for a while, and then my month later decided, okay, let's start over again,
let's see how that goes, I've already talked about that, I don't know what I'm talking
about again, but okay, so Synarch and I had a working on the computer for, oh, six months,
maybe I guess it was, four months, and then of course, Synarch developers decided that
MIPS release packages in, in Sermon, we're just getting too long in the tooth, and they
needed to, they needed to move on to something else, and so Synarch began to enter us, and
what I found out right away, though, it is, and this laptop was used to take with me
on a service call, so it wasn't my everyday computer, and I went out and one day and tried
to do an update, and it told me all the repositories, or at least all the Synarch specific repositories
were no longer found, and I went to URLs manually, and sure enough, they weren't there, and
I said, oh, great, so, that is a little searching on Android, and yeah, there's, there's, there's
link on, and it goes.com, so big heading, we're back, link is in the show notes, I don't
want to read the whole, the whole link out here, well, it's not too bad, EnterGos, that's
a-n-t-e-r-g-o-s.com, slash, EnterGos, dash, 2013, dash, 05, dash, 12, dash, weir, and no
postry, because I got, you couldn't put the postry in a URL, so, w-e-r-e, dash, back, and that
explains how it did conversion, and if you scroll down, right there, it has to, okay, you're
on Synarch, this is what you need to do to convert to EnterGos, and at this point, by the time
this plays, if you haven't done the conversion, I guess you're probably not interested in doing
it.
But there was, there was, at least for me, on my machine, there were, there kind of left
a couple steps out, so, and I, and I'm not going to say this URL on the error, but on, on,
on the, on the forms, EnterGos forms, it's going to be in the show notes, if you scroll
down, well, I mean, it's my top, did I post it, I said, oh, you know, I went through this,
this is what I'm getting, and they went through, oh yeah, this is what you also, you have
to do manually, to get it to work, so, I, I didn't seem to be like to be anything specific
to my situation, it's just perhaps that little tutorial page is not as complete as it
could be, so, and I didn't know it right away, I, I, I went to install a package outside
the repository, and I, I'd been used to using Yallert, yet another repository tool, I mean,
you have to install it on a pack man's, the, of course, is the normal package manager
for arch, there are packages that are set up outside the normal repositories by users,
it's sort of, well, sort of like using a PPA, and you move to, which I think everybody
is, has probably done, and the Verizon is, you know, use your own risk, so I, I'd use
Yallert, there's a quick, quick and easy way to do it, but, well, it's, it, it, it is
easy, but for some reason, after I've made this, the conversion to Antigos, and ran Yallert
to try to get a package, it, it told me, well, command not found, that's what was installed
in there, and that, that's, that still seems a little funny to me, I, I could understand
that, maybe I couldn't have, updated or something, after I, after I changed the, going to
the new repos, but it, it doesn't explain why the command was installed, and now it's
not, and somehow going, going through, convert the conversion to Antigos, there, there was,
we'll see, there were, there were like three, set arch specific repos originally, and they've
got, I think there's now one for Antigos, on, on top of the, your, your normal arch repos,
and I don't know how I missed it, but I looked back in the packman.conf, and yeah, that,
that, the new Antigos, repos wasn't there, so that could, that very well could have been
part of my problem, I didn't catch it till, after I'd done, gone through, steps, I'm gonna
relate to you, but, so Yallert wasn't there, couldn't, couldn't figure out why, so, and,
and before, on, on, you know, in, in podcasts, and, and on all-casts, planet, you know, people
told me why, talked about using Yallert, well, well, I guess this went the first time,
I've also related, that the problem I had, with, like, DM, and, and, you know, degree, or,
I've, I've done a package installation of Yallert, rebooted, and suddenly, I had no, I
know, it, longer, had a login screen, and at length, I found, I had to go in and make
changes to, scrub too, so I could, do, do a single user log in, and, and then go and
install, GDM, which fixed everything, and it, apparently, it was, it was a time, as
you've told you guys this before, there's a time, it was a timing issue, that actually,
like, DM, and, you know, degree, to work, since I had an SSD, things were happening too
fast, for those programs to catch up, and, I just played the login screen, but, I, I,
I've been, I've been on, all-casts, planet, and, said, well, I don't know what happened,
you know, I did, was, install something through Yallert, and then suddenly, I can, next
day, turn the machine on, I don't have a login screen, and at the time, some guys, like
Arts, V61, and Peter 64 were, saying, well, you know, real man don't use Yallert, they,
they do, uh, manual package installs from the, you are anyway, so I got, I kind of thought
by the way, is, I thought that, learning how to, manually install packages from the,
you are, I would, wait, and that would, that would be an exercise for when I was, would
be a little more confident with Arch. Someone's came up, Yallert's, no, no longer there,
for some reason, said, well, this is probably a perfect opportunity then to, to, to learn,
how to, uh, manually install packages, and, I'm, I'm, I'm, it turns out, wasn't nearly
as daunting a process that, as I thought it would be. So, your first step may be to
ensure that you really have to resort to the Arch user repositories, that, that, there
you are, to install apps you're looking for. So, Doc viewer, it was installed with, with
my version of Arch, and I, I've been using it to access PDFs, but, really, I preferred
Ocula, that, that, that, I found installed by default in other distros. And I tried
pseudo-packman, uh, dash capital S, uh, space-ocular, and that failed to find the package, I assume
that's going to have to look for it out, and there you are. However, Google search on
Arch, and install an Ocula, revealed the package I needed was KD graphics, dash-ocular,
which I couldn't install from the standard Arch repos. Now, that probably brings in, if you're,
if you're trying to make your system small, and, and, you know, you've got a, no, no base system,
and you don't have any cute applications installed, and you might want that. I, I, I, I guess that's
probably the only version of Ocula, so used may have to make that decision to, to produce system
blowup by not installing a, uh, a, uh, cute based application. Okay, once you, to, to determine
package you need, uh, exist in there you are, and not in the standard repos. You need to locate
the appropriate package build, and your Google search may have already taken care of that.
The URL should be in the form, HTTP, colon slash slash a, you are dot arch Linux, dot org slash
packages slash, and then the package name. For the sake of example, let's go with HTTPS,
colon slash slash a, you are dot arch Linux, dot org slash packages slash Google dash curl.
The Chromium, the fully open source version is already in the standard arch repos, but if you
are, if you are Google Chrome, you're going to have to find in there you are. On that page,
finally labeled download the tarball, and it will be a file ending in dot tar dot gz. Before
downloading a file, the arch whiskey instructs instructions for manually installing packages from
the AUR, and that's at HTTP code slash slash wiki dot arch links, dot org slash index dot PHP slash
arch underscore user underscore repository. Recommend creating a designate folder to put them in.
They suggest creating a build folder in your home directory. I like my downloads and download
folder. I usually have a sub folder under downloads called packages for standalone packages,
I think. So I stuck my builds folder under downloads rather than having it in my home directory,
but that's right. Neither here nor there, and it's completely a matter of your own discretion.
Now, first, before installing the package, if you have a multi-core machine, you may be able to
take advantage of a slight compiler performance increase by making adjustments to your slash
Etsy slash MAKEPKG dot com make package dot com. Go scroll down to line that starts with cflags equal,
and it should have a first parameter that would look like dash march equals x86 underscore 64
or dash march equals i dot i686. In other words, 32 bit first versus 64 bit OS. Now, whichever it is,
change it to dash march equals native and eliminate the second parameter that reads dash
mton equals generic. This will cause gcc to auto detect your processor types because you could
have 64 bit processor and it be a single core. So then edit the next line, which begins with
cxx flags to read cxx flags equals double quote dollar sign, open parentheses, c flags, close
parentheses, double quote. And that just causes the cxx flags to echo settings already in cflags.
Because they should have been both lines should have been the same when you opened up the file,
at least they were on mine and they were on all examples that I saw. Now, the instructions for
for part I've just gone over for for changing your make package dot com. And you should look at
those instructions to just blindly listening to what I'm telling you. But those are at HTTP
code slash slash wiki dot arch links dot org slash index dot PHP slash make package dot com.
Or well MAKEPKG dot clnf. Okay, for installing first a or a or package, you will have to install
and you may already have these packages installed on your system. Face dash devl d-e-v-e-l.
So in the word pseudo pack man underscore, I'm not saying underscore space, dash capital S,
space, base dash devl. Okay, now look for that dot dot gc file you download in your builds directory.
Using them, still going to use Google Chrome as an example. So the file you download will be Google
dash chrome dash tar dash gz. Now, I'm raffle with tar ball with tar space dash xv zf space google dash
chrome dot tar dot gz. Now, your builds folders should have a new directory named google dash
chrome drop down in that folder from the command line. Now again, our tricky stress is since user
repo repos are not standard. They're not trusted to standard ones. It might be a good idea to
open the pkg build file and look for malicious bash instructions. Do the same with the dot install
file. Once you're satisfied everything in there is legitimate. You can make the new package with
make space dash lower case s and dash s which lets the compiler resolve any unmet dependencies by
prompting you for your pseudo password. Now, you'll have a new tar ball in the format of application
name dash application version number dash package revision number dash architecture dot pkg dot
t-a-r dot xc. And again, following our google chrome example, the final name resulting was
google dash chrome dash 27 dash 0 dash 1453. I'm sorry, I'm sorry google dash chrome dash 27 dot 0 dot 1453 dot
110 dash 1 dash 86 underscore 64 dot pkg dot t-a-r dot xc. And we'll install we can install that
with Pac-Man's upgrade function which is Pac-Man of course pseudo Pac-Man unless you're already
logged in as root. uh pseudo Pac-Man space dash uppercase you space google
dash chrome dash 27 blah blah blah blah blah the file name. And this command will install the
new package and create an rpm. That's that's all you have to do that's that's manually installing
a uh package from the archa you are. Okay, this this is the second little arch tip,
forwarding arch. I didn't realize belt checking was essentially configured in Linux. I always
assumed it was in each individual application just like it is in Windows. But after installing
archa I noticed auto correct wasn't working anywhere. For what's the the highest priority but
linked I looked for solution. And I found labor office and most browsers rely on Hunspell
for spell checking functions. That's h-u-n-s-p-e-l-l. Get it working you just need to install Hunspell
and Hunspell library appropriate for your language. So in my case was Pac-Man space dash uppercase
s space Hunspell space Hunspell dash e-n. Okay, that's that's it for uh arch tips this time. That's
completely unrelated but I want to do a little review on the straight talk service for track
functions. I've got the cheap prepaid track phone months to months I go in Walmart and buy a
card to prepaid recharge it for next month. And I picked that I want I want to go smart phone
phone and went to Philly and the old that a couple that we wanted reliable service in my area
was straight straight talk and track phone by at Walmart. And for 35 bucks a month they advertise
unlimited data talk and text. Now they only draw back which I didn't realize before I bought
the phone. I didn't I guess I didn't look in the fine print is that any flow of tire tethering whether
it being wired or wireless violates straight talks term service. Hmm you know I'm wonder if
Chromecast would count as tethering. Anyway for some people no tethering would be in a minute
deal breaker I realize. And also places I go and work I have Wi-Fi available though I
can't see the variance of tethering but the one thing I I'm really most interested in tethering for
is if I'm working on a computer on site that I know is infected it would give another level
security if I didn't have to connect that computer into the network to download and I malware
updates if I'm going to try to you know when I'm trying to fix it from inside the operating system
which usually I don't use of Linux and the virus rescue disk usually several but you know malware
bytes does work fairly good in most in most cases if you just want to do the quickest thing that
you can I'll try to clean up a system and the budget phone I bought only supports 3g so I'm
not really going to have a streaming media to it much less outputting that media to another device
so I got tried tried Hulu and it was just a slideshow on 3g so that doesn't mean I don't use
my available bandwidth I put a 16 gig SD card in the phone and I start using this additional
pipeline to download Linux I says so in words I could download one of my home system download
one for the same time you know or any other type of big file I might want to download and of course
anything it's on the phone I can transfer over to my network using ES file explorer and I did
download several gigs in the first month to test the meaning of unlimited you know because if you
folks know unlimited usually does not mean unlimited only means unlimited if you don't use
anywhere near your theoretical bandwidth okay so towards the end of the first month once
and then after I bought the pre-pay card for the next month and we and we renewed it I had
offered off and on again data connection in fact I was you know that second month I was
asked for about three days well you know lay it they're looking at the the traffic and assume
I'm tethering they have some hidden thing to unwritten policy that the people are naughty about
actually using the bandwidth that they're guaranteed are getting knocked off the network but I found
out that the data network comes back when I turn the phone off and on again so you know thanks
to the wisdom of the IT crowd that that seems to fix it every single time when I don't when I
don't have a when I don't have a data connection and I do get on the phone see my home network I
want to get about all from down a little file if I'm lucky 45 megabits second and I was get three
times that on the phone over the 3G connections although it was great but of course not everything is
perfect and most of the stuff that I find that I download over a direct link doesn't doesn't
match the MD5 some check when I get it downloaded I can use of course I can always tour over the
phone and torrents are almost always by their nature do match the MD5 some when you when you get
them downloaded but unfortunately touring brings download speed about about down to the same speed
as my network I've never seen it go over about 50 megabytes per second so it's it's still a second
another option sometimes and something it does seem like unless the screen's only the connection
seems to to break you come back and find out the download has been interrupted so I've had a
lot better luck actually better speed to download it night because probably I'm the only one using
the net using the 3G network at night so step it down before I go to bed and let it run on the phone
sometimes that works out pretty well but the main thing I want to get across is I can honestly say
that when straight talks says unlimited they they mean unlimited because I would think if they
were going to throttle me they would be doing it right now okay well I'm 51 50 and this is
another episode of hpr on the books if you need to reach me other than just replying in the
comments for this episode on the hpr page you can find my contact information at the big red
switch dot drupal gardens dot com and well I have a wonderful life until we meet here again
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