These instructions were developed using VirtualBox 5.2.6 and the archlinux-2018.02.01-x86_64.iso.

I’m assuming you have Oracle’s VirtualBox installed, and that you’ve downloaded and verified the appropriate Arch Linux image. Especially when running inside a Virtual Machine, it’s nice to have as small a footprint as possible.Īlright, enough explanation, let’s dive in. I chose to use a Tiling Window Manage in place of a Desktop Environment, which cuts my system down to the absolute bare minimum I need. With Arch Linux, you’ll pick exactly what you want on your system. Even if you manage to find a good distro that’s light on bloatware, chances are it comes with a Desktop Environment complete with all the unnecessary folders you’ll never use. At best, you don’t use it, and at worst, it consumes valuable system resources that could be going to running the software you actually want to run. However, the more popular distributions still manage to cram in a healthy amount of bloatware - the Amazon app is a good case-in-point. Linux distributions are inherently more lightweight than their Windows or Mac counterparts. What do you get in exchange for the extra effort? Control and transparency. A time when they convince themselves that, yes, they definitely need to spend several weekends learning about and installing a distribution which, after countless hours of toiling over system config files and failed partition attempts, will include virtually nothing they need to do anything useful with their device. There comes a time in every Linuxer’s life when the taunting temptation of Arch Linux overwhelms their better judgement. I promise there’s nothing technical until then.) (Or you may not, in which case just skip to the start. I fully expect to be wrong, but I like to be corrected so I can eventually be less wrong. I’m putting this out there for others for the benefit of others AND my own edification. Tl dr Please bring up mistakes, typos, or thoughts in the comments. I provide explanation for each command in this blog, but if you just want a list of the raw commands, you can just go to this gist to get them. If you are installing on bare metal, using an EFI motherboard (or a VM with EFI enabled), or would like to use a different partitioning scheme, these instructions won’t work 100%, although you may still get value out of the parts that are consistent with your specific setup. In this tutorial, I will walk you through what is needed to get up and running with Arch Linux on VirtualBox with EFI disabled using a BIOS/GPT partitioning scheme and GRUB as the bootloader. Up and Running with Arch Linux on VirtualBox Intro

Arch virtualbox additions