How to Install Arch Linux

Here's how

Before Install

Back up EVERYTHING to something, like a usb hard drive/usb ssd thing. Use balena etcher or rufus to flash the arch linux installer onto a usb drive, NOT your back up medium. In fact you shouldn't have the medium you used to back up your system plugged in at all during the install.

Before Formatting

First, check if your system is a uefi system by entering cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size into the terminal. If it's either 32 or 64, you're using UEFI. If it doesn't exist, you're not. Enter ip link to figure out if you have internet. It it says DOWN then follow the next steps. If you're using Wi-Fi enter iwctl device list then iwctl --passphrase passphrase station name connect SSID and replace passphrase with your wifi password, name with the device from device list and SSID with your WiFi name. Check if the network works by pinging a website, like this one, with ping paxtonpenguin.com. Then enter timedatectl to set the clock. You should be ready to format the hard drive.

Using fdisk

Use the command fdisk -l to list the drives. You should see something like /dev/sda or /dev/nvme0n1, that's your hard drive/ssd that you can install onto. Then enter fdisk /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned but replace the /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned with your disk. Now is where you deviate depending on if you have a bios or uefi system.

UEFI format

When you run fdisk press n to make a new partition.