This is a checklist of what to do on a freshly installed Arch Linux. It’s going to be refined constantly.

  • Make sure discard is among the options in /etc/fstab for SSD
  • Configure the noop scheduler for non-rotational storage
  • Configure makepkg flags
  • Install yay
    • Either from the source code (requires Go compiler) (yayAUR)
    • Or prebuilt (yay-binAUR)
    • Consider setting a custom build directory: yay --save --builddir=/tmp -Syu
  • Install GNOME with the dependencies (like xorg)
    • Install xf86-video-intel or another appropriate
    • Test gdm starting, enable it permanently sudo systemctl enable gdm.service
  • Install chromium with bunch of suggested TTF fonts
  • Install gnome-tweaks
    • Configure desired behaviour of the touchpad
    • Configure theme (dark, light)
    • Configure font rendering (subpixel)
  • Install powertop
    • Tune the power consumption
  • Install networkmanager, nm-connection-editor
  • Install systemd-swap
    • Configure the swap
  • Install openssh
  • Install pacman-contrib
    • Add pacman hooks to clear the cache after upgrades: paccache-*
  • Limit journald size
  • Install and enable earlyoom from earlyoomAUR
  • Configure tinc, add to one of my networks
  • Configure Hardware video acceleration
    • Install libva, libva-utils, libva-intel-driver
    • Add the user to the group video
    • Test vainfo
  • Install pavucontrol
  • Configure multimedia keys