How to install arch linux next to windows

This is an article detailing different methods of Arch/Windows coexistence.

Important information

Windows UEFI vs BIOS limitations

Microsoft imposes limitations on which firmware boot mode and partitioning style can be supported based on the version of Windows used:

Note: The following points only list configurations supported by the Windows Setup even though Windows itself may still work on these unsupported configurations. A good example of this is Windows 11 which still works on a BIOS/MBR configuration once the Windows Setup check is bypassed.

• Windows XP both x86 32-bit and x86_64 (also called x64) (RTM and all Service Packs) versions do not support booting in UEFI mode (IA32 or x86_64) from any disk (MBR or GPT) OR in BIOS mode from GPT disk. They support only BIOS boot and only from MBR disk.
• Windows Vista or 7 x86 32-bit (RTM and all Service Packs) versions support booting in BIOS mode from MBR disks only, not from GPT disks. They do not support x86_64 UEFI or IA32 (x86 32-bit) UEFI boot. They support only BIOS boot and only from MBR disk.
• Windows Vista RTM x86_64 (only RTM) version support booting in BIOS mode from MBR disks only, not from GPT disks. It does not support x86_64 UEFI or IA32 (x86 32-bit) UEFI boot. It supports only BIOS boot and only from MBR disk.
• Windows Vista (SP1 and above, not RTM) and Windows 7 x86_64 versions support booting in x86_64 UEFI mode from GPT disk only, OR in BIOS mode from MBR disk only. They do not support IA32 (x86 32-bit) UEFI boot from GPT/MBR disk, x86_64 UEFI boot from MBR disk, or BIOS boot from GPT disk.
• Windows 8/8.1 and 10 x86 32-bit support booting in IA32 UEFI mode from GPT disk only, OR in BIOS mode from MBR disk only. They do not support x86_64 UEFI boot from GPT/MBR disk, x86_64 UEFI boot from MBR disk, or BIOS boot from GPT disk. On market, the only systems known to ship with IA32 (U)EFI are some old Intel Macs (pre-2010 models?) and Intel Atom System-on-Chip (Clover trail and Bay Trail) Windows Tablets, which boot ONLY in IA32 UEFI mode and ONLY from GPT disk.
• Windows 8/8.1 and 10 x86_64 versions support booting in x86_64 UEFI mode from GPT disk only, OR in BIOS mode from MBR disk only. They do not support IA32 UEFI boot, x86_64 UEFI boot from MBR disk, or BIOS boot from GPT disk.
• Windows 11 only supports x86_64 and a boot in UEFI mode from GPT disk.

In case of pre-installed Systems:

• All systems pre-installed with Windows XP, Vista or 7 32-bit, irrespective of Service Pack level, bitness, edition (SKU) or presence of UEFI support in firmware, boot in BIOS/MBR mode by default.
• MOST of the systems pre-installed with Windows 7 x86_64, irrespective of Service Pack level, bitness or edition (SKU), boot in BIOS/MBR mode by default. Very few recent systems pre-installed with Windows 7 are known to boot in x86_64 UEFI/GPT mode by default.
• ALL systems pre-installed with Windows 8/8.1, 10 and 11 boot in UEFI/GPT mode. Up to Windows 10, the firmware bitness matches the bitness of Windows, ie. x86_64 Windows boot in x86_64 UEFI mode and 32-bit Windows boot in IA32 UEFI mode.

The best way to detect the boot mode of Windows is to do the following[1]:

• Boot into Windows
• Press Win+R keys to start the Run dialog
• In the Run dialog type msinfo32.exe and press Enter
• In the System Information windows, select System Summary on the left and check the value of BIOS mode item on the right
• If the value is UEFI, Windows boots in UEFI/GPT mode. If the value is Legacy, Windows boots in BIOS/MBR mode.

In general, Windows forces type of partitioning depending on the firmware mode used, i.e. if Windows is booted in UEFI mode, it can be installed only to a GPT disk. If Windows is booted in Legacy BIOS mode, it can be installed only to an MBR disk. This is a limitation enforced by Windows Setup, and as of April 2014 there is no officially (Microsoft) supported way of installing Windows in UEFI/MBR or BIOS/GPT configuration. Thus Windows only supports either UEFI/GPT boot or BIOS/MBR configuration.

Tip: Windows 10 version 1703 and newer supports converting from BIOS/MBR to UEFI/GPT using MBR2GPT.EXE.

Such a limitation is not enforced by the Linux kernel, but can depend on which boot loader is used and/or how the boot loader is configured. The Windows limitation should be considered if the user wishes to boot Windows and Linux from the same disk, since installation procedure of boot loader depends on the firmware type and disk partitioning configuration. In case where Windows and Linux dual boot from the same disk, it is advisable to follow the method used by Windows, ie. either go for UEFI/GPT boot or BIOS/MBR boot. See https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408 for more information.

Install media limitations

Intel Atom System-on-Chip Tablets (Clover trail and Bay Trail) provide only IA32 UEFI firmware without Legacy BIOS (CSM) support (unlike most of the x86_64 UEFI systems), due to Microsoft Connected Standby Guidelines for OEMs. Due to lack of Legacy BIOS support in these systems, and the lack of 32-bit UEFI boot in Arch Official Install ISO (FS#53182), the official install media cannot boot on these systems. See Unified Extensible Firmware Interface#UEFI firmware bitness for more information and available workarounds.

Bootloader UEFI vs BIOS limitations

Most of the linux bootloaders installed for one firmware type cannot launch or chainload bootloaders of the other firmware type. That is, if Arch is installed in UEFI/GPT or UEFI/MBR mode in one disk and Windows is installed in BIOS/MBR mode in another disk, the UEFI bootloader used by Arch cannot chainload the BIOS installed Windows in the other disk. Similarly if Arch is installed in BIOS/MBR or BIOS/GPT mode in one disk and Windows is installed in UEFI/GPT in another disk , the BIOS bootloader used by Arch cannot chainload UEFI installed Windows in the other disk.

The only exceptions to this are GRUB in Apple Macs in which GRUB in UEFI mode can boot BIOS installed OS via appleloader command (does not work in non-Apple systems), and rEFInd which technically supports booting legacy BIOS OS from UEFI systems, but does not always work in non-Apple UEFI systems as per its author Rod Smith.

However if Arch is installed in BIOS/GPT in one disk and Windows is installed in BIOS/MBR mode in another disk, then the BIOS boot loader used by Arch CAN boot the Windows in the other disk, if the boot loader itself has the ability to chainload from another disk.

Note: To dual-boot with Windows on same disk, Arch should follow the same firmware boot mode and partitioning combination used by the Windows installation.

Windows Setup creates a 100 MiB EFI system partition (except for Advanced Format 4K native drives where it creates a 300 MiB ESP), so multiple kernel usage is limited. Workarounds include:

• Mount ESP to /efi and use a boot loader that has file system drivers and is capable of launching kernels that reside on other partitions.
• Expand the EFI system partition, typically either by decreasing the Recovery partition size or moving the Windows partition (UUIDs will change).
• Backup and delete unneeded fonts in esp/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/Fonts/ [2].
• Backup and delete unneeded language directories in esp/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/ (e.g. to only keep en-US).
• Use a higher, but slower, compression for the initramfs images. E.g. COMPRESSION="xz" with COMPRESSION_OPTIONS=(-9e).

UEFI Secure Boot

All pre-installed Windows 8/8.1, 10 and 11 systems by default boot in UEFI/GPT mode and have UEFI Secure Boot enabled by default. This is mandated by Microsoft for all OEM pre-installed systems.

Arch Linux install media does not support Secure Boot yet. See Secure Boot#Booting an installation medium.

It is advisable to disable UEFI Secure Boot in the firmware setup manually before attempting to boot Arch Linux. Windows 8/8.1, 10 and 11 SHOULD continue to boot fine even if Secure boot is disabled. The only issue with regards to disabling UEFI Secure Boot support is that it requires physical access to the system to disable secure boot option in the firmware setup, as Microsoft has explicitly forbidden presence of any method to remotely or programmatically (from within OS) disable secure boot in all Windows 8/8.1 and above pre-installed systems

Fast Startup and hibernation

There are two OSs that can be hibernated, you can hibernate Windows and boot Linux (or another OS), or you can hibernate Linux and boot Windows, or hibernate both OSs.

Warning: Data loss can occur if Windows hibernates and you dual boot into another OS and make changes to files on a filesystem (such as NTFS) that can be read and written to by Windows and Linux, and that has been mounted by Windows [3]. Similarly, data loss can occur if Linux hibernates, and you dual boot into another OS etc. Windows may hibernate even when you press shutdown, see section #Windows settings.

For the same reason, if you share one EFI System Partition between Windows and Linux, then the EFI System Partition may be damaged if you hibernate (or shutdown with Fast Startup enabled) Windows and then start Linux, or hibernate Linux and then start Windows.

ntfs-3g added a safe-guard to prevent read-write mounting of hibernated NTFS filesystems, but the NTFS driver within the Linux kernel has no such safeguard.

Windows cannot read filesystems such as ext4 by default that are commonly used for Linux. These filesystems do not have to be considered, unless you install a Windows driver for them.

Windows settings

Fast Startup is a feature in Windows 8 and above that hibernates the computer rather than actually shutting it down to speed up boot times.

There are multiple options regarding the Windows settings for Fast Startup and hibernation that are covered in the next sections.

• disable Fast Startup and disable hibernation
• disable Fast Startup and enable hibernation
• enable Fast Startup and enable hibernation

The procedure of disabling Fast Startup is described in the tutorials for Windows 8, Windows 10 and Windows 11. In any case if you disable a setting, make sure to disable the setting and then shut down Windows, before installing Linux; note that rebooting is not sufficient.

Disable Fast Startup and disable hibernation

This is the safest option, and recommended if you are unsure about the issue, as it requires the least amount of user awareness when rebooting from one OS into the other. You may share the same EFI System Partition between Windows and Linux.

Disable Fast Startup and enable hibernation

This option requires user awareness when rebooting from one OS into the other.
If you want to start Linux while Windows is hibernated, which is a common use case, then

• you must use a separate EFI System Partition (ESP) for Windows and Linux, and ensure that Windows does not mount the ESP used for Linux. As there can only be one ESP per drive, the ESP used for Linux must be located on a separate drive than the ESP used for Windows. In this case Windows and Linux can still be installed on the same drive in different partitions, if you place the ESP used by linux on another drive than the Linux root partition.
• you can not read-write mount any filesystem in Linux, that is mounted by Windows while Windows is hibernated. You should be extremely careful about this, and also consider Automount behaviour.
• If you shut down Windows fully, rather than hibernating, then you can read-write mount the filesystem.

Note: You can avoid this issue for a drive by mounting a drive as an external drive in Windows and ejecting the drive in Windows before hibernating.

Enable Fast Startup and enable hibernation

The same considerations apply as in case «Disable Fast Startup and enable hibernation», but since Windows can not be shut down fully, only hibernated, you can never read-write mount any filesystem that was mounted by Windows while Windows is hibernated.

Note: Windows updates may re-enable Fast Startup, as reported in [4].

Windows filenames limitations

Windows is limited to filepaths being shorter than 260 characters.

Windows also puts certain characters off limits in filenames for reasons that run all the way back to DOS:

• < (less than)
• > (greater than)
• : (colon)
• " (double quote)
• / (forward slash)
• (backslash)
• | (vertical bar or pipe)
• ? (question mark)
• * (asterisk)

These are limitations of Windows and not NTFS: any other OS using the NTFS partition will be fine. Windows will fail to detect these files and running chkdsk will most likely cause them to be deleted. This can lead to potential data-loss.

NTFS-3G applies Windows restrictions to new file names through the windows_names option: ntfs-3g(8) § Windows_Filename_Compatibility (see fstab).

Installation

The recommended way to setup a Linux/Windows dual booting system is to first install Windows, only using part of the disk for its partitions. When you have finished the Windows setup, boot into the Linux install environment where you can create and resize partitions for Linux while leaving the existing Windows partitions untouched. The Windows installation will create the EFI system partition which can be used by your Linux boot loader.

Windows before Linux

BIOS systems

Using a Linux boot loader

You may use any multi-boot supporting BIOS boot loader.

Using the Windows Vista/7/8/8.1 boot loader

This section explains how to : install a linux bootloader on a partition instead of the MBR ; copy this bootloader to a partition readable by the windows bootloader ; use the windows bootloader to start said copy of the linux bootloader.

Note: Some documents state that the partition being loaded by the Windows boot loader must be a primary partition but usage of an extended partition has been documented as working.

• When installing the boot loader, install it on your /boot partition rather than the MBR. For details on doing this with GRUB, see GRUB/Tips and tricks#Install to partition or partitionless disk, for Syslinux, see the note at Syslinux#Manual install, for LILO see LILO#Install to partition or partitionless disk.

• Make a copy of the VBR:

  dd if=/dev/disk of=/path/to/linux.bin bs=512 count=1

  where /dev/disk is the path of the partition on which your bootloader is installed and /path/to/ is the mounted filesystem on which you want the copy to be readable by the Windows bootloader.

• On Windows, the linux.bin file should now be accessible. Run cmd with administrator privileges (navigate to Start > All Programs > Accessories, right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator):

  bcdedit /create /d "Linux" /application BOOTSECTOR

  BCDEdit will return a UUID for this entry. This will be refered to as UUID in the remaining steps.

  bcdedit /set UUID device partition=c: (or the drive letter on which linux.bin is kept) 
  bcdedit /set UUID  path pathtolinux.bin  
  bcdedit /displayorder UUID /addlast  
  bcdedit /timeout 30

On reboot, both Windows and Linux should now show up in the Windows bootloader.

Note: On some hardware, the Windows boot loader is used to start another OS with a second power button (e.g. Dell Precision M4500).

For more details, see https://www.iceflatline.com/2009/09/how-to-dual-boot-windows-7-and-linux-using-bcdedit/

UEFI systems

If you already have Windows installed, it will already have created some partitions on a GPT-formatted disk:

• a Windows Recovery Environment partition, generally of size 499 MiB, containing the files required to boot Windows (i.e. the equivalent of Linux’s /boot),
• an EFI system partition with a FAT32 filesystem,
• a Microsoft Reserved Partition, generally of size 128 MiB,
• a Microsoft basic data partition with a NTFS filesystem, which corresponds to C:,
• potentially system recovery and backup partitions and/or secondary data partitions (corresponding often to D: and above).

Using the Disk Management utility in Windows, check how the partitions are labelled and which type gets reported. This will help you understand which partitions are essential to Windows, and which others you might repurpose. The Windows Disk Management utility can also be used to shrink Windows (NTFS) partitions to free up disk space for additional partitions for Linux.

Warning: The first 4 partitions in the above list are essential, do not delete them.

You can then proceed with partitioning, depending on your needs. The boot loader needs to support chainloading other EFI applications to dual boot Windows and Linux. An additional EFI system partition should not be created, as it may prevent Windows from booting.

Note: It only appears when Linux is installed on the second hard disk and a new EFI system partition is created on the second hard disk.

Simply mount the existing partition.

Computers that come with newer versions of Windows often have Secure Boot enabled. You will need to take extra steps to either disable Secure Boot or to make your installation media compatible with secure boot (see above and in the linked page).

Linux before Windows

Even though the recommended way to setup a Linux/Windows dual booting system is to first install Windows, it can be done the other way around. In contrast to installing Windows before Linux, you will have to set aside a partition for Windows, say 40GB or larger, in advance. Or have some unpartitioned disk space, or create and resize partitions for Windows from within the Linux installation, before launching the Windows installation.

UEFI firmware

Windows will use the already existing EFI system partition. In contrast to what was stated earlier, it is unclear if a single partition for Windows, without the Windows Recovery Environment and without Microsoft Reserved Partition, will not do.

Follows an outline, assuming Secure Boot is disabled in the firmware.

1. Boot into windows installation. Watch to let it use only the intended partition, but otherwise let it do its work as if there is no Linux installation.
2. Follow the #Fast Startup and hibernation section.
3. Fix the ability to load Linux at start up, perhaps by following #Cannot boot Linux after installing Windows. It was already mentioned in #UEFI systems that some Linux boot managers will autodetect Windows Boot Manager. Even though newer Windows installations have an advanced restart option, from which you can boot into Linux, it is advised to have other means to boot into Linux, such as an arch installation media or a live CD.

Windows 10 with GRUB

The following assumes GRUB is used as a boot loader (although the process is likely similar for other boot loaders) and that Windows 10 will be installed on a GPT block device with an existing EFI system partition (see the «System partition» section in the Microsoft documentation for more information).

Create with program gdisk on the block device the following three new partitions. See [5] for more precise partition sizes.

Create NTFS file systems on the new Microsoft basic data and Windows RE (recovery) partitions using the mkntfs program from package ntfs-3g.

Reboot the system into a Windows 10 installation media. When prompted to install select the custom install option and install Windows on the Microsoft basic data partition created earlier. This should also install Microsoft EFI files in the EFI partition.

After installation (set up of and logging into Windows not required), reboot into Linux and generate a GRUB configuration for the Windows boot manager to be available in the GRUB menu on next boot.

Troubleshooting

Couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one

See #Windows UEFI vs BIOS limitations.

Cannot boot Linux after installing Windows

See Unified Extensible Firmware Interface#Windows changes boot order.

Restoring a Windows boot record

By convention (and for ease of installation), Windows is usually installed on the first partition and installs its partition table and reference to its bootloader to the first sector of that partition. If you accidentally install a bootloader like GRUB to the Windows partition or damage the boot record in some other way, you will need to use a utility to repair it. Microsoft includes a boot sector fix utility FIXBOOT and an MBR fix utility called FIXMBR on their recovery discs, or sometimes on their install discs. Using this method, you can fix the reference on the boot sector of the first partition to the bootloader file and fix the reference on the MBR to the first partition, respectively. After doing this you will have to reinstall GRUB to the MBR as was originally intended (that is, the GRUB bootloader can be assigned to chainload the Windows bootloader).

If you wish to revert back to using Windows, you can use the FIXBOOT command which chains from the MBR to the boot sector of the first partition to restore normal, automatic loading of the Windows operating system.

Of note, there is a Linux utility called ms-sys (package ms-sys^AUR in AUR) that can install MBR’s. However, this utility is only currently capable of writing new MBRs (all OS’s and file systems supported) and boot sectors (a.k.a. boot record; equivalent to using FIXBOOT) for FAT file systems. Most LiveCDs do not have this utility by default, so it will need to be installed first, or you can look at a rescue CD that does have it, such as Parted Magic.

First, write the partition info (table) again by:

# ms-sys --partition /dev/sda1

Next, write a Windows 2000/XP/2003 MBR:

# ms-sys --mbr /dev/sda  # Read options for different versions

Then, write the new boot sector (boot record):

# ms-sys -(1-6)          # Read options to discover the correct FAT record type

ms-sys can also write Windows 98, ME, Vista, and 7 MBRs as well, see ms-sys -h.

Restoring an accidentally deleted EFI partition

If you have a GPT-partitioned disk and erased (e.g. with mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdx) the EFI partition, you will notice that Windows Boot Manager will either disappear from your boot options, or selecting it will send you back to the UEFI.

To remedy it, boot with a Windows installation media, press Shift+F10 to open the console (or click NEXT > Repair Computer > Troubleshoot… > Advanced > Command Prompt), then start the diskpart utility:

X:Sources> diskpart
DISKPART> list disk

Select the appropriate hard drive by typing:

DISKPART> select disk number

Make sure that there is a partition of type system (the EFI partition):

DISKPART> list partition

Select this partition:

DISKPART> select partition number

and assign a temporary drive letter to it:

DISKPART> assign letter=G:

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

To make sure that drive letter is correctly assigned:

DISKPART> list vol

 Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
 ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
 Volume 0     E                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
 Volume 1     C                NTFS   Partition    195 GB  Healthy    Boot
 Volume 2         WINRE        NTFS   Partition    400 MB  Healthy    Hidden
 Volume 3     G                FAT32  Partition    499 MB  Healthy    System

Close diskpart:

DISKPART> exit

Navigate to C: (or what your system drive letter is):

X:Sources> cd /d C:

Next is the «magic» command, which recreate the BCD store (with /s for the mount point, /f for firmware type, optionally add /v for verbose):

C:> bcdboot C:Windows /s G: /f UEFI

Tip: If it hangs up after a minute, hit Ctrl+c. This happens sometimes, but you will get a message like boot files successfully created and it will have worked just fine.

You should now have Windows Boot Manager working as a boot option, and thus have access to Windows. Just make sure to never format your EFI partition again!

Note: Remove the drive letter G assigned to the EFI partition to keep it from showing up in My Computer.

See [6], [7] and [8].

The EFI system partition created by Windows Setup is too small

Windows Setup creates a 100 MiB EFI system partition (except for Advanced Format 4K native drives where it creates a 300 MiB ESP). This is generally too small to fit everything you need. You can try different tools to resize this partition, but there are usually other partitions in the way, making it, at the very least, difficult. One option is to use the Arch install media to create a single EFI system partition of your preferred size before you install Windows on the drive. Windows Setup will use the EFI system partition you made instead of creating its own.

Unable to install Windows Cumulative Update on BIOS system

On BIOS systems, Windows cumulative updates may fail with the error We couldn’t complete the updates. Undoing changes. Don’t turn off your computer. In such case, while in Windows, you need to set the Windows partition as active.

C:> diskpart
DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk number
DISKPART> list partition
DISKPART> select partition number
DISKPART> active
DISKPART> exit

After successfully installing the Windows update, mark back your Linux partition as active, using commands above.

Time standard

• Recommended: Set both Arch Linux and Windows to use UTC, following System time#UTC in Microsoft Windows. Some versions of Windows revert the hardware clock back to localtime if they are set to synchronize the time online. This issue appears to be fixed in Windows 10.
• Not recommended: Set Arch Linux to localtime and disable all time synchronization daemons. This will let Windows take care of hardware clock corrections and you will need to remember to boot into Windows at least two times a year (in Spring and Autumn) when DST kicks in. So please do not ask on the forums why the clock is one hour behind or ahead if you usually go for days or weeks without booting into Windows.

Bluetooth pairing

When it comes to pairing Bluetooth devices with both the Linux and Windows installation, both systems have the same MAC address, but will use different link keys generated during the pairing process. This results in the device being unable to connect to one installation, after it has been paired with the other. To allow a device to connect to either installation without re-pairing, follow Bluetooth#Dual boot pairing.

See also

• Booting Windows from a desktop shortcut
• One-time boot into Windows partition from desktop shortcut
• Windows 7/8/8.1/10 ISO to Flash Drive burning utility for Linux (MBR/GPT, BIOS/UEFI, FAT32/NTFS)

UPDATE! 10/11/2022 This post has been deprecated. See this post which supersedes it.

I am currently going through another coding camp right now.

Although this environment is not part of the course, it is of benefit to anyone looking for a smarter, more dynamic environment for developing on Windows using Linux.

How I set up Arch Linux for WSL

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a way to use Linux on Windows without re-partitioning your hard drive or using a Virtual Machine like Virtual Box.

You need to install something called Hyper-V if you want to use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). It can NOT be installed with Window 10 Home, but should work with Windows 11 Home. This will require a reboot.

Right click on the Windows menu and select «Powershell (Administrative)». If you are using Windows 11, open «Windows Terminal (Administrative)». We will enable Hyper-V in the command line rather than going through a bunch of other Windows like I had to do.

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V -All

You probably should enable Hyper-V with the Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool (DISM) to help configure windows and Windows images. This will allow DISM to enable Windows features while the operating system is running.

DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /All /FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V

When the installation is completed, reboot and come back here.

From the Microsoft Store App, you should install the Windows Terminal application and also Visual Studio Code. If you have Windows 11, you should already have Windows Terminal.

Get a Windows Installer

You should install either Chocolatey or Scoop so you can download some stuff in the command line, especially the NerdFonts that are required for Powerline, Powerlevel10k, and VS Code. These fonts have extra characters that can be used in the Windows Terminal.

I recommend Scoop (scoop) over Chocolatey (choco) because it is better organized. Packages are grouped into «Buckets».

Installing Scoop

Set-ExecutionPolicy ByPass -Scope Process -Force
$env:SCOOP='C:ApplicationsScoop'
$env:SCOOP_GLOBAL='C:GlobalScoopApps'
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('SCOOP_GLOBAL', $env:SCOOP_GLOBAL, 'Machine')
iex "& {$(irm get.scoop.sh)} -RunAsAdmin"

Note: we can’t use irm get.scoop.sh | iex, not even in an Administrative PowerShell! (This is why PowerShell sucks!)

If iex "& {$(irm get.scoop.sh)} -RunAsAdmin" doesn’t work, try running irm get.scoop.sh -outfile 'install.ps1' ; .install.ps1 -RunAsAdmin. This will create install.ps1 locally, which you will need to del install.ps1 later.

We need to set the execution policy to Bypass. We could have also used Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser which would have set the execution policy to RemoteSigned. You can see what execution policy is used by running Get-ExecutionPolicy.

We should get scoop to work. Let’s update it.

scoop update

Get the NerdFonts

Because the entire set of NerdFonts is about a couple of gigabytes, you should just get the essential fonts.

I recommend installing these fonts from NerdFonts.

• Meslo
• FiraCode
• FiraMono
• Hack

We first need to add the nerd-fonts bucket.

scoop bucket add nerd-fonts

Next install the font packages

scoop install Meslo-NF Meslo-NF-Mono Hack-NF Hack-NF-Mono FiraCode-NF FiraCode-NF-Mono FiraMono-NF FiraMono-NF-Mono

You should be able to set your Windows terminal to use one of the fonts we installed by going to the settings. A lot of folks are recommending using Meslo.

Installing ArchWSL

We need to get ArchWSL from the extras bucket. Before we run WSL for the first time, we need to set it’s version to version 2. This will use WSL2, which is recommended. We can view what version our Linux distribution is using later with wsl -l -v.

wsl --set-version 2
scoop bucket add extras
scoop install archwsl

You might have seen a message at the end saying «Even when you are logging in as ‘root’, some operations (like service command) require Windows administrator privileges». This is nothing to worry about. We’re going to do something in a little bit so we don’t have to log in as root directly.

Note: To view what Linux distributions are available, we can use wsl -l. To view version information, we can use wsl -v. Combining -l with -v, we can see what version of WSL we are using and what Linux distribution is being used with wsl -l -v.

We are now ready to take care of some basic tasks to get Arch Linux up and running.

Start by running the Arch.exe program.

Arch.exe

First lets set our root password with passwd, you could use your windows password, but a different password would be more secure.

NOTE: Bash is set up to show the current username of the user that is logged in, and the machine that you are logged into. This is called the prompt. Later we’ll do some stuff to make it look pretty. I would recommend giving your computer a name instead of "Dell-XPS_13-bunch_of_numbers". You can do that in your Windows setting. For now well, call our PC «Crystal». This will show up if we run the command uname -n.
Our prompt in Bash will also use # if root (the administrator) is logged in and $ if a regular user is logged in.

[root@crystal]# passwd

Once you have set up your root password, let’s create our regular user and give them permission to use the sudo command that temporarily gives them the power to run root command with the sudo prefix.

[root@crystal]# echo "%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/wheel      # This creates the sudoers file
[root@crystal]# useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash jrcharney          # Create a new users. I will set mine for jrcharney
[root@crystal]# passwd jrcharney                        # Set the password for the new user
[root@crystal]# exit                                # Return to powershell

We need to return to the Powershell for a moment to set the default user.

Arch.exe config --default-user jrcharney                    # Note: Use your username not mine!

Note: If the above command doesn’t work, try restarting the LxssManager in an Administrative Powershell/Windows Terminal.
Do this by running these two command: net stop lxssmanager then net start lxssmanager
Contrary to what the ArchWSL Setup documentation says, you can’t use && in Powershell. But that’s not going to matter once we get this running.
If that doesn’t work, try restarting the computer, but that should only be a last resort.

Once we have our default user, we can launch Arch again. Thanks to how ArchWSL is set up, Arch will be a option in our dropdown menu on the Windows Terminal, but we can’t set it as the default option. That will still need to be PowerShell because Microsoft.

But that’s no big deal, because the next time we start our Linux terminal, you should see something like this as your user prompt.

[jrcharney@crystal]$

Congratulations! You now have LINUX installed on Window! This next part will add all those rad toys to it to make it look awesome and a lot less scary.

Set up Arch Linux

If this were actually Arch Linux, we could have used a script called arch_install to knock out some of this stuff. Since we don’t have it, we got to do it manually.

Here’s just the quick summary of everything I ran to get mine set up. The first few packages we install will be the ArchLinux keyring, the base development tools, Git, another package manager called yay that will let us use the ArchLinux User Repo (AUR), and short list of other cool stuff.

Note: I’m not going to write the prompt anymore. Almost everything will be done as your default user, even the sudo commands.

sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring                                            # Note: ArchWSL says this is optional, but THIS PACKAGE IS MANDITORY! It should be the first one installed.
sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git                                      # When you install the `base-devel` package for ArchWSL, `fakeroot` and `fakeroot-tcp` are in conflict. When asked if you want to replace `fakeroot-tcp` with `fakeroot` SAY NO!
sudo git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git                            # This will install `yay` which will allow you access to the ArchLinux User Repository.
cd yay                                                                      # Go to the yay directory  (TODO: Could I have put this in a Downloads directory?)
makepkg -si                                                                 # Make the `yay` package, this will also install the Go Language (`golang`) that `yay` needs to do stuff.
sudo pacman -S openssh                                                      # Install OpenSSH so we can use SSH.
sudo pacman -S github-cli                                                   # Install this so we can use `gh` to do github command. (TODO: Is there something similar for gitlab?)
sudo pacman -S lolcat                                                       # Install `lolcat` (colorful cat), this will also install the Ruby programming language that it depends on.
sudo pacman -S bat                                                          # `bat` is like `cat`, but it looks better.
sudo pacman -S bat-extras fzf clang llvm rust                               # Some important tools I'll talk about them later.
sudo pacman -S python-pip                                                   # Python needs pip to install some packages
sudo pacman -S lm_sensors psutils python-psutil neofetch bashtop htop       # Install these to show system information and to manage processes in a more user-friendly way
sudo pacman -S figlet cowsay fortune-mod cmatrix nyancat                    # Command line toys, some of them are important that they install some depedencies you'll want to have around.
sudo pacman -S ponysay                                                      # It's like cowsay, only 20% cooler.
yay -S bash-pipes                                                           # One more toy (`pipes.sh`), because the Internet is a Series of Tubes. (Note You can't use `sudo` with `yay` upfront. Yay will ask you for your sudo password later.)
sudo pacman -S imagemagick                                                  # Manipulate images from the command line. You probably won't use it a whole lot, but there's some cool stuff that is important
mkdir bin                                                                   # Add this directory. It should be added to your `$PATH`. You can use this directory to launch scripts that you write to do tasks
mkdir Projects Downloads Documents Sandbox Music Pictures Videos            # Just some placeholder directories. I should really make them softlinks to their Windows counterpart later.
curl wttr.in                                                                # Check to see if we have curl installed by checking the weather!
sudo pacman -S zsh                                                          # Install Zsh
zsh --version                                                               # Show the version of Zsh. (We're still in Bash, but that will change shortly.)
chsh -l                                                                     # Show a list of shells we can change to.  (You can also see this in `/etc/shells`)

OK, we should be ready to do everything in Zsh from now on.

A few things to note

• You’ll be asked some questions when you launch Zsh the first time when you run Oh-My-Zsh. I forget what I said, most of these aesthetic. There’s probably a tutorial about it on YouTube.
• You may be asked some questions to get Powerlevel10K working (at least for Oh-My-Zsh), if not, run p10k.
• If things don’t have color when you run pacman -Ss, go into the /etc/pacman.conf file and uncomment the line that says Color. Visually, this helps out tremendously.
• We could have changed the shell to Zsh using chsh -s $(which zsh), but there was a problem getting that done. Fortunately we can do this with Oh-My-Zsh

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL http://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"     # Install Oh-My-Zsh.  (I should have used `yay -S oh-my-zsh-git` but this works just as well.)  (If it asks if you want to change the default shell to Zsh, say yes!)
yay -S --noconfirm zsh-theme-powerlevel10k-git                                          # Install the powerlevel10k them for zsh.
echo 'source /usr/share/zsh-theme-powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k.zsh-theme' >> ~/.zshrc    # Use the Powerlevel10K theme in Zsh. (You could use it in Bash too, but I'm not going to do that.)
exec zsh                                                                                # Restart zsh
p10k configure                                                                          # Configure the Powerlevel10k prompt.
sudo pacman -S tmux                                                                     # Install the terminal multiplexer. (We'll have some basic stuff set up in `~/.tmux.conf`)
git clone https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm ~/.tmux/plugins/tpm                       # Install the TMUX plugin manager.
sudo pacman -S powerline                                                                # Install powerline. The command to enable it for tmux should be in `~/.tmux.conf`.
sudo pacman -S lsd                                                                      # Use lsd (not that LSD! This one make the ls command look cool.) (I added commands to ~/.bash_aliases to use it.)
sudo pacman -S jq                                                                       # Command-line JSON processor. This will be useful later. (There's also `hq` and `yq`, but I haven't tried those yet.)
sudo pacman -S neovim                                                                   # Neovim is something I'm adding. It's basically a text editor based on Vim, but all the plugins are written in Lua. This should also install Lua.
sudo pacman -S python-neovim                                                            # Python 3 plugin support for Neovim
sudo pacman -S zsh-autosuggestions                                                      # Enable auto suggestions in Zsh
sudo pacman -S zsh-syntax-highlighting                                                  # Enable syntax highlighting. You will need to add a line to to bottom of your `~/.zshrc` file.

To Activate zsh-syntax-highlighting, add the following line to the end of ~/.zshrc

source /usr/share/zsh/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh

My Github repo should contain

• ~/.bash_aliases
• ~/.tmux.conf
• ~/.bashrc
• ~/.zshrc
• ~/.p10k.zsh

You should also run VS Code from this environment for the first time such that both applications become familiar with each other.

code .          # That is "code" space "period"

This will install what WSL and VS Code needs to work with each other.

TODO: How do I set WSL/Arch as the default terminal for VS Code?

Anything else, I’ll probably tack on here later. I do have some dotfiles you can download to run some other tasks.

Congratulations! You’re ready to code like a pro!

Taskwarrior (optional)

There’s one thing I would suggest doing if you are doing software development: Install taskwarrior. This is useful because you can write down tasks for things you can do while working on project. Personally, I’m more of a Trello person because Kanban is awesome and can be used for more than just computer development. I used it to help me list all the things I need to do when I moved into my apartment a few months ago. It’s that versatile.

You could also use something like Notion, which as a Markdown editor, but in terms of Markdown editors, I prefer Typora ($15) because it supports Mermaid where you can generate UML diagrams and other charts and uses MathJax for LaTeX support. You can also embed HTML and SVG and generate a preview of what the code looks like.

To install Taskwarrior, install the task package.

sudo pacman -S task

We can also install a couple of terminal interface programs such as taskwarrior-tui and vit. I will add that.

sudo pacman -S taskwarrior vit

There is also a command-line time tracking app called timewarrior (timew) that integrate with task.

sudo pacman -S timew

Because we installed powerlevel10k earlier, if we add a task, an item should appear showing how many tasks you have on the right side. If it doesn’t show up, you may need to restart ArchWSL or check ~/.p10k.zsh to make sure that the segment is enabled.
In fact, Powerlevel10k has many segments that can be useful. You should enable the ones you know that you will need as enabling all of them will be taxing to your system resources.

The first time you run task you will be told that a configuration file could not be found and asked if you would like to create a sample one. Say yes to it.
Similarly, if you run timew the first time, it will also ask of you would like to create a new database file. Also say yest to that.

I wanted to install Taskell (taskell), which is a command-line Kanban board written in Haskell, but for some reason, the taskell package would not download. Which is unfortunate considering it could be integrated with Trello and Github and it used Markdown. It is quite unfortunate and will need to be brough up at a later date.

So, this is the part where the Coding Boot Camp picks up. Good luck!

2

MAR

Is this article up to date?