Archlinux on Chromebook

/ Tutorial

I’ve heard the reputation of Archlinux for a very long time, and perpetually notice some issues I am trying to fix are documented by ArchWiki. But the truth is I never tried to use it, because the installation seems too tedious and Ubuntu is still workable at present. What dictates me to use Archlinux is the prolonged audio issue spread through multiple versions of Ubuntu on my Chromebook.

I have a Toshiba Chromebook bought in 2015, the dust on which has not been swept out for years until the other days I was on demand to use a laptop for a few months.

The first step I did was follow https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/getting-started.html website and install the UEFI Full ROM. Then you would be able to boot your installation image in UEFI mode from your USB device.

After booting from it, you’ll see the command line console already logged as root in your front, all the installations will be manually operated with command in this console. The installation steps are documented at official installation guide.

A few notice the guide does not mention put here:

  1. Format the disk as GPT type and add a fat32 format partition with a size of 50M as the first partition. Remember to mount this partition to /boot/EFI before using the genfstab command. Well to know that if you mount this partition to /boot, the size of this partition needs to be at least 200M, since the initramfs-linux, vmlinuz-linux, and grub files are put to this partition as well.
  2. Before using pacstrap, better update your mirror list in case of the slow downloading packages in your country: pacman -Syy, pacman -S reflector, reflector -c "cn" -f 12 -l 10 -n 12 --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.
  3. Create an extra user but not root as your daily usage: pacman -S sudo, useradd -m yanying, passwd yanying, usermod -ag wheel,audio,video,storage yanying.
  4. Follow lxqt guide and install the lightest lxqt desktop environment: pacman -S xorg lxqt.
  5. If you have issues with starting your fcitx5, try to add gtk_im_module=fcitx \n qt_im_module=fcitx \n sdl_im_module=fcitx \n xmodifiers=@im=fcitx to your ~/.xprofile file.
  6. If you have issues with showing some special characters properly, try to install fonts: pacman -S noto-fonts noto-fonts-emoji.
  7. To show archlinux logo instead of the command screen while you are starting your system, check the Plymouth project.
  8. Uncomment Color and ILoveCandy in /etc/pacman.conf for a better output of pacman.
  9. Place icons to /usr/share/sddm/faces/yanying.face.icon to show it as the user icon in the login screen.
  10. Check IOS wiki to connect and transfer files with iPhone.
  11. Follow Waydroid wiki to run android on Archlinux.
  12. swap ctrl and search key: modify /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/pc with: key <LWIN> { [ Control_L ] }; and key <LCTL> { [ Super_L ] };. More: https://askubuntu.com/questions/33774/how-do-i-remap-the-caps-lock-and-ctrl-keys
  13. function keys of volumes and backlight: https://github.com/yanyingwang/CBFixesAndTweaks
  14. insall adb tools: pacman -S android-sdk-cmdline-tools and yay -S android-sdk-cmdline-tools-latest