Post Install Configuration of Arch Linux

Installing VirtualBox Guest Additions

VirtualBox Guest Additions provides drivers and applications that optimize the guest operating system including improved image resolution and better control of the mouse.

Official Installation Procedure

To install enter the following command.

sudo pacman -S virtualbox-guest-utils

 I have Linux kernel so I'll choose virtualbox-guest-modules-arch, when asked.

Installing Other Essential Applications

You can choose between vlc and parole they're both good.
screenfetch will print out system specs for you on the terminal.

sudo pacman -S firefox parole screenfetch

Customizing Arch Linux  

Lets install good stuff!

This is how I customize
My preferred icons -- Paper icons
My preferred theme -- Arc Dark or Arc Darker
My preferred mouse -- Simple and Soft
My preferred Font  -- Ubuntu 10

Lets install them

sudo pacman -S ttf-ubuntu-font-family arc-gtk-theme xcursor-simpleandsoft

sudo yaourt -S paper-icon-theme

Customizing Bootloader

I like to have "Shutdown" and "Reboot" menu entry for grub, for which we've to edit the following file.

nano /etc/grub.d/40_custom

At the end add this block of code

menuentry "System restart" {
    echo "System rebooting..."
    reboot
}

menuentry "System shutdown" {
    echo "System shutting down..."
    halt
}

Now use CTRL + X to exit hit 'y' to confirm and then hit ENTER

Now this command will finalize the process

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Changing Default Audio Settings 

In case you don't get audio and need pulseaudio to start in Headphones mode by default then you need to edit default.pa file.

sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

Add the following line at the end

set-sink-port 0 analog-output-headphones

Now use CTRL + X to exit hit 'y' to confirm and then hit ENTER

Terminal

Default Arch terminal isn't set to UTF-8 so you've to set it yourself by going into preferences and going in advanced and setting it to "UTF-8"

Screen Lock

If xflock4 doesn't work then go in whisker menu's properties then in commands and change xflock4 to "dm-tool lock"

Enabling Autologin

Edit the LightDM configuration file

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Scroll down to this line.

#autologin-user=

Change it, in this case I added my username and removed #
It should look exactly like this

autologin-user=fellchase

Now use CTRL + X to exit hit 'y' to confirm and then hit ENTER

You must be part of the autologin group to be able to login automatically without entering your password

sudo groupadd -r autologin

sudo gpasswd -a username autologin

Next time you boot up you'll not be asked for password.

Clock

Linux can't properly synchronize time on my machine, if it does it's off by 1 or 2 hours. So I stick to my hardware clock which means that Linux will not synchronize time from network.  

You might not want to do this if you change timezone or use DST.

sudo timedatectl set-ntp False

sudo hwclock -s --local

sudo timedatectl set-local-rtc true

sudo reboot

Screen Tearing

Unfortunately the default xfwm4 doesn't work well for some reason, you maybe experiencing screen-tearing issues. Thankfully Manjaro Linux has published a guide on installing compton which should fix this issue, this guide worked on my Arch Install.


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