Arch Linux Pick Your Own Installer

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Welcome to the step by step guide for installing Arch Linux

Contents

Question One: to 64bit or not 64bit

Statically most Linux users run a 32-bit distro, and many of them run a 32-bit distro on a 64-bit enabled CPU. Most modern AMD and Intel chips support 64-bit out of the box.

  • AMD CPUs: Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Phenom, Phenom II, Athlon X2, Turion 64, Turion 64 X2, Opteron and later Sempron processors.
  • Intel CPUs: All Core 2 and Core i7 chips, but also including most Xeons and many recent Celerons.

Windows Users: Using the freeware CPU-Z software, You'll easily be able to find if your CPU can support a 64bit compatible instructional set. CPUs with AMD's instructional set "AMD64" or Intel's solution "EM64T" should prove to be compatible with the x86_64 releases and binary packages.

Reasons to use i686 (32bit)

  • Tried and tested. Most intricate and upto date collection of packages.
  • Common closed source applications (Skype) are known to be problematic on x86_64 but compatibility is always improving.

Reasons to use x86_64 (64bit)

  • A x86_64 (64bit) system is as standard as a i686 (32bit) system. There's no stability or software difference to using 64-bit.
  • Similar range of software packages available. x86_64 software is generally released at the same time as the 32bit.
  • Performance increases in most cases. Large increases expected in memory-intensive applications as they can run more quickly and efficiently.
  • If your computer is running 4GB or over of usable RAM, 64bit should be considered as any additional ram cannot be allocated by an 32bit OS.
  • Increased security due to the No-Execute bit: The "NX" bit.

Bottom line: General performance will generally increase around 5-10% on a x86_64 compiled linux system.

Tidbits


Question Two: Core, FTP - CD, USB or ISOLINUX

  • The "core" images contain a snapshot of the core packages. These images are best suited for people who have an internet connection which is slow or difficult to set up.
  • The "ftp" images contain no packages at all, and will use the network connection to install the most recent version of the required packages core.


  • The ISO images will work on almost any machine with a CD-ROM drive
  • The USB images will work on any system capable of booting from a USB drive
  • The ISOLINUX release is an alternative bootloader offered for those having problems with GRUB not loading.
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