How to install arch on the hp omen

Disk Layout

We're using the following disks

/dev/nvme0n1 - 500GiB m.2 SSD
/dev/sda     - 2TB SATA SSD

Partitioning

We're creating three partitions. One EFI, one root and one home partition. The root and home partition are to be encrypted with dm-crypt.

fdisk /dev/nvme0n1
> g        # gpt partition table
> n        
> <Enter>  # starting from the beginning
> +500M    # 500 MiB
> t 1      # EFI partition
> n        # new partition
> <Enter>  # 
> <Enter>  # use the remaining size of the disk
> w        
> q

fdisk /dev/sda
> g
> n
> <Enter>
> <Enter>  # use the whole disk
> w
> q

# Create the encrypted root partition
cryptsetup -cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 512 --hash sha512 --iter-time 5000 --use-random luksFormat /dev/nvme0n1p2

# Create the encrypted home partition
cryptsetup -cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 512 --hash sha512 --iter-time 5000 --use-random luksFormat /dev/sda1

# Open the devices
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p2 cryptroot
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda1 crypthome

# Create the filesystems
mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
mkfs.btrfs /dev/mapper/cryptroot
mkfs.btrfs /dev/mapper/crypthome

# mount the partitions in the correpsonding paths
mount /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/mapper/crypthome /mnt/home

Pacstrap

# install base, kernels, firmware and utils
pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel linux linux-zen linux-firmware intel-ucode vim nushell

Steps in Chroot

# enter new root
arch-chroot /mnt

Timezone and Time

# Uncomment at least one desired locale
vim /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
# Use your main locale
echo LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 /etc/locale.conf
export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8

# Timezone info
ln -s  /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin /etc/localetime

# Configure hwclock to utc
hwclock --systohc --utc

# Set the keyboard layout
echo KEYMAP=de > /etc/vconsole.conf

Pacman

Open /etc/pacman.conf and uncomment Color and ParallelDownlods=5 as well as the section containing the multilib repository

Users

# set the root password
passwd

# Add a user (this one is called trivernis)
useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/nu trivernis

# Change the user's password
passwd trivernis

# Enable the wheel group
EDITOR=/bin/vim visudo # uncomment the corresponding line 

Bootloader (systemd-boot)

Add mkinitcpio hooks

# TODO

# Generate initrds
mkinitcpio -P

bootctl install

Create records in /boot/loader/entries/

# arch-zen.conf
title Arch Linux (linux-zen)
linux /vmlinuz-linux-zen
initrd /intel-ucode.img
initrd /initramfs-linux-zen.img
options cryptdevice=/dev/nvme0n1p2:cryptroot root=/dev/mapper/cryptroot zswap.enabled=1 intel_pstate=no_hwp rootfstype=btrfs

# arch.conf
title Arch Linux (linux)
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /intel-ucode.img
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options cryptdevice=/dev/nvme0n1p2:cryptroot root=/dev/mapper/cryptroot zswap.enabled=1 intel_pstate=no_hwp rootfstype=btrfs

# arch-fallback.conf
title Fallback Arch Linux (linux)
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /intel-ucode.img
initrd /initramfs-linux-fallback.img
options cryptdevice=/dev/nvme0n1p2:cryptroot root=/dev/mapper/cryptroot zswap.enabled=1 intel_pstate=no_hwp rootfstype=btrfs

Configure the bootloader with /boot/loader/loader.conf

timeout 2
default arch-zen.conf
console-mode max

Disks

# Create key for /home cryptdevice
mkdir /etc/keys
chmod 700 /etc/keys
dd bs=512 count=4 if=/dev/random of=/etc/keys/crypthome.key iflag=fullblock
chmod 600 /etc/key/crypthome.key
cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sda1 /etc/keys/crypthome.key

Edit /etc/cryptab And add the device with the created key

Networking

# set the hostname
echo archomen > /etc/hostname

# Install the networkmanager
pacman -S networkmanager
systemctl enable NetworkManager.service --now

Bluetooth

# Install packages
pacman -S bluez bluez-utils

# Enable the bluetooth service
systemctl enable bluetooth

Desktop Environment (KDE)

# Install audio support
pacman -S pulseaudio

# install KDE. Choose 
# > noto-fonts 
# > pipewire-jack
# > wireplumber 
# > phonon-qt5-gstreamer 
# in the selection prompts
pacman -S sddm plasma plasma-wayland-session xorg-xwayland xdg-desktop-portal-kde plasma-nm plasma-pa kwallet5 kwallet-pam kwalletmanager bluedevil

# Enable sddm on startup
systemd enable sddm

PRIME Offloading

Make sure to remove kms from the /etc/mkinitcpio.conf HOOKS section

# Install nvidia drivers
pacman -S linux-headers linux-zen-headers dkms nvidia-dkms prime nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils

Yay

pacman -S git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.gi
cd yay
makepkg -si

Swap

See BTRFS Swap

Fonts

# Fira Code
pacman -S ttf-firacode-nerd ttf-fira-code

# CJK characters
pacman -S noto-fonts-cjk

# Vietnamese
pacman -S ttf-hannom

# Emoji
pacman -S noto-fonts-emoji