bestArch

Configurations and todos to make your Arch Linux the best Arch Linux

• System
  • Use systemd-boot
  • Microcode updates
  • Compress initramfs with lz4
  • Limit journald log size
  • Change IO Scheduler
  • Change CPU governor
  • Create a swap file
  • Enable hibernation
• Package Management
  • Switch to better mirrors
  • Enable colors in pacman
  • Enable parallel compilation and compression
• Networking
  • DNSCrypt
• Graphics
  • NVIDIA driver DRM kernel mode setting
• Multimedia
  • Fix bluetooth audio
  • MPV hardware decoding (NVIDIA VDPAU)

System

Use systemd-boot

Arch Wiki reference

Requires you to be able to boot in UEFI mode (not MBR).

You need to have a /boot partition formatted in FAT32 (usually I make it 400 MBs, even if it's a little too much).

Assuming you have all your file systems mounted to their proper locations AND that you are already chroot-ed in your installed system.

sudo bootctl --path=/boot install

Create /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf like follows:

title		Arch Linux
linux		/vmlinuz-linux
# uncomment this in case you want to install intel microcode
# initrd		/intel-ucode.img
initrd		/initramfs-linux.img
options		root=UUID=ROOT_PARTITION_UUID rw quiet # nvidia-drm.modeset=1 # uncomment this if/when you want to enable nvidia drm kernel mode setting

Where ROOT_PARTITION_UUID can be obtained from the command lsblk -f (use the UUID of the partition mounted as /).

You may want to edit /boot/loader/loader.conf to set a timeout (format: timeout TIME_IN_SECONDS) and to add a line that says default arch-*.

Install systemd-boot-pacman-hook^AUR to automatically update systemd-boot.

Microcode updates

Arch wiki reference

AMD

From Arch Wiki:

For AMD processors the microcode updates are available in linux-firmware, which is installed as part of the base system. No further action is needed.

Intel

sudo pacman -S intel-ucode

Edit /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf so that the first initrd line is the following:

initrd        /intel-ucode.img

Compress initramfs with lz4

Make sure lz4 is installed.

Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:

• Add lz4 lz4_compress to the MODULES list (delimited by ())
• Uncomment or add the line saying COMPRESSION="lz4"
• Add a line saying COMPRESSION_OPTIONS="-9"
• Add shutdown to the HOOKS list (delimited by ())

Run sudo mkinitcpio -p linux to apply the mkinitcpio.conf changes.

Limit journald log size

Edit /etc/systemd/journald.conf:

• Uncomment SystemMaxUse= and append 200M (or any size you like).

Change IO Scheduler

Change CPU governor

Arch Wiki reference

sudo pacman -S cpupower

To change the governor for the current session run sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance.

To change the governor on boot create a systemd service.

Create /etc/systemd/system/cpupower.service:

[Unit]
Description=Set CPU governor to performance

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/cpupower -c all frequency-set -g performance

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Finally run sudo systemctl enable cpupower.service.

NB: the default governor is powersave and you may want to leave it as it is.

Create /etc/udev/rules.d/50-scaling-governor.rules as follows:

SUBSYSTEM=="module", ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="acpi_cpufreq", RUN+=" /bin/sh -c ' echo performance > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_governor ' "

Create a swap file

Arch Wiki reference

A form of swap is required to enable hibernation.

In this example we will allocate a 8G swap file.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/swapfile bs=1M count=8192
sudo chmod 600 /home/swapfile
sudo mkswap /home/swapfile
sudo swapon /home/swapfile # this enables the swap file for the current session

Edit /etc/fstab adding the following line:

/home/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0

Removing the swap file if not necessary/wanted anymore

sudo swapoff -a

Edit /etc/fstab and remove the swapfile entry, and finally:

sudo rm -f /home/swapfile

Alternative route

Use systemd-swap for automated and dynamic swapfile allocation and use. Consult the GitHub project page for more info.

Enable Hibernation

Arch Wiki reference

Package Management

Switch to better mirrors

Arch Wiki reference

sudo pacman -S reflector
sudo reflector --latest 200 --protocol http --protocol https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Enable colors in pacman

Edit /etc/pacman.conf and uncomment the row saying Color

Enable parallel compilation and compression

Edit /etc/makepkg.conf:

• Add the following row (replace 7 with CPU threads-1): MAKEFLAGS="-j7"
• Edit the row saying COMPRESSXZ=(xz -c -z -) to COMPRESSXZ=(xz -c -z - --threads=0)
• sudo pacman -S pigz and edit the row saying COMPRESSGZ=(gzip -c -f -n) to COMPRESSGZ=(pigz -c -f -n)

Networking

DNSCrypt

Arch Wiki reference

Encrypt your DNS traffic so your ISP can't spy on you. Use pdnsd as a proxy and cache for it.

Install

sudo pacman -S dnscrypt-proxy pdnsd

Configure

Edit /etc/dnscrypt-proxy/dnscrypt-proxy.toml:

• Uncomment the server_names list (line 30) and change it as follows: server_names = ['de.dnsmaschine.net', 'trashvpn'] (see Note below)
• Change the listen_address list (line 36) to an empty list: listen_address = [] (we're using systemd socket, this avoids port conflicts)

Note: you can find more "Resolvers" in /usr/share/dnscrypt-proxy/dnscrypt-resolvers.csv or here

Edit /usr/lib/systemd/system/dnscrypt-proxy.service to include the following:

[Service]
DynamicUser=yes

Edit /usr/lib/systemd/system/dnscrypt-proxy.socket to change the port dnscrypt runs on. Here is a snippet:

[Socket]
ListenStream=127.0.0.1:53000
ListenDatagram=127.0.0.1:53000

Create /etc/pdnsd.conf like so:

global {
	perm_cache=1024;
	cache_dir="/var/cache/pdnsd";
#	pid_file = /var/run/pdnsd.pid;
	run_as="pdnsd";
	server_ip = 127.0.0.1;  # Use eth0 here if you want to allow other
				# machines on your network to query pdnsd.
	status_ctl = on;
#	paranoid=on;       # This option reduces the chance of cache poisoning
	                   # but may make pdnsd less efficient, unfortunately.
	query_method=udp_tcp;
	min_ttl=15m;       # Retain cached entries at least 15 minutes.
	max_ttl=1w;        # One week.
	timeout=10;        # Global timeout option (10 seconds).
	neg_domain_pol=on;
	udpbufsize=1024;   # Upper limit on the size of UDP messages.
}

server {
    label = "dnscrypt-proxy";
    ip = 127.0.0.1;
    port = 53000;
    timeout = 4;
    proxy_only = on;
}

source {
	owner=localhost;
#	serve_aliases=on;
	file="/etc/hosts";
}

rr {
	name=localhost;
	reverse=on;
	a=127.0.0.1;
	owner=localhost;
	soa=localhost,root.localhost,42,86400,900,86400,86400;
}

Reload systemd daemons, enable and start services:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable dnscrypt-proxy.service pdnsd.service
sudo systemctl start dnscrypt-proxy.service pdnsd.service

Edit your NetworkManager configuration to point to the following IPs for respectively IPv4 and IPv6 DNSes:

127.0.0.1
::1

Graphics

NVIDIA driver DRM kernel mode setting

Arch Wiki reference

Edit /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf appending nvidia-drm.modeset=1 to the options row.

Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf prepending to the MODULES list (delimited by ()) the following: nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm.

Run sudo mkinitcpio -p linux to apply the mkinitcpio.conf changes.

Add a pacman hook to rebuild initramfs after an NVIDIA driver upgrade, create /etc/pacman.d/hooks/nvidia.hook:

[Trigger]
Operation=Install
Operation=Upgrade
Operation=Remove
Type=Package
Target=nvidia

[Action]
Depends=mkinitcpio
When=PostTransaction
Exec=/usr/bin/mkinitcpio -P

NB: Make sure the Target package set in this hook is the one you have installed (nvidia, nvidia-lts or some other different or legacy driver package name).

Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf uncommenting the row that says WaylandEnable=false (enabling DRM kernel mode setting usually improves performance but enables NVIDIA Wayland support for GNOME, but currently NVIDIA Wayland performance is terrible and makes for an unusable experience. While this option is not mandatory, it's highly recommended).

Multimedia

Fix bluetooth audio

Arch Wiki reference

Prevent GDM from spawning pulseaudio: edit /var/lib/gdm/.config/pulse/client.conf like so:

autospawn = no
daemon-binary = /bin/true

Finally run:

sudo -ugdm mkdir -p /var/lib/gdm/.config/systemd/user
sudo -ugdm ln -s /dev/null /var/lib/gdm/.config/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket

MPV hardware decoding (NVIDIA VDPAU)

Install nvidia-utils (or similar package depending on your nvidia driver) and libva-vdpau-driver.

Create or edit .config/mpv/mpv.conf:

vo=vdpau
profile=opengl-hq
hwdec=vdpau
hwdec-codecs=all
scale=ewa_lanczossharp
cscale=ewa_lanczossharp
interpolation
tscale=oversample