How to install Arch and configure it with NeoVim and Hyprland tiling windows manager

Installing Arch

Prepare your key

We ll first start by downloading the iso. The download page can be found here. We ll choose the http direct download.

curl -L -C - --progress-bar -O https://archlinux.mirrors.ovh.net/archlinux/iso/2025.11.01/archlinux-2025.11.01-x86_64.iso
curl -L -C - --progress-bar -O https://archlinux.mirrors.ovh.net/archlinux/iso/2025.11.01/b2sums.txt
b2sum -c b2sums.txt

Now we have to copy it to our USB key.

lsusb
lsblk
sudo dd if=archlinux-2025.11.01-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

Configure and install

Once booted on your USB key, select the first option “Arch Linux install medium (x86_64, UEFI). You should have a terminal welcoming you. Let s go through each option

Archinstall language

English

Locales

Keyboard layout : us Locale language : en_US.UTF-8 Locale encoding : UTF-8

Mirrors and repositories

Select your region

Disk configuration

Partitioning

Use a best-effort default partition layout
Filesystem : Btrfs
Use Btrfs subvolumes with a default structure : Yes
Use compression : Yes

LVM

No

Disk Encryption

TODO

Btrfs snapshots

Snapper

Swap

Use swap on zram : Yes

Bootloader

I used to use Grub, and it worked well with timeshift. This time i am trying systemd-boot

Unified kernel images

Yes

Hostname

YouDontNeedMyInputForThisOne

Authentication

User account : name, pass, is a superuser

Profile

Minimal

Applications

Bluetooth : enabled Audio : pipewire

Kernels

Linux

Network configuration

Use NetworkManager

Additional packages

hyprland, neovim, tmux, kitty, zsh, git

Timezone

Select yours

NTP

Enabled

Arch config

Congratz ! It should boot. Choose carefully the UEFI entry if you are using a multiboot selector otherwise it will look for legacy grub path
Now you should be greated by a prompt. Log in, then install Nvidia drivers if you are using an Nvidia graphic card :

pacman -S nvidia-dkms

The DKMS version will recompile the module every time our kernel will update. Wich will improve stability.
Reboot, log in, type

hyprland
# super + m to exit

and you should be greeted by a working hyprland ! Yeahhh

Hyprland config

Ok, it works. But barely. We ll now import our various configuration files. I am using git to keep them tidy and sync between devices. But I am wondering if adding an Ansible layer to manage them would be worth the overhead.

YAY

Before starting the infinite install step, we will install the (YAY)(https://github.com/Jguer/yay) package manager to take full advantage of AUR.

sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si

Git

yay -S openssh
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your email"