My Experience Installing Arch Linux

Neptunus' blogs

ネプチュヌスのブログ

2025年12月20日

[NOTICE] Story first, instructions at the bottom

What I used to daily-drive

I used to daily drive Windows 11 on my ASUS Vivobook 16 X1605, and I've never used anything other than Windows as a daily drive. I went from Windows 7 to Windows 10 to Windows 11, but never Linux. Linux was always something that I'd use for homelabs/homeservers, or something I'd install on an old computer, like an old iMac or a laptop, but I had never used it as a daily drive. I decided to change that, after realizing that Microsoft no longer benefits me. A large chunk of the codebase for Windows 11 was literally vibecoded, they kept trying to push their little AI onto me and they had released 3 updates in 2 weeks each of which broke parts of Windows that I needed to use.

Annoyance

So, I put all my important files onto a USB stick, looked for a distro to use and decided: "Why not Arch Linux?"

I flashed the Arch Install Medium onto a USB drive, booted from it, (I had to painstakingly mess with the secure boot and secure boot key settings before booting from the USB) ran iwctl and then device list to see what the name of my wlan interface was, but then...

Emptiness

There were no interfaces. "What?? How?? I was using WiFi perfectly fine on Windows, though... oh well, lets see if it even detects my WiFi card in the first place."

>> lspci | grep "Network"

Network controller: MEDIATEK Corp. MT7902 WiFi 5e

"Well, it's definitely there. Perhaps it's a driver issue? I'll go through official sources to get the Linux drivers for my WiFi card and... none? No drivers? Really? Ah! There's a community made driver on Github! I'm saved!"

*The community made driver turned out to be incredibly unreliable*

"I can't believe this... am I physically unable to use Linux unless I use a WiFi dongle!?"

The fix

I ended up realizing I could buy a new WiFi card that does have official drivers. So I took a look around, decided that the Intel AX200 should work just fine for me. It had official drivers for Linux and it was an upgrade to my Mediatek MT7902.

I ordered the card and it arrived 3 days later. I was waiting 3 days for this tiny thing that costs around $25 USD. But nonetheless, it was time to get it working.

*Every time I open up a piece of hardware that I care about, my heart starts beating faster...*

I opened up my laptop by taking the backpanel off after unscrewing it, unplugged the battery, unscrewed the WiFi card, put in my Intel AX200 WiFi card, screwed it in, stuck the antennas onto it, plugged the battery back in, put the backpanel on, and for the moment of truth...

It turned on! I didn't somehow break my laptop! "Thank you ASUS, I love and hate you!"

Almost there

But wait. It was not a time for celebration yet. I still needed to see if an internet interface shows up in iwctl. I booted into the Arch Install Medium yet again, ran iwctl and then device list, and there it was. A sweet-looking wlan0 interface that was begging to fetch the archinstall script. So I let it happen. I ran archinstall, tweaked some settings, and I let it run.

The finale

5-10 minutes later, it's done. I reboot my PC, and it boots into Arch Linux' TTY (TeleTypeWriter, terminal interface). I installed the drivers for my Iris Xe graphics, installed KDE Plasma for my desktop environment, enabled sddm, and rebooted again. And there it was, the lockscreen. I typed in my password that I set up in archinstall, and KDE greeted me with its little introduction. I tweaked some settings, set up some stuff that needed setting up, started installing games, my IDE, and logged in on most of my accounts.

That was my experience when installing Arch Linux. Thank you for reading my first ever blog post, I hope it wasn't too dull. Till next time?

Instructions

Requirements

• Asus Vivobook 16 X1605
• A new WiFi card (I used an Intel AX200, but an AX210 is fine too. As long as there's Linux support, anything's fine)
• USB stick (Minimum 8GB)
• Screwdrivers (multiple sizes)
• Something to pry off the backpanel

Step-by-step

1. Flash the Arch ISO onto a USB stick (There's online guides for this)

Internal handling

1. Make sure your PC is off
2. Unscrew backpanel screws
3. Pry off backpanel
4. Unplug the battery
5. Pop the antenna cords off carefully, they are somewhat fragile
6. Unscrew the screw that is holding the WiFi card down
7. Take out the old WiFi card
8. Place the new one in
9. Screw it down with the screw you unscrewed before
10. Place the antenna cords on again, be careful not to pull on the antenna cords too hard. Make sure it's on there tight enough
11. Plug the battery back in
12. Click the backpanel back on
13. Screw the backpanel on

Messing with UEFI

1. Boot up the PC and press ESC repeatedly to enter boot selection mode
2. UEFI > Advanced Settings > Security
3. Try disabling Secure Boot. If it works, skip to step 15. If it is greyed out, keep reading
4. Open Key Management
5. Click on Reset To Setup Mode. If the keys are cleared, skip to step 14. Otherwise, keep reading.
6. Boot into Windows
7. Open an admin Powershell
8. Check if BitLocker is off: manage-bde -status
9. If any drive says Protection On, run manage-bde -off C:
10. Wait until encryption is fully disabled, then reboot
11. Turn off Windows Secure Boot enforcement: bcdedit /set {current} testsigning on and bcdedit /set {current} nointegritychecks on
12. Reboot into the boot selection mode again by repeatedly pressing ESC
13. UEFI > Advanced Settings > Security > Key Management > Reset To Setup Mode
14. All the keys should now be cleared. When you go back to the Security tab, you'll see that Secure Boot still says that it's active. This is not true. Secure Boot is off.
15. Save & Exit, shutdown

Finale

1. Plug in your USB that has the Arch Install Medium on it
2. Power on and press ESC repeatedly
3. Boot into your USB
4. From here on out, I recommend watching this video guide. Make sure to go to 3:30.