r/archlinux

I used to use Linux a couple of years ago on my Dell G15 and it was absolutely wonderful (Arch with KDE), so you may be wondering "If you were happy about it, why are you even asking this question".

Well, first of all I was not at college back then, and now I use a different laptop (Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 14IMH9). I'm not concerned about connectivity between devices or what programs I can run on Linux, but I'm concerned about the PowerPoint and Word documents that I send to my professors every week. I'm studying to become a teacher, thus you may understand why these documents are so important for me. Sometimes, I'm literally graded based on these documents.

I'm afraid that a Word or a PowerPoint document that I send to one of my professors may not be compatible with Windows. For example, an essay that I've written on my Linux laptop may not work on my professor's Windows laptop for some random compatibility issue. I don't think that there will be any problems on my side, but rather on my professors' side because I don't think that none of my professors, except maybe one of them, have any idea about Linux let alone having used any distro at any point in their lives.

Also, sometimes I have to do presentations and/or give lectures, so I'm scared that the projector that I have to use may not work with my PC for some random reason.

So, I would really appreciate it if you guys could help me with this situation.

With common I mean packages like these: CUDA/CUDNN, vscode, brave browser, MPV, wireguard or touchpad drivers. Can I assume that arch have the latest updates and not that nvidia driver is 3 months behind Ubuntu?

I would think most exist but is there any gotchas for people coming from other distros?

I am looking for a way to delay package downloads and upgrades by 24 hours (a.k.a. they must be 24 hours old or it downloads an older variant). However I have had trouble finding a proper solution.

The reason I am looking for this is because dependency chain attacks are on the rise (my company has already been hit once), and I want to secure my system from these kinds of attacks wherever possible.

I am aware I could just head to another distro, like Debian, which isn't a rolling release. However I am already here and don't want to go through the trouble of learning another flavor of Linux.

This started happening the other day after a full upgrade. I am on the LTS kernel, 6.18.31-1-lts.

(the same two errors popped up when I tried to boot with the regular kernel the other day, but in addition, it would also not launch KDE, so I did not switch over from LTS)

Here's the relevant portion from sudo journalctl -b:

May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd-vconsole-setup[259]: loadkeys: Unable to open file: sr-latin: No such file or directory
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd-vconsole-setup[255]: '/usr/bin/loadkeys' failed with exit status 1.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd-vconsole-setup[255]: Configuration of first virtual console was skipped, ignoring remaining ones.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: systemd-vconsole-setup.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: systemd-vconsole-setup.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: Failed to start Virtual Console Setup.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux kernel: fbcon: Taking over console
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux kernel: Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 240x67
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: Reached target Preparation for Local File Systems.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: Reached target Local File Systems.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: Starting File System Check on /dev/disk/by-uuid/be20b84a-6e54-43d4-b7a7-59c73e30f715...
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: Starting Create System Files and Directories...
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: Starting Virtual Console Setup...
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: Finished Create System Files and Directories.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd-vconsole-setup[276]: loadkeys: Unable to open file: sr-latin: No such file or directory
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd-vconsole-setup[271]: '/usr/bin/loadkeys' failed with exit status 1.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd-vconsole-setup[271]: Configuration of first virtual console was skipped, ignoring remaining ones.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd-fsck[273]: /dev/sdb3: clean, 2307050/28262400 files, 101617964/113017856 blocks
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: systemd-vconsole-setup.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: systemd-vconsole-setup.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 21 13:02:31 archlinux systemd[1]: Failed to start Virtual Console Setup.

However SDDM launches normally and so does KDE, and all the other TTYs appear to work normally too (3-6; 2 is held by sddm and I can't seem to switch to 7, while F8 gives an empty screen with a blinking cursor).

Here's my /etc/vconsole.conf:

KEYMAP=sr-latin

It was empty at first, and adding this line did not change anything (yes, I did run mkinitcpio -p linux-lts after editing; somewhat related, lsinitcpio says it is Unable to read file: '/boot/initramfs-linux-lts.img' - any ideas? relevant, irrelevant? action needed?) Edit: works with sudo, silly me. Still doesn't seem to contain any fonts in the .img so it's still probably somewhat of an issue

Edit 2: clearing the vconsole.conf file again does get rid of those errors technically. But it leaves me with the English (US) layout because that is the default fallback.

And the localectl status:

localectl status 
System Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
    VC Keymap: sr-latin
   X11 Layout: rs
  X11 Variant: latin

In the log you can see loadkeys complaining that sr-latin does not exist, however it does get listed by localectl list-keymaps. On the other hand the only place I find it is /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwertz/sr-latin.map.gz - is this where loadkeys looks for it or is it the wrong location?

English is not my first language, so I'm sorry if anything is confusing; ask and I will try to clarify. And if you need any other info ask and I will provide as available.

I updated packages, shutdown and now computer can't find "boot():/initramfs-linux-zen.img"

how might that happened and how to fix it?

(Kde Plasma) I installed steam on an old computer and then I did "sudo pacman -Syu" and then it shut down my computer, black screen. I turned it back on and Grub is not showing arch. IDK, I wasn't doing anything else. Literally just opened my laptop to install steam, nothing else was open other than Steam and Kitty.

Can anybody tell me what to do? I'm stuck on bios since Grub sends me straight to it after 5 seconds

Arch wiki says running the command ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars will show you if the dir exists or not which means you are in uefi if it does exist which is my case i then ran the bootctl install command which gave me this output that did make some directories but after copying 2 things it said mount point /boot is world accessible which is a security hole and same thing for boot/loader/random-seed at the end it said not booted with efi or running in a container. Am i in the right boot mode or whatever?? (Not sure if important but this is a distro hop so i didnt partition the disk myself i just formatted to xfs and mounted)

How to install Diablo Immortal, Battle.net app in arch Linux because it use Arxan kernel-level anti-cheat?

Via Lutris I can run Diablo III, but not Diablo Immortal.

Took all my notes and transcribed all of the known failure modes I could find into the debian version of this guide, but also expanded it to arch and fedora because I use those too. Hope it helps someone: https://github.com/crussella0129/linux-nivida-troubleshooting

https://preview.redd.it/v0y74spbnb2h1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=29e2ed33c6f3ade2317fa65dc9e7c8d39a410c9d

eu tava quase endoidando pq queria usar uma distro nova, tava em duvida entre zorin e pop os mas acabei indo pro arch kkkk o foda é que não to conseguindo personalinzar nada, to usando com kde plasma e ta tudo feio e redundante pq não to conseguindo personalizar, não quero fazer arroz não, so deixar bonitinho mesmo, o problema vem de que toda vez que tento instalar algo pela propria loja não carrega e da erro http/2 e baixando as pastas pelo site não foi de jeito nenhum, por fim, pro pessoal que usam distros com kde bonitinho, mostrem o de voces

My buddy and I are having a dispute. He is throwing around "I use arch BTW" but hes on Omarchy. I don't think he can say that unless hes actually using Arch and not an opinionated Arch Rice. What do you guys think?

I recently re-install Arch Linux, and i saw the news about the Pascal architecture drop

But for some reason, when i search about nvidia packages, both the AUR and pacman show me the open-source driver instead

So my question is why i'm affected by the drop of the Pascal architecture while i'm on a Ampere architecture ?

>This question it was partial solved. I'm waiting the vendor support from my laptop fix the GPG keys from their mirrors.

Hi guys!

Is someone experiencing failing updates today?

:: Import PGP key E71F8DF725D88A26, "i02-ch1b <abuild@i02-ch1b>"? [Y/n] 
Y

error: 
key "E71F8DF725D88A26" could not be looked up remotely

error: 
required key missing from keyring

error: 
failed to commit transaction (unexpected error)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

 -> 
error installing repo packages :: Import PGP key E71F8DF725D88A26, "i02-ch1b <abuild@i02-ch1b>"? [Y/n] Y
error: key "E71F8DF725D88A26" could not be looked up remotely
error: required key missing from keyring
error: failed to commit transaction (unexpected error)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
 -> error installing repo packages

The error is blocking all updates.

I know that Arch adds new versions of packages "when they are ready", but I found it weird that the Extra repo has version 8.7.0-12 of Calibre (released on July 2025), while the latest version available in Calibre's website is 9.8.0. In the AUR you can find calibre-bin, which installs the latest version.

I thought that maybe the devs decided to stop maintaining that package, but if that's the case, why it hasn't been removed from the repos? Then I thought that maybe there is a good reason for keeping that specific version, so I searched both the forum and this subreddit for more information about this, but I couldn't find any. So, does anybody knows why the version on the repos is outdated? (Not complaining or anything, I'm just genuinely intrigued.)

Ive been on zorin for about 9 months now and think it's time to move to a distro that is more customisable, more mine and more cool in general. However, ive got things on zorin i don't want to lose. Ive got an insanely riced gnome i want to keep, 80gb of games, a lutris config that has been debugged by chatgpt more times than i care to remeber and generally just a bunch of micro configs, extentions and customisation i dont want to lose. Is there a way to install arch with gnome and have this transferred over to there? i understand drivers, some packages etc wont be able to but i want as much of this configuration and files to be transferred over. my first thought was just have a bunch of mountable volumes in my disk, but i dont know how i'd do that, as im dual booted with kali. any help would be appreciated

Hi, I think I downloaded Arch Hyprland about two days ago, and my file manager (Dolphin) isn't working. I can't select the program for the file type, for example, opening an image in Google or a PDF in Zathura, I don't know, and I can't open any file of any type. I don't know what to do or how to fix it, since I haven't found anything on the wiki. I hope I'm not breaking any rules, and my English is pretty bad, so I'm kind of using Google Translate, so I can't expect much.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1sxa85y/dx12_games_do_not_launch_on_nvidia_gpu_595_open/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button.

So, I had issues with NVIDIA not properly working with modern DX11/12 games through DXVK/VKD3D. I then found out that the issues stems from my nvidia gpu not being recognized as CUDA device.

Eventually, the issue was fixed by removing `page_poison=1` from boot kernel parameters (you typically find it in `/etc/modprobe/*` or `/etc/default/grub`). Second issue was the `nvidia_uvm` (on debian, it's `nvidia-current-uvm`) not being loaded at boot (you can load it manually after boot, or add it to `/etc/initramfs-tools/modules` for debian or `/etc/mkinitcpio.conf` for arch).

I tested the fix on arch and debian. Both work great! This post is for those people who are striving to death to find fix for such issue (I am one of them)!

I am on cachyos
i been looking for netlimiter long time tried trinkle
tried to create my own with vibe coding
i want to use it to download ollama and huggingface AI models
when i download them my family cant watch TV cause it takes all net

If you guys are using any netlimiter software or know how to limit ollama or any software using net please suggest

Hi everyone.I've switched from windows to ubuntu and now arch for several months.I just received a job offer and plan to work full-time while self-studying cs knowledge My goal is to build strong foundations and eventually get into a CS Master’s program (and possibly PhD later).

My current laptop felt very bad on windows. I will never use windows again.

Thank you for your reply and sorry in advance if i say something wrong.

(Actually, i considered macbook air but it's not open-source,so i didn't like it.)

Edit:Sorry didn't mention that.I need a dgpu for gaming + future software development (including possible ML / AI self-study when i'm master). My budget is around... RTX 4070 / 4080 laptop level.

So, I've been using arch for a few weeks now, tweaked a bunch of stuff, installed packages, uninstalled packages, some without removing configs and dependencies, I've vimed my way through config files, ran a bunch of commands I don't remember anymore to fix minor inconveniences like setting default file browser in xdg, and I'm getting to a point where I'm satisfied with my setup, it's a minimalist setup with swayWM, my question is, how do I remove all the unused stuff I don't need anymore? How do I know what is useful or not, which is safe to remove? And how would I go about recreating this setup if I was ever to format my PC or install arch on another computer? Can I see through pacman or systemd which alterations were done by me and recreate it in a script?

Before you point me to the arch wiki, I'll read it, don't you worry, Im just at work right now and thought I should gather other user's experiences in the meantime. Thanks in advance.