Arch Linux + Windows 10 Encrypted UEFI Installation Guide (2020)

In this video we explore setting up Windows 10 and Arch Linux on a laptop. The installation includes encrypting the Windows and Arch partitions, along with setting up a bootloader (grub) to choose between the systems. Throughout the video I explain details on how the installation process works.

This setup is my daily driver for work and personal. I hope you find it helpful!

[jiqu]

For anyone using the 2021 Arch image it appears to be missing wifi-menu referenced in the video to get WiFi working when booting from Arch USB installer. It recommends using "iwctl" to select wireless networking and the following commands should get you going.

1. From the command line type "iwctl" and hit enter
2. In the new prompt that opens type "help" if you want to see all commands available
3. Type "device list" and under the name section remember your wireless device name
4. Type "station (your device name here) scan" to make sure it finds your WiFi network
5. Type "station (your device name here) connect myWifiSSID" and hit enter.
6. It will ask for your WiFi password, enter it and hit return
7. Type "quit" to exit iwctl and at the command prompt type "ping www.google.com" which should respond this time.

Hope this helps!

[rock]

Very helpful! Not only did you explain how to do it, but you explained why you were performing each step as well.

[kavan]

Dude your videos on linux are an absolute godsend for someone like me who's just getting into Arch. You hit the perfect blend of giving good explanations at a comfortable and engaging pace. Keep it up man, I look forward to learning more from you.

[tennisfreak]

How this video does not get more views is beyond my understanding. Excellent and step by step tutorial. i finally got my duo boot system setup and knows exactly what is going along the way. Thank you so so much

[jorgesilva]

I've been watching a BUNCH of arch installation videos with windows10 in dual boot. This is by far the best one! (simple, easy to understand, educative, relaxed)
Well done mate! Cheers <3

[Ddos]

From your video I got the vibe you have at least 100k subs and was shocked to see you have only 4k... Thank you for the amazing tutorial, it was exactly what I needed and I would have f-ed it up if it wasn't for this video.

[martinzen]

oh man, greatest arch linux install video ever, really top notch. Thanks so much.

[kevinpita]

Thank you so much. I have been trying to do this and I couldn't get bootloader working and now thanks to you I have it up and working!. Really good explanation :)

[cfufswu]

Awesome tip about using a second machine while installing Arch.
One of those things that I just never thought about!

[emshukar]

I'd like to point this video as 'THE MOST VALUABLE' in terms of arch/win encrypted dual-boot. And I'm pleased to give thumb up for the more then well done job! I never leave a comment without a reason, so if some one is in doubt about the content - trust me...it worth it . Thanks to the author! Stay safe !

[hcjkruse]

Good job. It was a while ago Installed a dual boot. Last time was SUSE 6 something in 200?. I was impressed with arch on old underpowered hardware(bulldozer).
Arch doesn't install crap and not has 3 different package management systems to debug.

Now I wanted to try it on my personal laptop for a while. What kept me back was remembering Gentoo pain of fiddling with WiFi, firmware and boot settings. Luckily most of it seems automated. Your video really brought me back on track. Thanks!

One thing that came to mind is copy over an SSH public key to the arch iso so that I do not need to have a password for root. (not tried yet). This will allow me to automate most of the steps in this video for my system using Ansible. A reinstall will then be just put in the usb, get networking up and let Ansible do the rest. I already do that for Debian on WSL2.

[saidneder]

This is the video I was looking for THANK YOU!

[saidneder]

Once again I followed your tutorial and it worked perfectly! Although I used btrfs and the installation of grub could be simpler, by just letting os-prober check the windows partition, and in the cryptsetup of the grub config file instead of copying the UUID you can put just the device itself /dev/nvme0n1pX and it will work, just a suggestion, thank you!

[micleh]

Awesome. This is the best and most comprehensive tutorial on setting up a dual-boot and encrypted Windows and Arch system that I've ever seen. Thanks so much! Funny enough, the Arch part matches almost exactly the wiki I've written for my students, with the only exception that I use btrfs. I also think LVM for desktop systems is overkill. Sadly, most people, including almost all of my colleagues, rely on Bitlocker, which is, as you hinted at, only available in the Pro and Enterprise versions of Windows. In the Home edition, you cannot create encrypted volumes but just open them (which is bonkers).

[ellandill]

Great job! Clear and conrete explanation. And without lvm which makes things easier in case of troubles

[savantshuia]

11:03 Using "setfont solar24x32" is also a pretty easy way to get bigger font

[wildwng]

ive got dual boot arch and win11 running on sepeate m.2 drives. installed uefi arch first with systemd-boot then win 11. win 11 installed its boot files into my existing boot partition on linux m.2 drive. works flawless

[MarkParkTech]

As far as swap space is concerned, it's not really important on modern desktops, but on laptops that hibernate or sleep, you need either a swap partition or file to dump the contents of memory into so that when you turn the machine back on it resumes at the state it was before it hibernated. Honestly, it isn't super reliable on all systems because various manufacturers do things that are wonky, so I never use it personally.

I do recommend that if you are going to implement sleep/hibernate in your Linux system, that the swap space be double the amount of RAM you have, or at least enough more so that if you do end up using any swap space while running, you will still have enough room to dump all of your memory on to the swap partition. Does it necessarily need to be that big, no, not really, it's more of just a precaution. Even then, it's no guarantee it will work, and there's nothing preventing you from running a task or tasks that collectively use all that additional swap space and prevent you from hibernating. Of course, I imagine your computer would be quite frustrating to use by the time you get to that point anyway, and full reboot is probably preferred.

[dreamtoneamps]

Yes great video as others mentioned! I installed a variety of Linux distros before I seen your video here; It was on bare metal too (not VM) and I had a lot of trouble setting up grub in fact I had to even go into my bios using F2 during boot up to get into some of them since grub did not pick them up granted I barely new what I was doing. I learned a lot here though and picked up some really good points so thanks for sharing your knowledge, and that SSH tip was awesome too!

[juliosheen]

Awesome tutorial. Thank you very much. I like how you explain the steps you make. It shows that you have a lot of knowledge. I try it once my laptop arrives.