System76 Oryx Pro + Arch Linux

Arch linux installation instructions for a System76 OryxPro.

DISCLAIMER: ~~This tutorial requires pre-release software out of the testing repos in order to work.~~* You should be aware that going forwards, you will likely need to manually manage your installation setup to return to a standard, non-testing environment. Also, this is Arch Linux and things move fast. If you find something to be inaccurate or incorrect here, please file an issue. I would like to know!

* UPDATE (1/17/2017): Obviously Arch has moved forwards since this was originally written. My Oryx model is a late 2015/early 2016, and there have been some hardware revisions since then. I expect some of this tutorial may be out of date, but much of it probably still holds true. Happy to accept update PRs; it's great to see an uptick of Oryx owners looking to run Arch :)

Partition and format drives

I'm dual booting Windows and using the SSDs available to me, so my partition setup is a little strange. Since Windows 10 likes to blow away anything you setup on the drive first, it's best to install that first and use the ESP partition it generated.

After installing Windows onto the larger of my 2 SSDs, I shrunk the data partition down as low as it would allow me to go. For some reason, I was only able to get down to about 130G, which was okay by me because that's about what I was shooting for anyway. It seems Windows limits how much you can shrink the partition since it has certain critical files on disk that prevents shrinking farther. Also, defragging won't help. Yay Microsoft. Additionally, Windows generated a second recovery partition at the end of the drive for some reason. I removed it to make way for the linux partitions.

/dev/sda # 128GB drive shipped with machine
  * /dev/sda1 -> 4G Linux Swap
  * /dev/sda2 -> 124G ext4 /home

/dev/sdb # 256GB drive I installed
  * /dev/sdb1 -> 300M Windows Recovery
  * /dev/sdb2 -> 99M FAT32 ESP (this is important!)
  * /dev/sdb3 -> 128M Microsoft Reserved (no idea what this is.)
  * /dev/sdb4 -> 134.3G Microsoft basic data (main windows data partition)
  * /dev/sdb5 -> 30G ext4 /
  * /dev/sdb6 -> 68.1 ext4 /var

mkswap /dev/sda1 && swapon

Create mountpoints and mount up partitions.

Setup mirrorlist

curl "https://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?country=US" > mirrorlist.b && \
  rankmirrors -n 12 mirrorlist.b > mirrorlist && pacman -Syy

Pacstrap

pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel

fstab

genfstab -U /mnt > /mnt/etc/fstab Verify things look good.

Change root

arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Initial personal env setup

pacman -S vim && echo "imap kj <Esc> > ~/.vimrc"
echo "export EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim" > ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc

Locale

Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen

locale-gen
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Time

hwclock --systohc --utc
pacman -S ntp && systemctl enable ntpd
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime

Microcode

pacman -S intel-ucode

Grub will pick this up and correctly enable the microcode updates, marking /boot/intel-ucode.img as the first initrd in the bootloader config file.

Boot Loader

Using GRUB for bootloader and chainloading Windows.

pacman -S grub efibootmger

efibootmgr required for adding EFI boot entries.

Install grub:

esp=/boot/efi grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=$esp \
  --bootloader-id=grub --recheck`

NOTE: The following is particular to my dual-boot setup. It is not required unless you are attempting something similar.

Custom boot options for Windows chainloading:

Copy over 40_custom to /etc/grub.d/40_custom, ensure 755 permissions.

If you are dual booting and you have a different partition scheme, substitute the appropriate values on the search line. You'll assuradly need to edit the UUID of the ESP partition.

Gen grub config: grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

NOTE: i915.preliminary_hw_support=1 may be a required kernel param. If so, add to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub In my testing, I haven't found it to be required since I'm running a kernel out of testing, addressed later. YMMV.

User config

Enable passwordless sudo if preferred: visudo

useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash $NEW_USER && passwd $NEW_USER

Touchpad drivers

pacman -S xf86-input-synaptics

Display Setup

This is the difficult part of getting Arch to run on an Oryx pro.

The Oryx Pro is an Nvidia Optimus enabled laptop. To leverage this, we're going to use Bumblebee, an effort to get Optimus to run correctly on Linux. It uses Intel graphics unless specified to use the discrete graphics via optirun.

NOTE: I'm choosing to run bumblebee+nvidia rather than nouveau for performance reasons. The proprietary drivers tend to run a little faster. It is also possible to use nouveau with bumblebee, in which case, obviously do not blacklist it in the grub config.

IMPORTANT: The Oryx Pro ships with it's hybird graphics chipset configured for discrete graphics, NOT hybird graphics. Hybrid graphics can be switch on in the BIOS settings via advanced chipset settings. Hold F7 > advanced chipset settings > switch from DISCRETE to MSHYBRID. Do not do so yet, since the arch iso will not boot with this switched on. (More specifically, it will boot, but you will be greeted with a blank screen.)

Install packages and setup:

pacman -S bumblebee mesa xf86-video-intel nvidia xorg-server
systemctl enable bumblebeed # Enable the bumblebee daemon
gpasswd -a $MY_USER bumblebee # Add main user to bumblebee group

Things are going to vary here depending on your preferred setup. I boot to tty login and manually launch Gnome with startx scripts. I will say I've had difficulties with some DMs, particularly GDM.

pacman -S xorg-xinit gnome && echo "exec gnome-session" > /home/$MY_USER/.xinitrc

!! Critical Tweaks !!

Install newest kernel and display drivers

After much experimentation, I've found this to be the only way to consistently boot. Again, do so at your own risk. To quote the wiki:

WARNING: Be careful when enabling the testing repository. Your system may break after performing an update. Only experienced users who know how to deal with potential system breakage should use it.

NOTE: testing is not for the "newest of the new" package versions. Part of its purpose is to hold package updates that have the potential to break the system, either by being part of the core set of packages, or by being critical in other ways. As such, users of testing are strongly encouraged to subscribe to the arch-dev-public mailing list, watch the testing repository forum, and to report all bugs.

1. Enable testing repos. Uncomment testing and community-testing in /etc/pacman.conf.

2. Sync repos and upgrade: pacman -Syyu. This is important because Arch Linux does not support parial upgrades. You should not cherry pick packages from testing, it's all or nothing. We're not in kansas anymore!

3. Install the latest nvidia proprietary drivers: pacman -S nvidia. The previous upgrade should have pulled in linux 4.4. If not, nvidia will as a dependency.

Enable early KMS

We're going to enable early KMS by baking intel_agp and i915 into the intial RAM image.

Add to MODULES, space separated, in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.

Rebuild intiram img: mkinitcpio -p linux

Network Setup

echo $MY_HOSTNAME > /etc/hostname
pacman -S networkmanager networkmanager-openvpn network-manager-applet
systemctl enable NetworkManager

Finalization

exit # Leave chroot
umount -R /mnt
reboot

Hold F7 and enter setup, switch from DISCRETE to MSHYBRID to enable hybrid graphics. F4 saves and restarts.

At this point, you should be able to boot into Arch proper from the grub selection. Confirm Intel and Nvidia are both recognized and bumblebee is happy:

lspci | grep VGA
journalctl -u bumblebeed

Launch your DE via preferred method. Optionally verify bumblebee is running correctly:

pacman -S mesa-demos && optirun glxgears -info

Known issues and remarks

• Unfortunately, we're still faced with a blank screen whenever the screen is shutoff. As a workaround, I've configured this to never happen. Since I'm normally on AC power, this isn't a huge deal for me, but it's clearly not ideal. Still troubleshooting this.

• While running bumblebee, you default to Intel graphics until explicitly executing with discrete graphics using optirun. I've setup a number of programs to execute via discrete graphics by editing their Exec directives inside the respective /usr/share/applications/*.desktop