These are my instructions for installing Arch Linux onto a UEFI system and setting it up to use a BTRFS file system with subvolumes. It will also include installing the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment and SDDM display manager. This will be a succinct cheat sheet to help get you quickly get set up with a fully-fuctional Arch system. If you need a more comprehensive Arch installation guide, visit the Arch Wiki. Let's get 'er done!

Preparing system for install

Run ping command to ensure network connectivity.

ping -c 10 www.google.com

Enable Network Time Protocol (NTP).

timedatectl set-ntp true

timedatectl status

Find out the naming convention of your drive's partition (e.g. /dev/sda, /dev/vda, /dev/nvme0n1).

lsblk

Create partitions. You'll need an EFI partition and a Linux filesystem partition, swap is optional.

gdisk /dev/vda

o
n 1 (default) +512m     ef00   # EFI system partition
n 2 (default) +4g      8200   # Linux swap (optional, same size as RAM)
n 3 (default) (default) 8300   # Linux filesystem (if no swap - change partition number to 2)
w

Create filesystems.

mkfs.vfat /dev/vda1
mkswap /dev/vda2
mkfs.btrfs /dev/vda3

Create subvolumes on BTRFS filesystem.

mount /dev/vda3 /mnt
btrfs su cr /mnt/@
btrfs su cr /mnt/@home
btrfs su cr /mnt/@snapshots
btrfs su cr /mnt/@log
umount /mnt

Mount BTRFS partition and subvolumes to /mnt.

mount -t btrfs -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache=v2,subvol=@ /dev/vda3 /mnt

mkdir -p /mnt/{boot,home,.snapshots,var}
mkdir -p /mnt/var/log
mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi

mount -t btrfs -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache=v2,subvol=@home /dev/vda3 /mnt/home
mount -t btrfs -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache=v2,subvol=@snapshots /dev/vda3 /mnt/.snapshots
mount -t btrfs -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache=v2,subvol=@log /dev/vda3 /mnt/var/log

mount /dev/vda1 /mnt/boot/efi

swapon /dev/vda2

Arch Installation

Install Arch base packages and other useful ones to /mnt.

pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel mkinitcpio linux linux-headers linux-lts linux-lts-headers linux-firmware nano vim git os-prober grub grub-btrfs btrfs-progs efibootmgr networkmanager gvfs falkon gparted clamav clamtk gufw network-manager-applet gnome-keyring terminator flatpak htop plasma sddm

Generate Fstab file and then inspect the contents of it.

genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

cat /mnt/etc/fstab

Chroot into new installation.

arch-chroot /mnt

Configure system locale(s) by editing /etc/locale.gen file using the text editor of your choice. Locate and uncomment the line of your locale (e.g. en_US UTF-8).

Generate locale file.

locale-gen

Set timezone (modify for your timezone if different).

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern /etc/localtime

Set hardware clock.

hwclock --systohc --utc

Enable multilib repository by editing the /etc/pacman.conf file. Locate the line shown below and uncomment it. Should look like this:

[multilib]
include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Ensure multilib repository is working and also update all repositories.

pacman -Sy

Set system hostname.

echo yourhostname >> /etc/hostname

Change password of root.

Note: You will be prompted to enter a password and then will be prompted to reenter it for confirmation.

passwd

Create a standard non-root user account.

useradd -m -g users -G wheel -s /bin/bash yourname

Set password for new user.

passwd yourname

Edit sudoers file to allow newly created user to run commands and programs as if they were root.

EDITOR=nano visudo

Locate the line shown below and uncomment it. Should look like this:

%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Create system initial ramdisk environment for standard Arch kernel.

mkinitcpio -p linux

Create system initial ramdisk environment for Arch LTS kernel.

mkinitcpio -p linux-lts

Install GRUB EFI bootloader.

grub-install /dev/vda --efi-directory=/boot/efi

Update GRUB configuration file.

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Exit chroot environment

exit

Reboot system

reboot