RPi2 Arch Linux

These are my notes right now on how to install Arch Linux on the Raspberry Pi 2 as well as set up a GUI

Install:

SD Card Set Up:

follow installation instructions here(Linux, you can make a bootable usb and follow this, i will try to release a plain .img of RPi2Arch in the future)

Set up Arch: Update Arch, Create User, Change Time, Video Driver:

walk through initial installation here, we didn't mount any extra partitions, ignore swap as the constant read/write damages your sd card.

if you are planning on using a window manager/desktop environment install

xf86-video-fbturbo (experimental rpi video driver) or xf-video-fbdev (ordinary driver)

Xorg:

sudo pacman -S xorg-xinit (automatically start the window manager after login) xorg-server

Window Manager:

• Openbox(similar to windows, light and configurable(look into obconf))
• mkdir -p .config/openbox (makes directory for your openbox config files)
• sudo pacman -S openbox (install openbox itself)
• cp /etc/xdg/openbox/* .config/openbox/ (copy files to your openbox config directory)
• sudo pacman -S (proograms you want to install like a panel ie Tint2)
• nano /config/openbox/autostart (edit what programs start with openbox)
• scroll down and add tint2 & to the bottom, Ctrl+X to quit, press Y to save and enter to overwrite the file

• i3(another window manager, ignore this if you already installed openbox):
• sudo pacman -S i3-wm dmenu(as a light application launcher, use Mod+d to use)
• nano ~/.config/i3/config, scroll down and delete the last part about starting i3status

• cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc .xinitrc (copy the original xinitrc to .xinitrc folder)
• nano .xinitrc (configure 'startx' to run the window manager)
• scroll to the bottom, delete everything starting at twm & as we didn't install them, 
• then add exec openbox-session or i3 depending on what you chose, Ctrl+X, Y, enter.
• press startx to start the window manager

Programs

Here is a helpful list of the packages installed in the default raspbian environment

• Install Yaourt for easy access to AUR (Arch Linux User Repository) files
• install base-devel
• look up the directory of package-query 
• curl -O http://mir.archlinux.fr/~tuxce/releases/package-query/package-query-1.6.2.tar.gz(paste the url under sources)

• tar zxvf package-query-1.6.2.tar.gz 

• cd package-query-1.6.2

• inside the new folder make a file call PKGBUILD and copy the pkgbuild into it 

• makepkg -si

• nano /etc/pacman.conf

• [archlinuxfr]
  SigLevel = Never
  Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/arm

• pacman -Sy yaourt

• Terminal Emulator - Xterm(default), rxvt-unicode(if you're looking for a bit more)
• IDE/Text Editor - Geany
• Image Viewer & Background Manager - Feh
• Player - omxplayer (requires xorg-xset and xorg-xrefresh, VLC is too laggy)
• no gui, run in terminal with: omxplayer -o (type hdmi or local for jack audio) (directory of video file)
• System Panel - Tint2
• File Manager - PCManFM, or ranger for a terminal experience (you can enable previews too)
• Web Browser - Firefox(laggy), Midori(has no youtube), iceweasel(not as laggy as Firefox), i have yet to try pale moon and epiphany browsers, apparently Minimal Kiosk Browser works well with YouTube but i can only find it on Debian at the moment.
• Audio Driver - alsa-utils alsa-firmware alsa-lib alsa-plugins
• adjust audio with alsamixer and change input with amixer cset numid=3 x
• where x = 0 for auto, 1 for analog, 3 for HDMI

desktop uses about 34mb of ram in i3

edit openbox theme

edit tint2

GPIO

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python-raspberry-gpio/  for more info
download the tar.gz file
extract the file
open the folder and create text file PKGBUILD
paste this into PKGBUILD:

Now open up geany and go to

[Build] - [Set Build Commands] - [Execute commands]

Change 'python "%f"' to ' sudo python "%f" ' 

now you have RPi.GPIO working and your scripts in Geany will run with root privledge (be careful) 

notes:

follow this for openbox install (no need for python2-xdg just add programs into startup file)
optimize boots