Here's why you may want to use Arch Linux, followed by how to set it up.

Who's Arch Linux Good For?

Linux is popular for a number of reasons, but high on that list is the fact that, with Linux, you have a lot more power to tweak your OS to your liking. You also have the opportunity to learn more about the way computers and operating systems work. While Ubuntu certainly fits this bill (when compared with Windows or Mac OS), intermediate Linux users may be itching to try something new. Arch Linux is a great distribution for intermediate users looking to dig into Linux a bit more and essentially roll your own fast, stable, super-personalized distro.

Why Arch Linux?

As Arch is definitely not for Linux beginners, you may be wondering what its advantages are. While it's pretty popular among developers and the like, it's also pretty popular among general tweakers and geeks that like to really get at the nuts and bolts of a system. If you've been a Linux user for a little while and you'd love to get a bit deeper and learn about how it works so you can more properly and openly configure it to work for you, Arch is the perfect next step in your journey.

The Arch Way

However, while this may seem like a burden to some, it's actually one of Arch's biggest advantages. Instead of configuring the distribution to be idiot-proof, Arch forces you (politely) to learn what each configuration file and important terminal command does early on. Thus, when something breaks or when you want to configure something beyond what KDE or GNOME has options for, you pretty much already know where to go and what to do.
Note that I'm not trying to say that idiot-proofing is a bad thing. In fact, being simple to use is one of the best characteristics a modern OS can have—for the average PC user. Once again, this guide is not for those people. This is for the people that strive to tinker with their operating system's insides.

Why, as an Ubuntu User, You May Want to Switch

You'll Know What's Really Going on Behind the Scenes

For the record, I love Ubuntu. It works great out of the box on my netbook, and I don't see myself migrating that PC to a new OS anytime soon. I've also used it to repurpose some old PCs for my mother around the house, up north, etc. and it works beautifully. If you use Linux solely because it's free, open, and easy to use, you don't need to complicate your life for no reason. However, if you've used Linux for a little while and would like to take the next step, Arch is where you want to go.
While Ubuntu works out of the box with a lot of comptuers, and provides a lot of user-friendly configuration for certain things, it's a nightmare to configure for others. It provides no way of teaching you where the correct config files are for your eighty button mouse or your three monitor setup, and I hate to say it, but in my experience the Ubuntu forums have been less than helpful. Again, not to hate, but that's just what I've experienced.
Arch's installation doesn't really have a graphical interface. It's mostly done through the command line, and consists of you using a guide like this and the fabulous Arch Wiki to partition your drive, install a minimal base system, and go through each base configuration file and learn what it does. So one day, when you want to automatically mount another hard drive when Arch boots, you will know, at the very least, it requires adding something to the options column of /etc/fstab, and you won't be the least bit intimidated by that fact. And, when you don't know what to do, Arch has one of the best documentations and communities I've ever seen.

You'll Always Have the Newest Software

Unlike other popular operating systems, Arch doesn't have a big update every two years, one year, or even six months—Arch updates whatever it wants, whenever it wants, which means you're constantly on the bleeding edge of both the OS and the software you use.

Note that in this instance, "bleeding edge" does not mean "ridiculously unstable". Lots of testing goes into these packages before they get added to the repositories, and you aren't going to find your PC crashing every day because you're always getting the newest updates. What it really means is that you'll get software updates as soon as they're ready to use, not as soon as Ubuntu gets around to updating their repositories. If Thunderbird releases an update, you'll get that update the next day—not the next month.

You Build a Killer Operating System that Fits Your Needs and Wants

Since you start off with a minimal install and build up from there, you won't have any unecessary packages bloating up your system. You have complete control over everything that goes into your setup, and you can make it as small and minimalistic or as big and powerful as you want—you essentially build your own, fast, stable, super-customized Linux distro from the ground up. And who wouldn't love that?

Installing Arch Linux

This guide contains the methods I found work best and were easiest for me, and they should work with most PC builds without a problem. If you do run into any problems, or have any specific needs that aren't fulfilled by this guide (like if you are using a statip IP), you can probably find more detail in the corresponding section of Arch's Beginner's Guide, so head over there when necessary.
Click on any of the following images to get a closer look.

Install The Arch Linux Base

The first step is installing the Arch Linux base system on your drive. This consists of the easy stuff like setting the clock, getting your partitions in order, and selecting any packages that are necessary out of the gate, and the educational part where you learn what each base config file does and how to edit it.

Get Yourself an Arch Linux Install CD

There are two main types of installations for Arch: Core and Netinstall. The Core ISO contains all the packages you need to install Arch, while the Netinstall ISO grabs them all from the net. The Core takes longer to download at the beginning, while the Netinstall will take longer when you download all the packages—though the Netinstall will grab all the most up-to-date packages, while you'll have to update the Core install afterwards. We'll use the Netinstall version, since it's faster in the end and we'll assume you have an internet connection on the computer in question. However, you can still follow this guide with the Core CD no problem.

Set Up Your Partitions

While you could always partition your drive from the Arch Linux installation CD, you might as well do it now, especially if your computer already has a working OS on it (and since you'll need something to do while that ISO downloads and burns). Assuming you already know how to partition drives, go ahead and make one for your OS and a nice 1GB swap partition for good measure. Format them however you want; you'll just reformat them once you install Arch. This setup merely takes the fear out of partitioning, which can be a litte nerve-racking when done from the command line.
If you do this from Linux (like a Live Ubuntu or GParted CD), you'll make your life a lot easier. Once you split up your partitions, note the names of the two you'll be using (i.e. /dev/sda1 as the OS partition and /dev/sda2 as your swap partition), as that's how you'll have to refer to the partitions during the install process.

Boot from the CD and Start the Installation

Installing the Base System

Step 2 is setting the clock. This step is pretty easy; just follow the instructions. When it asks you to set the time, choose UTC if you only have UNIX-like operating systems on your computer (this includes Mac OS X), and choose "localtime" if you'll be dual-booting Windows.
Next, prepare your hard drives. If you've already partitioned your drives as you want them, skip to step 3 of this part, "Manually Configure Block Device, Filesystems and Mountpoints".
Pick "dev" at the next prompt, select the partition on which you want the OS, and hit Enter. Select your desired filesystem—I personally use ext4, though ext3 is also a popular choice—and hit Enter again. Select root (/) for the mountpoint, and enter a name for the partition if you so desire. Leave the options boxes that pop up blank, unless you have reason to believe you need specific options (again, if you're an advanced user). Go through the same process for your swap partition (formatting it as Swap).
When you're done and you see both partitions scroll down to "DONE". It will give you an error message, likely stating that you don't have a separate /boot filesystem—this is fine; just hit ignore and continue on.
Step 4 consists of selecting packages to pre-install on your system. Honestly, I didn't need much here, but it's good to go through the step anyway. Just hit OK on the first window, as you don't need the base-devel packages. When it gives you a long list of packages, I'd recommend scrolling all the way down to the bottom and selecting wireless_tools, if you have a wireless network you want to connect to. Hit space to select a highlighted package, and hit Enter to continue to the next step.
Step 5 will install all the necessary packages. Grab a cup of tea and let it do it's thing; it'll take awhile.

/etc/rc.conf: This file is your general system configuration file. It contains a lot of different things, from your location and timezone to what hardware modules you load on startup. Right off that bat, you'll need to scroll down to the NETWORKING section and set your HOSTNAME to whatever you want, and add wlan0 to your INTERFACES if you plan on using wireless networking (so the line would read INTERFACES=(eth0 wlan0)). Again, if you're using a statip IP, you may need to enter more here. Take a look at the DAEMONS section, because you'll see it a lot in the installation process—it basically lists all the scripts we want to start up with our computer. We'll be adding a few in the near future.
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf: This file configures the initial ram filesystem (also known as initramfs), which is essentially the image that performs the actions necessary for your hard drive to control the Linux kernel (like loading the SATA module required to recognize the drive). You probably don't need to do anything here at the moment.
/etc/resolv.conf: You will only need to even think about this file if you use a static IP, which as I've mentioned, we won't go throug here.
/etc/hosts: This file associates hostnames with their IP addresses. Make sure your computer's hostname matches the one you picked in /etc/rc.conf (which it should have done automatically), and move along.
/etc/hosts.deny and /etc/hosts.allow: These files deny and allow incoming connections from specific IPs. You'll only need this if you plan on using ssh. The allow file will allow only connections from the ips you select, and reject all others, while the deny file will only deny the ones you list.
/etc/locale.gen: You'lll need to select your location here. By default, everything should be commented out except the two marked en_US, which if you're an English speaker from the US are the two you want. Make sure that's correct (or, if you're from elsewhere, comment them out and uncomment the ones for your location) and move on.
/etc/pacman.conf: Pacman is the incredibly awesome package manager for Arch Linux, and these are the files that configure it, including which repositories it searches. You're probably fine with the default three repositories: [core], [extra], and [community]. However, if you're on a 64-bit system, you'll probably want to head into /etc/pacman.conf and uncomment the [multilib] line and the line below it, near the bottom of the file. This adds the [multilib] repository to your setup, which contains 32-bit applications for those situations in which you need them.
/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist: This file contains a list of mirrors that Pacman uses to download files. Again, go ahead and uncomment one or a few mirrors near you. They'll work for now.
When you're done viewing all the config files, hit "Root-Password" to set the password for the root account, then scroll down to "Done" and press Enter. It will run through a few processes to configure your system and return you to the main menu.
Step 5 is installing the bootloader, which for the purposes of this guide will be the ever-familiar GRUB. It will throw you into the config file, which you might like to poke around in, but doesn't really need editing at the moment.
Depending on if and how you're dual-booting, you'll want to install this in a different place, but the default of /dev/sda (where sda is the drive upon which Arch is installed) should be fine. Note that's /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1—you want to install this on the drive, not the partition, if you're using it as your main bootloader. Now, if you're using a different boot menu or bootloader already (such as Chameleon for Hackintoshes, rEFIt for Macs, etc.), you'll want to install it on Arch's partition instead.
When you're done, go ahead and exit the install, and type reboot when you return to the command prompt. Arch is now installed on your system. However, you aren't out of the woods yet—the next step is making sure your network, sound, video, and other things are in line and installing a desktop environment from which you can work.

Configure the Necessities

If you can get your base system to reboot to a simple login prompt, congratulations! You have a working base system. Now, we're going to get some of the details ironed out, like sound, graphics, users, and other back-end necessities.

Update the System with Pacman

Log back in as root. If you used the Netinstall, you're most likely up to date, but for piece of mind and teaching purposes we'll update the system now anyways.
Pacman is the package manager used in Arch, and it's essentially the Arch equivalent of Apt in Ubuntu. Pacman is simple, lightweight, and fast, and surprisingly easy to use. I don't miss Synaptic's graphical interface at all; installing things from the command line is such a cinch that it seems unecessary.
To update your system, run the following command:
Again, if you used the Netinstall, you probably won't have anything to update, but Core installers should definitely let this run (in fact, you may want to run it a few times, until it tells you it's finished). And, since Arch has a rolling release model, all you need to do to keep your system up to date is run this command every once in a while—it will update everything you need.
Note at this point you may get some errors, failing to retrieve files from mirrors—I definitely had this problem more than once—and often it's because a specific mirror is down. If you edit your mirrorlist with the following command:
You can try finding the broken one by uncommenting one mirror at a time until it works. If the update fails at the first step (failing to check the repository instead of failing to download the package), make sure your internet connection is working. If at any point here you install a new kernel, you'll want to restart before doing anything else.

Add a User and Install Sudo

Since we don't want to use the system as root all the time (as that can be dangerous), the next thing we'll do is add you as a user. To do so, just run the following command:
Next, add a password for your new user by running:
and typing in your desired password when prompted.
You'll also probably want to install Sudo at this point, since you'll no doubt need it for many a task (as you've already learned if you're a regular Linux user). To do so, just use Pacman:
That's how easy adding a package is in Pacman. If you wanted to see a list of packages pertaining to a search term, you could type:
Once you've installed Sudo, you'll want to add your user as a valid sudoer. You'll need to use the special command visudo to do this, which uses the editor vi to edit /etc/sudoers. Unfortunately, vi is not very friendly if you don't know how to use it, so for now we'll change visudo's default editor to our friend nano by running it with the EDITOR variable, like this:
You can use many strategies to add your user as a sudoer, but we're going to just tell Arch to let all users in the group "wheel" use sudo. So, uncomment this line in /etc/sudoers:
When you're done, you can move on to configuring video and sound.

Installing ALSA

Before installing ALSA, you'll want to edit your /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf file by typing nano /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf at the command prompt. Add the following line to the file:
This will make sure the snd-pcsp modeule load last, ensuring that your sound will work correctly. Then, install alsa-utils with Pacman. You should know how to do this by now, but for good measure, the command is pacman -S alsa-utils. However, you'll also probably want alsa-oss. You can actually install them both in one fell swoop with:
Next, you'll want to start up alsamixer as a normal user (not as root). To do so, type su - yourusername and then enter:
Make sure the correct channels are unmuted (usually Master and PCM, though you may need to turn up others like Front Speaker or Headphone). Usually, you'll want to raise their volume all the way up, but make sure under "Item" at the top there is not a positive number next to "dB gain". If there is, turn the channel down until "dB gain" is zero. This will ensure that you don't get any sound distortion.
Exit alsamixer with Esc and check if your sound is working correctly by typing in the following command:
If you hear a woman's voice, your sound works correctly. If not, go back and make sure the right channels are unmuted. You might have to play around until you get the right configuration.
Switch back to the root user by running su and type in alsactl store to store these values. To make your computer call on these settings at boot, throw your /etc/rc.conf into nano and add alsa to the DAEMONS section, like so:

Installing X

We're nearing the end, hang in there! The last thing before installing the desktop environment itself is to set up X, the window manager. Start by installing Xorg:
You can also include the package mesa if you forsee yourself using 3D graphics.
Before testing X, you'll also want to grab xf86-input-keyboard and xf86-input-mouse with Pacman:
If you're on a laptop, you'll want xf86-input-synaptics as well.
For now, let's try starting X as-is:
If it works, you should be able to interact with a very basic windowed environment and run commands in xterm. You can exit by typing exit into xterm and hitting Enter.
It is here where I learned I used the wrong video drivers, so I had to uninstall the old ones and reinstall a different package. For the record, to remove a package in Pacman, just type:
the n flag removes all the configuration files related to a package, while the s flag removes any dependencies that are now unecessary. I generally always use n and s when removing a package, because I like to keep my system relatively clean.

Get the Desktop Up and Running

You're in the home stretch now (well, the home stretch to getting a running desktop environment, after which you still have a lot of setup to do—but the fun kind). This part is easy; just install a few fonts:
And install your desktop environment of choice. While there are quite a few, it's likely that as a beginner Arch user you're looking for something like GNOME or KDE (both of which are great), so to install them just run:
or
Then, start hal with:
and add dbus, hal, and your graphical login (either gdm or kdm) to the DAEMONS section of /etc/rc.conf. Make sure dbus and hal come before network or networkmanager, like this:
You should be able to startx (as a normal user) or, alternatively, restart your computer and enjoy your new desktop environment.

Where to Go From Here

Obviously, this isn't the end of the story. It's not up to you to configure your desktop as you see fit. You're on your own now, but here are a few things you might want to read up on:

• Browser Plugins: You'll probably want (however begrudgingly) to install Adobe Flash, and this wiki page will help you do so.
• Arch User Repository: One of the really neat things about Arch is that, for packages not in the usual repositories, there's the AUR, a great, communidy-driven repository that contains packages. You'll definitely want to read up on it and, if you don't find a specific packages in the Arch repositories, check the AUR to see if someone has built it. To make your life even easier, install something like Packer to make installing AUR packages as easy as using Pacman (e.g. packer -S chromium-dev).
• Use the Forums: They'll be your greatest source of help. Of course, make sure you Google and search the forums before you go and start asking questions.
• Compiz: Because who doesn't like cool desktop effects? Alternatively, KDE users can also use the built-in Kwin just by going to System Settings.
• Xorg: I know I already mentioned this, but again—whether you're setting up your dual monitors or getting all those extra mouse buttons working, you're probably going to have to mess with Xorg. Also read up on your individual video cards, and search the wiki and forums for article specific to your hardware and peripherals—you'd be surprised which things are already heavily documented.