#net install

I did a net (re)install yesterday. Personally, I think that net install is better than installing off of a CD media.

When installing through CD media, base installation can take some time. After which you'd have to do a full system update which will download about ~100MB worth of packages which, again, could take some time. Also, when installing through the CD media, a lot of other packages get installed by default (which you probably don't need e.g. ndiswrapper) depending on the ISO you are using (I used Archboot 2011-02).

A net install is faster because it will download the latest packages from the Arch mirrors first before installing thus eliminating the need to do a full system update after install. And during a net install, you can choose what packages get installed (well, it's the same as with the CD media but I noticed that the CD media ISO I used installed many other packages). If you want a base install, choose base and devel packages only during install.

Of course, you will need to have a live internet connection when using the net install method of installing Arch Linux.

Once I got the base (and devel) system installed, I needed to add a few packages to manage my networking activities.

First, upgrade the pacman database management system by issuing the ff. command:

# pacman-db-upgrade

This command installs the necessary tools needed to issue ifconfig related commands:

# pacman -S net-tools

This command installs the necessary tools needed for the netcfg command (of course, this is a personal choice of network management; choose one that you prefer):

# pacman -S netcfg