[Huawei Nova/Nova Plus Guides, News, & Discussion] Vinnom:
I'm back =)

When I started to use linux, I went with Ubuntu. Unity DE wasn't my thing, so I tried Mint too. I used Mint for sometime but Cinnamon is too much Windows alike for me and I was trying to use something away as possible from Windows looks. Then I tried other distros: Fedora, OpenSuse... and I tried some flavours too, as Xfce, LXDE, Gnome... And I then I never let it go from Gnome (at that time, it was already Gnome 3). Then I started to study russian language and I met a guy from computer science course there. He was an arch user and recommended it to me. I wasn't a expert (I'm not now too, but I know a little more) with linux but I accepted the challenge.

Well, lets start to comment what you said.

Arch and its based distros uses pacman for handling ****. There are 4 repositories you will need:

- core

- extra

- community

- multilib

Multilib isn't available by default, at least not in Arch. To check, go to /etc/pacman.conf and uncomment the following lines:

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

Notes: core is the only repository maintened by arch guys. It has linux and other core packages for a distro to work. Extra is maintened by official groups, as Gnome or Mozilla, who has its own crew. Community is the one maintened by "official" community members and multilib has de x86-64 packages we need.

One other great thing about arch: arch user repository, aka AUR. Inside this repository, you will find unofficial packages, maintened by users. But AUR packages can't be handled by pacman, so you will need yaourt, which is basically, a pacman that can install things from AUR headachelessly. But, yaourt itself it is an AUR package. The steps to install it would be (you will also need package-query - yaourt dependency and an AUR package too - and the steps to install it are the same. Install it before yaourt):

- Go to yaourt page inside AUR

- Download snapshot (at the right of the screen). You'll have a tar.gz file, extract it.

- You will have a PKGBUILD file. This is a make file. Just run "$ makepkg" command inside the folder that contains it and it will compile everything it needs and output a tar.xz file

- As .deb files in Ubuntu and Debian based distros, you just need to install this file outputted now. But you will run:

# pacman -U file.tar.xz

I'll leave here useful commands. It's useful to create alias for them inside ~/.bashrc file too.

pacman -S package ### command to install package from repositories
pacman -Ss package ### command to search for packages in repositories
pacman -Sg group ### command to list every package from a group (eg gnome)
pacman -Rsc package ### command to remove a package and all of its dependecies - must be used carefuly
pacman -Rs package ### command to remove a package and its dependecies that are not used by other packages
pacman -Rdd package ### commando to remove a package without its dependecies
pacman -Syu ### command to sync repositories and update packages
pacman -Syy ### command to sync repositories - it is a good practice to run it before install any package
systemctl poweroff ### poweroff computer
systemctl reboot ### reboot computer
systemctl suspend ### suspend to RAM
systemctl hibernate ### suspend to HDD
pacman -Sc && sudo pacman-optimize ### command to clean a lot of garbage. But it is good to not run it, unless your var partition is overloaded
pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qtdq) ### command to remove all unused packages that are cached
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg ### if you're using grub as bootloader, it is good to run after linux get updated
pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring ### update your keyring. Useful when a key gets outdated

All systemctl commands can be done without sudo. Almost all pacman will ask sudo permission (unless search command, I think). If you installed yaourt, you can replace all 'pacman' by 'yaourt' (Just pacman-optimize must stay as is. And to update aur packages, 'pacman -Syu' must be 'yaourt -Syua' . Don't run yaourt with sudo. When superuser password is needed, it will ask).

One more useful thing. You need to edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. Leave there only your country mirrors. I suggest to leave some RU (closer too you) or US - they are always stable.

Other thing, go to /etc/makepkg.conf and edit the variable CFLAGS 'march' tag. It should be "-march=native". If it isn't like that, maybe it will be slower to compile somethings.

At last, but not least, I recommend you to run:

# pacman -Syy
# pacman -S base base-devel

It will install all base components you need (things already installed will be marked as 'reinstalling') to build android. Other specific things, you can find what is needed to install from Android page at Arch Wiki (you will need yaourt or manually install from AUR 2 packages). Further and better instructions of how to proceed is there too.

If you need anything more, just ask ^^

If you decide to install arch, I can help too.