Most what you will find in this post comes from this gist. I’m rewritting this here as a note in any case. Some more info about the installation process here on ArchWiki and also more info about the post-installation process.

1. Boot USB flash drive and make sure it’s connected via Ethernet.
2. Change terminal keys if you are not in qwerty:

   loadkeys fr

3. Disable the beeping sound (this one will save your ears and sanity):

   setterm -blength 0

4. Check if the system was booted with UEFI:

   cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size

   It should exists and be 64 if it’s booted in UEFI x86_64. If that’s the case, continue.

5. Check that you have an IP address and try a ping to check your Internet connectivity:

   ip address
   ping 8.8.8.8
   

6. Update system clock and check status:

   timedatectl set-ntp true
   timedatectl status

7. Enable SSH, this might be useful if you want to continue the installation from elsewhere or transfer files via sftp:

   systemctl start sshd

8. List the disks then proceed with creating the partitions:

   fdisk -l
   cfdisk /dev/sda
   

   Create a EFI partition of 256M to 512M, a several GB swap partition and what is left with a Linux root partition.

9. Format the partitions:

   mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
   mkfs.ext4 -L root -m 0 /dev/sda3
   

10. Mount the root partition:

    mount -o noatime /dev/sda3 /mnt
    

11. Install the base packages:

    pacstrap -Ki /mnt base linux linux-firmware
    

12. Generate the fstab:

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

13. Chroot in the filesystem:

    arch-chroot /mnt
    

14. Configure the terminal keyboard:

    vim /etc/vconsole.conf

15. Set the timezone:

    ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Brussels /etc/localtime
    

16. Update the hardware clock:

    hwclock --systohc
    

17. Install other packages:

    pacman -S grub efibootmgr dosfstools openssh os-prober mtools net-tools inetutils netctl dhcpcd dhclient vim
    

18. Edit and set-up the locale:

    vim /etc/locale.gen
    locale-gen
    

19. Setup root password:

    passwd
    

20. Create and mount EFI directory:

    mkdir /boot/EFI
    mount -o noatime /dev/sda1 /boot/EFI

21. Time to install the GRUB bootloader and write the config:

    grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --bootloader-id=grub_uefi --recheck
    grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
    

22. If needed you might configure an extra entry within the GRUB boot list, for instance for a dualboot with FreeBSD. To that end, edit /etc/grub.d/40_custom and add (at the end of this file):

    menuentry FreeBSD {
      insmod ufs2
      set root='(hd0,gpt3)'
      chainloader /boot/loader.efi
    }
    

    Then update the grub configuration with:

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

23. Time to reboot:

    exit
    reboot