blog.ewpt3ch.dev/content/posts/Lenovo-slim.md

+++ date = '2025-12-19T22:51:02-07:00' draft = true title = 'Lenovo Slim' tags = ['install', 'guide'] +++

Getting rid of Windows

Windows is not my favorite and with the new push for fancy pattern matching engines that we call 'ai'I'm even less fond. My old yoga2 pro was getting long in the tooth and Sarah's is not doign well with the increased load from Windows so we got new laptops, Costco had a sale. First things first, how do we get rid of Windows on this Lenovo Ideapad Slim.

• Get into UEFI by holding F2 at poweron
• turn off secure boot, and some other windows only options
• boot into a live usb, I've had great luck with Ventoy
• Follow the Arch Linux Install Guide
• I deleted all partitions except the EFI and have one encrypted partition with btrfs and several subvolumes. Swap will be in a file.

partition 1 -> EFI partition 2 -> LUKS encryption btrfs: @ -> / @home -> /home @varlog -> /var/log @paccache -> /var/cache/pacman @dockerroot -> /var/docker

We use dm-crypt to encrypt the partition first, then make the filesystem and subvolumes.

crytpsetup -v luksFormat --label *cryptname* /dev/sda2 cryptsetup open /dev/sda2 sdacrypt

Create the filesystem and subvols

mkfs.btrfs -L realroot /dev/sda2 mount /dev/sda2 /mnt btrfs subvol create @ # repeat for all desired subvolumes umount /mnt

mount the root subvol, create the mountpoints and mount everything else

mount -o rw,noatime,compress=zstd,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvol=@ /dev/sda2 /mnt mkdir /mnt/boot mkdir /mnt/home mkdir -p /mnt/var/log mkdir -p /mnt/var/cache/pacman mkdir /var/docker mount -o rw,noatime,compress=zstd,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvol=@home /dev/sda2 /mnt/home mount -o rw,noatime,compress=zstd,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvol=@varlog /dev/sda2 /mnt/var/log mount -o rw,noatime,compress=zstd,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvol=@paccache /dev/sda2 /mnt/var/cache/pacman mount -o rw,noatime,compress=zstd,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvol=@docker /dev/sda2 /mnt/var/docker mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

install the base system and required packages to boot

pacstrap -K /mnt base linux linux-firmware amd-microcode btrfs-progs iwd neovim sudo vi

Configure the system and chroot

gentfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab arch-chroot /mnt ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Denver /etc/location hwclock --systohc

Edit locale.gen and uncomment the US english lines create locale.conf and add

` LANG="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_COLLATE="C" `

• Run locale-gen
• Set the hosname in /etc/hostname
• enable systemd-resolved and systemd-networkd, ln -s the appropriate network example into systemd/network.

I like using a unified kernel instead of a bootloader where possible. With this in mind and the encrypted root we need to edit mkinitcpio.conf and the preset. See Encrypting the entire filesystem for details related to the encryption. See Unified kernel image for details on booting the kernel directly.

Add to the hooks for dealing with encryption to mkinitcpio.conf:

HOOKS=(base systemd autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard sd-vconsole block sd-encrypt filesystems fsck)

create a file called crypt.conf in /etc/cmd and add(UUID and cryptname need to match luksDump):

rd.luks.name=UUID=root root=/dev/mapper/cryptname

create a file called root.conf in /etc/cmd and add(cryptname must match cryptname in crypt.conf):

root=/dev/mapper/cryptname rw rootfstype=btrfs rootflags=subvol=@

edit /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset and comment out PRESET_image and uncomment PRESET_uki. Change the dir part of uki to match the path to the EFI directory ie /boot/EFI/Linux. make the Linux dir in the EFI path. Then recreate the image with:

mkinitcpio -p linux

Set the root password using passwd then reboot.