Hey folks! I'm reaching out for some guidance because I've tried to set up a dual boot with Windows 11 and Arch Linux twice and hit a wall both times. On my first attempt, I got an error saying, "root device mounted successfully, but /sbin/init does not exist. bailing out, you are on your own now. Good luck." It was super discouraging. The second time, I ended up in the Lenovo setup utility instead of Arch Linux. Here's what I've done so far:
- Created a bootable USB with Rufus.
- Made the necessary partitions and formatted them.
- Installed base packages with the command: pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware nano.
- Generated fstab using: genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab.
- Chrooted into the system and configured the locale, hostname, and root password, plus created a user with sudo privileges.
- Installed some extra packages including dosfstools, mtools, os-prober, networkmanager, iwd, efibootmgr, and intel-ucode.
- Finally, set up GRUB with: grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=GRUB and created the config file with grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
- Tried to reboot with shutdown -r now, but ran into issues again.
I'm not a pro at this, so I might have missed something obvious. Any insights would be greatly appreciated!
2 Answers
It sounds like you've done a lot already! One common mistake is forgetting to install the GRUB package before you run the installation command. Make sure you have that set up first. Also, if you're really new to Linux, you might want to try Ubuntu or Linux Mint first; they can be more beginner-friendly than Arch.
Have you checked if GRUB is loading as your default bootloader? After installation, run the command: efibootmgr to see if Windows is listed in GRUB. If it's not showing up, that could be part of the issue you're facing.
Yeah, Arch can be a bit tricky for newcomers. Sometimes dual booting is better off in a virtual machine if you're not comfortable yet.