Arch Linux

theokvdm

Member

Registered: 2013-04-07

Posts: 17

[SOLVED] from Ubuntu 18.04 to Archlinux

Hello all,

I have a system where I have Ubuntu 18,04 on to support some customers.
All customer have now migrated to Windows.
Now I have a machine free to run Archlinux.

I have tried to follow: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Instal … stribution  page.
But everywhere the old 18.04 system seems to throw up hurdles to migrate.
I there someone who succeeded in this?

I have also some questions about the wiki page:
I could not extract the tarball without errors without becoming superuser. Is this normal?
When using pacman I got the message:
error: restricting filesystem access failed because Landlock is not supported by the kernel!
error: switching to sandbox user 'alpm' failed!
error: failed to synchronize all databases (failed to retrieve some files)

What am I doing wrong here?

Last edited by theokvdm (2026-02-07 13:44:02)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,584

Re: [SOLVED] from Ubuntu 18.04 to Archlinux

Edit pacman.conf and disable the download sandbox. This isn't going to work on such an old system.

Yes, the '#' preceding the commands indicates a root prompt.

theokvdm

Member

Registered: 2013-04-07

Posts: 17

Re: [SOLVED] from Ubuntu 18.04 to Archlinux

Thank you, that helped.

Now I am bit stuck with pacstrap because the mounts /mnt & /mnt/boot aren't empty.
I thought it would overwrite the 18.04 installation.
But it refuses to install anything.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 18,796

Re: [SOLVED] from Ubuntu 18.04 to Archlinux

The existing installation method may not be suited to your use case as you want to replace the existing Ubuntu install rather than install alongside it.  Can you boot from the Arch installation media and use that?

theokvdm

Member

Registered: 2013-04-07

Posts: 17

Re: [SOLVED] from Ubuntu 18.04 to Archlinux

Shure I can do that. I think I need to reformat the partitions on the disks? But that is no problem.
I'll let you know how it turns out.

Thank you all

theokvdm

Member

Registered: 2013-04-07

Posts: 17

Re: [SOLVED] from Ubuntu 18.04 to Archlinux

Ok, got Archlinux on this machine running.
Because of some stupid mistakes of myself I had some stupid errors to solve.
But that was nothing I could not handle.

The machine is 5 years old with an AMD 5800X, 32GB RAM, 2T SSD and  a GTX1030
The GTX1030 is worrying me, I saw https://archlinux.org/news/nvidia-590-d … l-modules/
I thought nvidia-580xx-dkms in aur would be a breeze but when I clicked on it https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nvidia-580xx-dkms there were some serious problems in the comments.
I want to run KDE on it.
Is it worth trying to go the nvidia-580xx-dkms route or buy now a more recent nvidia card instead?
I am not a gamer I run some FreeCAD, Blender (very novice) and some KiCad for graphics applications.
I do not need a 5090 for that, I think.
I have an Archlinux laptop with no gpu that runs those applications. Only when the projects are getting a bit complicated it becomes really sluggish.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 18,796

Re: [SOLVED] from Ubuntu 18.04 to Archlinux

I suggest marking this topic as solved and open a new one for the nvidia related issue to avoid this becoming an omnibus thread that is only relevant to your installation.

theokvdm

Member

Registered: 2013-04-07

Posts: 17

Re: [SOLVED] from Ubuntu 18.04 to Archlinux

Done