Arch Linux on Medion Crawler E10
Installation and keyboard LED setup
Published on January 18, 2022.Last updated on February 16, 2022.
Together with a friend of mine we installed Arch Linux on her Medion Crawler E10 gaming laptop. Some quick googling and we found out this seems to be a re-branded Clevo model notebook. Installation was very straight forward, everything seems to work fine pretty much out-of-the-box.
These are the basic steps we had to take, maybe it helps someone else. Some parts have been kept short, so always consider the current Arch Installation Guide as well!
Prepare the storage (SSD as cache for HDD, as described here / here), with full disk encryption and format the filesystems.
Update: Even though it sounds good in theory, the real-world performance of the encrypted and cached LVM setup was very bad. For this reason we backed-up the root, re-formatted both the SSD and HDD to simple ext4 filesystems, put the data back on the SSD and modified the fstab and bootloader to boot from the now unencrypted root (mounting the HDD for data storage, if required in future). Performance is much better now!
So leave out the LVM related steps below and create a normal root partition.
# set disk mode in UEFI to AHCI fdisk # /dev/sda1 128GB swap # /dev/sda2 800GB data # /dev/nvme0n1p1 300MB EFI # /dev/nvme0n1p2 475GB data pvcreate /dev/sda2 /dev/nvme0n1p2 vgcreate RootVG /dev/sda2 /dev/nvme0n1p2 lvcreate -l 100%PVS -n cryptroot RootVG /dev/sda2 lvcreate --type cache-pool -l 100%PVS -n cryptroot_cache RootVG /dev/nvme0n1p2 lvconvert --type cache --cachepool RootVG/cryptroot_cache RootVG/cryptroot cryptsetup luksFormat --type luks2 /dev/RootVG/cryptroot cryptsetup open /dev/RootVG/cryptroot root mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/root mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1 mkswap /dev/sda1 mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt mkdir /mnt/boot mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot swapon /dev/sda1
Install everything that's needed.
reflector --verbose --latest 40 --number 15 --sort rate --protocol https --country "Germany" --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux linux-firmware genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab arch-chroot /mnt ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin /etc/localtime hwclock --systohc pacman -Syu vim git sudo intel-ucode vim /etc/locale.gen locale-gen vim /etc/locale.conf vim /etc/vconsole.conf vim /etc/hostname pacman -Syu networkmanager systemctl enable NetworkManager pacman -Syu lvm2 vim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf mkinitcpio -P passwd bootctl install vim /etc/pacman.d/hooks/100-systemd-boot.hook vim /boot/loader/loader.conf vim /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf useradd -m username_here passwd username_here gpasswd -a username_here wheel visudo # enable multilib repos & ILoveCandy vim /etc/pacman.conf pacman -Syu xorg-server nvidia nvidia-utils nvidia-settings lib32-nvidia-utils \ sddm pipewire pipewire-alsa pipewire-pulse pipewire-jack lib32-pipewire \ lib32-pipewire-jack helvum wireplumber sddm-kcm plasma-meta vlc dolphin \ dolphin-plugins kdialog kfind ark yakuake libreoffice-fresh openssh breeze-gtk \ kde-gtk-config ttf-droid ttf-inconsolata ttf-liberation ttf-roboto ttf-dejavu \ ttf-bitstream-vera terminus-font wine steam gvim firefox firefox-i18n-de \ firefox-ublock-origin cups cups-pdf print-manager system-config-printer \ pacman-contrib bluez-utils systemctl enable sddm systemctl enable sshd fc-cache systemctl enable cups systemctl enable paccache.timer echo btusb > /etc/modules-load.d/bluetooth.conf systemctl enable bluetooth.service # enable DRM kernel mode settings # in mkinitcpio and bootloader config pacman -Syu nvidia-prime # use prime-run for PRIME render offloading # install AUR helper, we used bauerbill
Setup LED keyboard backlight control. As described here at NovaCustom.
# install dmidecode sudo dmidecode | grep "Product Name" # --> CRAWLER E10 # clone pkgbuild from dkms driver # https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/clevo-xsm-wmi-dkms/ # adjust included patch, replace model name with "CRAWLER E10" pacman -Syu dkms linux-headers makepkg pacman -U pkgname modprobe clevo-xsm-wmi kb_color=white,white,white, kb_brightness=1 sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/clevo-xsm-wmi.conf <<< clevo-xsm-wmi # https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/clevo-xsm-wmi-util/ # for graphical control
Afterwards, install required user applications (Gimp, Okular, ...) and configure the KDE desktop to personal preferences. Also check out the General Recommendations in the Arch Wiki.