Although installing Arch Linux can be an educational experience, please don’t dismiss the distro as merely an educational tool or a novelty. It’s a fully featured distro and perfectly easy to maintain, once it is up and running. It comes with its own package management system, called pacman, which is roughly equivalent to Apt or YUM.
The /etc/rc.conf file is the centrepiece of Arch Linux configuration and a model of simplicity. In particular, configuration of the network and startup daemons resides in this file. That said, Arch makes use of other, standard Linux files where appropriate for compatibility.
In this example, we’re going to introduce Arch by installing a typical desktop system within a VirtualBox VM, but it will give you the experience and skills set to build any type of Linux system.