Configuration, Configuration, Configuration

A couple of pointers as the setup proceeded.

• I decided to let arch linux auto-prepare the hard drive. No point on keeoing a dog and barking yourself, I say. I may regret this, though !
• I elected to use the ext3 journalled filesystem for '/' and '/home'
  
• From the startup disk I installed pretty much everything, except the wierder wireless drivers (the webbook has an ipw2200 chip), reiserfs, jfs and xfs filesyetem utilities.
• I configured the machine to use the en_GB locale and configured eth0 (the wired LAN) to use "dhcp" against my wired and wireless router. For the moment updates can be loaded over electric string. Time enough for clever stuff with wireless later.
• I decided on a European location for my pacman mirrot. Heanet or Belnet, I can't remember which.

It all went swimmingly. Everything installed, the machine rebooted, I plugged in the wired LAN and told it to start updating itself. And off it went.

So here I am, the proud owner of a webbook no longer dead and running a fairly minimal, text based version of Arch Linux.