Guide: Dual boot Omarchy Os with Windows 11

[CrimsonCompiler]

OmarchyOs-DualBoot-Guide

A comprehensive guide for newbie arch users to install or test omarchy os alongside windows. This is the guide I have used to insall omarchy alongside my windows 11.

The only omarchy dual boot setup guide you will ever need

You need to have a free space partition if you want to dual boot alongside your another os.

1. First thing first boot your usb drive using rufus

   Rufus:

• https://rufus.ie/en/

  Omarchy Os file

• https://iso.omarchy.org/omarchy-3.0.2.iso

On rufus select GPT instead of MBR

2. Restart the computer / laptop and get into the usb drive

3. Keep going with the omarchy install by default . You need to stop when it shows your whole nvme ssd. Don't go any further. If you go and do something you might lose your everything.

4. Press Esc Then choose > Quit then hit enter . Again choose > Quit then hit enter

5. now you are in the root@archiso terminal

6. type lsblk | see your drive name it would be something like nvme0n1

7. then type cfdisk /dev/nvme0n1 to see your free space partition

8. select it choose New from below . Resize it to 1G and make the type EFI system from the type option. Now, select the remaining free space i am assuming it has 178G now just click on the New.

9. You need to see two different thing

   • 1G EFI system
   • 178G LinuxFileSytem

10. Now select write from the below and type yes the changes will be made then quit to get back into the root@archiso terminal

11. The formatting type the command below to format the drives

• For the 1G drive we need to format it like this.

---

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/< your 1G drive name>

In my case i have used this

mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p5

• For 178G drive you need to format it to btrfs file system.

---

mkfs.btrfs /dev/< your 178G drive name >

In my case i have used this

mkfs.btrfs /dev/nvme0n1p6

---

12. Now we have formatted it now the mounting

Carefully follow the steps

• 178G drive mounting
  • mount /dev/ < your drive name > /mnt

In my case i have used

mount /dev/nvme0n1p6 /mnt

• 1G drive mounting
  • mkdir /mnt/boot
  • mount /dev/< your drive name > /mnt/boot

In my case i have used

mkdir /mnt/boot

mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/boot

13. Now the formatting and mounting done now we have to install

type archinstall

Give the properties as below and hit the install

1. Select your closet mirror server

2. Disk configuration >> Pre mounted >> type /mnt | hit enter then back

3. Change Hostname(optional) if you want to

4. Bootloader >> select Limine

5. Authentication >> setup root password and create a user

6. Application >> Audio >> Pipewire

7. Network >> Copy ISO network config

8. Timezone >> select your time zone

9. Install

Don't select Profile simply don't touch it. I repeat don't touch it leave as it is.

After clicking on the Install it will start install just simply press yes to make changes to proceed further.

14. Reboot

15. You will see a terminal because we haven't select any profile

16. now type
    curl -fsSL https://omarchy.org/install | bash and give permission wait till the install is finished.

17. Enjoy Omarchy with dual boot ^-^

[sugan0tech]

AWSM this works like a charm for me. Also adding few notes of things that I have to troubleshoot.

Wireless network connectivity

• If the devices turned off, use iwctl to turn on adapter & device and connect to the network.

windows bootloader doesn't appear on limine

• you can just exectue limine-scan to find the windows boot entry and add it to your limine.

display manager, without encryption omarchy will opt you in via autologin.

• If you opt for non encryption mode, you probably need a additional displaymanager setup. In my case i have used sddm.
• Install sddm paru -S sddm
• disable the auto-login service sudo systemctl disable omarchy-seamless-login
• Now enable sddm service sudo systemctl enable sddm

[CrimsonCompiler]

I forgot to add the wireless network stuff because i have used Ethernet ^-^ also Thanks for additional commands.

[sugan0tech]

I forgot to add the wireless network stuff because i have used Ethernet ^-^ also Thanks for additional commands.

I see, got stuck beliving these network ain't a deal :). Anyways thanks for this, Now I am using dualboot configuration or else just stuck in windows.

[mihailo-obradovic]

Some things may have changed since the autologin solution was written. From my experience:

• The service omarchy-seamless-login was not found. But that part doesn't matter - it's not used.
• In /etc/sddm.conf.d/autologin.conf, the entire [Autologin] section including the User and Session lines needs to be commented out.

[VincentX33]

I did the installation yesterday, and was foolish enough to miss out on this tutorial! Had to install arch 5 times as I kept making configuration mistakes.
One of the errors I was facing with archinstall was that it was not allowing me to install, saying invalid configurations. Do you think it is because I was selecting Profile=minimal?
Anyway, a wonderful tutorial (typed from github via Omarchy. Thanks

[sugan0tech]

Thanks strange, 🤔. Are you sure on the partition part? like the paths have been filled correct?

[CrimsonCompiler]

I was following this guide and wehn I get to clicking "install" I get "Invalid Configuration: Root partition not found". I re-did all the steps thinking I messed something up, but got the same thing.

You should format again and mount the drives again. I think, there was a typo mistake in my guide [ i fixed it ] if you know how to install arch then installing omarchy isn't a pain. It is just some modification behind it

[CrimsonCompiler]

I did the installation yesterday, and was foolish enough to miss out on this tutorial! Had to install arch 5 times as I kept making configuration mistakes. One of the errors I was facing with archinstall was that it was not allowing me to install, saying invalid configurations. Do you think it is because I was selecting Profile=minimal? Anyway, a wonderful tutorial (typed from github via Omarchy. Thanks

Maybe . Try again without selecting any profile

[mmusiel]

Thanks strange, 🤔. Are you sure on the partition part? like the paths have been filled correct?

I appreciate your reply. I decided to just install Omarchy on the full drive. I'll try your instructions for duel-boot later on.

[brokkoli71]

I ran into the same “Invalid Configuration: Boot partition not found” error during archinstall
Turns out my EFI partition only had the esp flag, but archinstall also needs the boot flag.

Fix:

# set boot flag. (nvme0n1p3 is my efi partition, so swap 3 for your partition number in the following)
parted /dev/nvme0n1 set 3 boot on 
parted /dev/nvme0n1 print   # should show: boot, esp
# remount 
umount -R /mnt
mount /dev/nvme0n1p4 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt/boot

[Grey-007]

OmarchyOs

• 1G drive mounting

  • mkdir /mnt/boot
  • mount /dev/< your drive name > /mnt/boot

In my case i have used

mkdir /mnt/boot

mount /dev/nvme0n1p6 /mnt/boot

Here ur drive should be nvme0n1p5 right??

[CrimsonCompiler]

Yeah typo mistake

[Nekiiinkognito]

Hello, what should I do if I did all the steps before reboot, and after reboot I can't boot into arch, 'cause I already have grub setupped for Windows and Ubuntu. What should I do after reboot in this case?

[sugan0tech]

You can try by changing the boot order to limine and once you are at omarchy add refs to ubuntu partition. With limine-scan, Hope this works.

[Nekiiinkognito]

Thanks for your answer!
The thing is, partition that was created and mounted for boot, did not contain any files or folders
But on main partition there is limine in boot folder

And i cannot find limine in bios boot order tab

[CrimsonCompiler]

Hello, what should I do if I did all the steps before reboot, and after reboot I can't boot into arch, 'cause I already have grub setupped for Windows and Ubuntu. What should I do after reboot in this case?

Boot into Ubuntu (or any OS that currently boots using GRUB).

Mount the Omarchy root partition:

Open a terminal and identify it with:

lsblk

Look for your Omarchy partition probably something like /dev/nvme0n1p6 main drive where you have installed omarchy.

Mount it:

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p6 /mnt

Mount the EFI partition if needed:

If /dev/nvme0n1p5 is your 1G EFI for Omarchy:

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/boot

Update GRUB config:

If you're using Ubuntu:

sudo update-grub

This will detect Omarchy (as Arch Linux) and automatically add it to the boot menu.

Reboot:

sudo reboot

Now, GRUB should show Arch Linux (Omarchy) as one of the options alongside Ubuntu and Windows.

[Nekiiinkognito]

Thank you very much!

[Vin-Ren]

Thanks for the guide, appreciate it!

[icehubdown]

Just follow the guide and hit so problem, after archinstall and reboot, everything is fine, i can find omarchy in bios boot selection, then i launch it and run curl -fsSL https://omarchy.org/install | bash done and reboot, I cannot find the omarchy boot selection in bios boot

[CrimsonCompiler]

After the reboot can you see the omarchy or limine stuff ? if you see any of these you need select any of them. I think that will work

[icehubdown]

just fix it, after run the curl .... omarchy/install, I need rewrite the limine.conf set the right path, and the use efibootmgr command to write limine to ESP, then I can see it in boot selection.

[kfnx]

Does this support dual boot on single disk? two partition one for windows and one for omarchy.

[icehubdown]

Doesn't if you don't know how to write the limine.conf, jist like me.
If you know, it does support

[CrimsonCompiler]

Yes it does and I have done it

[ash-roof]

Will this work if I enable encryption on the main partition during archinstall?

[CrimsonCompiler]

Will this work if I enable encryption on the main partition during archinstall?

It is advised to remove encryption . But you can try

[derluke]

I had a problem with this guide: for some reason the boot partition ran out of space (set to 1GB)

Installation went through, but at reboot I saw "no valid configurations" in the limine bootloader.

To fix (Claude helped)
Good catch! Let me revise my advice based on the official Arch Wiki documentation. There are some important differences:

Corrected Fix for Your Limine Configuration

1. Boot from your USB stick into Linux

2. Mount your partitions:

   sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p6 /mnt  # Your root partition (178G)
   sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/boot  # Your boot partition (1G EFI)

3. Verify kernel files are in the right place:

   ls /mnt/boot/

   You should see vmlinuz-linux, initramfs-linux.img, and initramfs-linux-fallback.img

4. Create the Limine configuration file with the correct syntax:

   The Arch Wiki shows that Limine uses a different configuration format than I initially provided. Here's the correct format:

   sudo nano /mnt/boot/limine.conf

   Add this configuration (note the different syntax):

   timeout: 5
   
   /Arch Linux
       protocol: linux
       path: boot():/vmlinuz-linux
       cmdline: root=UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx rw
       module_path: boot():/initramfs-linux.img
   
   /Arch Linux (fallback)
       protocol: linux
       path: boot():/vmlinuz-linux
       cmdline: root=UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx rw
       module_path: boot():/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
   

5. Get your root partition UUID:

   sudo blkid /dev/nvme0n1p6

   Copy the UUID and replace xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx in the config above.

6. Important notes about the syntax:

   • Use colons (:) not equals signs
   • Use boot():/ which refers to the partition where limine.conf is located
   • Menu entries start with / (forward slash)
   • Indentation matters (use spaces)

7. Save and reboot:

   sudo umount -R /mnt
   reboot

If Limine itself wasn't properly installed to the EFI partition

Since the tutorial had you select Limine during installation, it should have been deployed. But if you still get errors, you might need to verify the Limine EFI file exists:

ls /mnt/boot/EFI/

If you don't see a limine or BOOT folder with BOOTX64.EFI, you may need to reinstall Limine from the chroot environment.

Let me know what you find and I can help you further!

[YourManz]

Having a slight issue where the manual install script gets caught on limine-snapper.sh. It can't find

/boot/limine/limine.conf

When I reboot I don't even get a TTY, it just boots to a black screen. I think it's something wrong with the limine.conf, and advice is appreciated.

[ckrailo]

Limine should be in /boot/limine.conf now.

[CrimsonCompiler]

You check the comment and this #2479 (comment)

[pive]

Sharing my experience with this guide:

• If you have Bitlocker enabled, do NOT forget to check for your recovery key, as it will detect EFI changes and invalidate.
• limine.conf was located in /boot/EFI/limine and not in /boot
• Windows entry in limine.conf has to use uuid(<Windows EFI partition UUID>):/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi

Example:

# look for the Windows EFI partition, usually the first one on the main disk
# mine was /dev/nvme0n1p1
fdisk -l

# get the UUID of the partition and cat it to the limine config
# this is to avoid doing this by hand
blkid -s PARTUUID -o value /dev/nvme0n1p1 >> /boot/EFI/limine/limine.conf

# Using the UUID in the /boot/EFI/limine/limine.conf, add one entry using your favorite text editor
/Windows
    protocol: efi
    path: uuid(xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx):/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi

# reboot

Upon reboot, select Windows and enter your Bitlocker recovery key if it's enabled on your windows disk.

[carlosdr02]

Does anyone have any idea why, after doing all this, the only option my BIOS gives me to boot into a hard drive disk is the window boot manager and not Limine? Before I did all this I had dual boot with Windows 11 and Arch and it showed window boot manager and grub

[NOTORIOUSVR]

This initial guide for the partitioning and continuing with the Omarchy script is great, but it seems like the installation script fails because it cannot download signal-desktop package? Anyone know what's up with that?

[mathias-ort]

OH GOOODD, I have the same results but worse because when i finished i'm on the booloader with efi fallback and nothing else, i have to do by hand all the limine.conf with the UUID and everything, after that on bootloader i have the new option and when i boot on it i arrive at the same page as you and same problem, cannot login or anything, except me i have a user but when i tried to log it reload the front without doing anything !

[cosmincartas]

Did anyone managed to fix this?

[mathias-ortg]

I ended use an old nvme and install on this second nvme because having omarchy and windows on the same device is hard, and i don't want to spend weeks for learning how to do this

[Arnz3]

Gemini gave me this answer and this worked for me.

. Fix Incorrect Session Name (Most Likely)
After an update, the session configuration might point to a non-existent or incorrect session.

Fix: Edit the SDDM autologin configuration file:
bash

sudo nano /etc/sddm.conf.d/autologin.conf

Change: Session=hyprland-uwsm to Session=hyprland-uwsm.desktop. 

[cosmincartas]

Did anyone managed to fix this?

I eventually ended up installing on a separate NVME

[jsah-mc]

Hey im running on a dell inspiron and when i boot up arch linux it doesnt connect to wifi and when i run iwctl, it says that there is no command for that

[yosuga7]

Hi please help me, im stucked at the archinstall install part. It says that i'm missing configuration. Either root-password or at least 1 user with sudo previleges must be specified. Please help me

[mathias-ortg]

Did you set up in the archinstall, the part authentification where it let you choose a root password and the user whist login passwd ?

[kukat]

If you install Omarchy via Ventoy rather than burning the ISO directly to a USB stick, archinstall may incorrectly treat the installation environment as removable media.

When this happens, the bootloader (Limine) is installed to the USB drive’s EFI partition instead of the system ESP.

This results in no Limine entry on the internal disk, and the system boots straight into Windows after installation.

Solution:
During archinstall, open Step 4: Bootloader and ensure that “Install to removable location” is disabled before proceeding.

[grmhay]

Thanks for this comment - this saved me banging my head against the well further

[Vahiire]

Hello,

Thanks for the tutorial! I have an issue at Step 16. The Omarchy install just stopped after a time, with this error:
omarchy install failed, ghostty-terminfo /usr/share/terminfo/g/ghostty exist in filesystem (owned by ncruses)

Should I try to remove ghostty and retry this step ?

Thanks for your help

[Vahiire]

Ok so i move /usr/share/terminfo/g/ghostty to /usr/share/terminfo/g/ghostty.bkp and relaunch the step 16, and it worked well.

I mean until I rebooted, and when i choose Limine to boot, I run to a endless EFI Fallback and can't do anything.

But that's a problem for tomorrow (or next week) :)

[Arnz3]

Take a look at your Limine config, this comment helped for me.
#2479 (comment)

[Vahiire]

Thanks ! With the post and Perplexity, I figured it out and now I can boot to Omarchy... who get stuck in the middle of booting 😄
I just saw 2 errors for the Bluetooth service and CUPS service, but i don't see why it would stop it from booting. It just hang and... nothing.
I'll check the log later.

[PiXeL16]

Stuck exactly on the same place. What did you do?

[Vahiire]

First of all, launch an other TTY session with ctrl + alt + F2 . Then check your errors: journalctl -b -p err

Mine was that my glibc version was 2.42 , but Hyprland needed 2.43 .

And i tried to update my packages with sudo pacman -Syyu nothing happened.

So I refreshed my mirrors:
sudo pacman -Syy reflector
sudo reflector --latest 20 --protocol https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

And then updated my packages:
sudo pacman -Syyu

And voilà, everything works now!

[husan-eshonqulov]

After installation the system boots fine, but I see this warning:

root_subvolume_path=/@ doesn't match the expected path / from /proc/mounts

From what I can tell, my system is mounting the top-level Btrfs subvolume (ID 5) as /, instead of using an @ subvolume.

So it looks like there is no @ subvolume, and the root filesystem is the top-level Btrfs subvolume.

Questions

1. Is this expected when installing Omarchy on an existing Btrfs partition?
2. Should I convert the system to the standard @ layout?
3. Or is it safe to ignore this warning?

[mihailo-obradovic]

Any updates on this? It needs to be fixed in order to get snapshots working properly.

I'm reluctant to move the whole root directory on a live USB as I'm already far into having everything configured the way I want it. I'd hate to mess it up.

[akfiveseven]

^^

[chrisdevelops]

^^

Also interested in understanding if this is an issue.

[nabatovv]

^^

Why does nobody answer this question?

[husan-eshonqulov]

Fix for Btrfs subvolume + Limine not showing in UEFI

The original guide is missing a proper Btrfs subvolume setup, which leads to errors like:
root_subvolume_path=/@ doesn't match the expected path /

✅ Correct steps (replace step 12)

mount /dev/nvme0n1p6 /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@
umount /mnt

mount -o subvol=@ /dev/nvme0n1p6 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/boot

✅ After installation (after reboot - step 14)

Limine may not appear in the boot menu. To fix that:

mount -o subvol=@ /dev/nvme0n1p6 /mnt
mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/boot
arch-chroot /mnt

efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 5 --loader '\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI' --label "Limine"

exit
umount -lR /mnt
reboot

[minchopaskal]

Stable mirror seems to be down at the moment. If anyone is banging their head with that try

curl -fsSL https://omarchy.org/instal > install.sh
chmod +x install.sh
OMARCHY_REF=dev ./install.sh

Which would use the latest mirror(edge).
The install script overwrites /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist so if you're a dummy like me you'd loose 15 minutes on that

[kabir0st]

If you are installing it on a MSI motherboard, there is a problem with the blue-utilz package for the bluetooth device, so just don't select the bluetooth in the setup process, just install the audio driver. Worked like a charm for me.

Thanks @CrimsonCompiler

[Luke-Skelton]

Hello, I've got as far as creating the partitions and getting arch installed. However, when I try to pull down Omarchy (curl command) I'm getting a bunch of files can't be found. omarchy.git and install.sh. Any suggestions or recommendations? I'm connected to the internet.

[Luke-Skelton]

So I resolved this by clearning the pacman cache and manually installing git. I was also getting a archlinux keyring issue. So I also update the keys to help. Hopefully this helps other in the future.

[hpastrana05]

Hello, I've followed every step without problems, but on step 16. I got a problem.
Error: failed retrieving file 'offline.db' from disk : Could not open file /var/cache/omarchy/mirror/offline/offline.db
Error: failed to synchronize all databases (download library error)

After running the curl I checked and there is no omarchy folder on the cache
Also I tried to ping omarchy.org and it works

I would need some help to finish the installation.

[cipaterson]

I have the same problem. I succeded by using an arch install ISO, I think the problem is that the Omarchy install ISO leaves the package configuration in a local state when interrupted.

I found I needed to change the Bootloader to Limine for Omarchy to succeed. Also
pacman -S gum
before the Omarchy manual install to get around a missing dependency.

It took quite some time to understand how to set up disk encryption, and I've learnt a lot about btrfs (mainly the importance of creating one sub-volume mounted on /) but eventually I got arch installed after a few more issues (perhaps related to not using the exact release of arch needed?)

[ActiveGH]

@cipaterson humanity needs more people like you

[hpastrana05]

There is a guy in YouTube called No Signal who created an ISO for easy dual boot installation with Windows. Here is the video