Questions concerning Arch linux installation on the RP.

[Firephyz]

I just got a micro sd on which I am trying to install Arch Linux for the raspberry pi (which I will recieve tomorrow). I've installed Arch before on my desktop so I'm pretty familiar with how to set it up initially. When researching how to install arch on the pi, however, I've noticed that the installation tutorial for the pi (http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/raspberry-pi) and the installation tutorial for Arch in general are different. Most strikingly are the differences in how to set up partitions. The beginners guide at the wiki suggests that one could simply make one enormous root partition on which the user can install the whole system. The raspberry pi tutorial, however, suggests to create two partitions. One formatted with FAT32 (which I find kinda strange since we are dealing with linux here) and the other with the familiar ext4. They then go on to explain the one should use the FAT32 partition as the boot partition and the ext4 as the root. My question is, do I have to stick strictly the installation instructions presented on the Raspberry Pi tutorial? I would much rather do as I did before and create just one root partition. And just for the sake of clarification, it seems that if I were to follow the Raspberry pi installation guide, Arch linux wouldn't be installed on the sd card in the normal sense of installation (as in mounting a drive and accessing the official repository for all the required packages and files). The tutorial seems to just simply extract the arch linux tar.gz right onto the root partition. Is this special method of installation and the fact that a boot partition is required all due to the fact that I'm trying to install arch on an ARM processor? Thanks for your help and claraifications.

[WarheadsSE]

The bootloader only understands fat, so you do need to have 2 partitions.

[sdjf]

Unlike normal Arch installations, the image for Arch Linux Arm for the Raspberry is already ready to run! A lot of the basics are already installed, so you will not be going through what you have come to think of as the "normal" installation process. You will, of course, be able to install and update packages with pacman the normal way, but this is ready to roll, out of the box, thanks to the hard work of pepedog.

And yes, as WarheadsSE said, this version requires 2 partitions, one vfat for /boot, the other ext4 for /root, although I seem to recall hearing that the root partition could be another format if so desired.