Maven behind a proxy

I am a beginner in Maven's world. So, when I tried to create my first Maven project using Eclipse, and I got back this error message:

Could not resolve archetype org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart:RELEASE from any of the configured repositories.
Could not resolve artifact org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart:pom:RELEASE
Failed to resolve version for org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart:pom:RELEASE: Could not find metadata org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart/maven-metadata.xml in local (/home/<myUsername>/.m2/repository)
Failed to resolve version for org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart:pom:RELEASE: Could not find metadata org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart/maven-metadata.xml in local (/home/<myUsername>/.m2/repository)

I was almost lost .

After having stopped crying, I decided to look for information about using Maven behind a proxy, as this is my configuration. Bingo! After having created file settings.xml in folder ~/.m2, with following contents, as presented here:

<settings>
  <proxies>
   <proxy>
      <active>true</active>
      <protocol>http</protocol>
      <host>putHereProxyAddress</host>
      <port>putHereProxyPort</port>
      <nonProxyHosts>putHereHostsAccessedWithoutProxy</nonProxyHosts>
    </proxy>
  </proxies>
</settings>

it worked perfectly.