Jiri Konecny from Red Hat announced efforts to modernize and enhance the user interface of the Anaconda installer used in Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and several other Linux distributions. Notably, instead of using the GTK library, the new interface will be built on web technologies and will allow remote management through a web browser. It is mentioned that the decision to redesign the installer has already been made, but the implementation is currently at the prototype stage and not ready for demonstration.
The new interface will be based on components from the Cockpit project, which is used in Red Hat products for configuration and management.. Cockpit has been chosen as a proven solution with backend support for interaction with the installer (Anaconda DBus). Additionally, utilizing Cockpit will help achieve uniformity and standardize various system management components. The use of a web interface will significantly enhance the convenience of remote installation management, which is unmatched compared to the current VNC protocol-based solution.
The redesign of the interface will build on the already completed work to enhance the modularity of the installer and will not significantly affect Fedora users, as much of Anaconda has already been transformed into modules that interact through the DBus API, and the new interface will use the existing API without internal redesign. The timeline for the start of public testing of the new interface and its readiness for promotion upstream is not specified at this stage of development, but the developers promise to periodically publish reports on the project's progress.
Source: opennet.ru
