The Arch Linux distribution has switched to using the new release of the package manager Pacman 6.1, which features support for the built-in CacheServer, caching packages to speed up downloads and simplify mirror creation.
Other changes in the new version of Pacman include:
- Additional output formatting specifiers have been added to the '--print' option.
- The ability to add extended fields with package data has been provided.
- More detailed diagnostics are now available when detecting file conflicts or package damage.
- Improved support for the WKD (Web Key Directory) keyring.
- Better handling of incorrect headers during downloads.
- Migration to OpenSSL for calculating sha256 and md5 hashes has been implemented.
- The makepkg utility has gained the ability to define replacement configuration files in the makepkg.conf.d directory, transitioned to using the autodeps library instead of libdepends and libprovides, added the ability to specify additional flags for Git via the GITFLAGS environment variable, included an option '-D' to change the directory before verification, and support for checksums for source code from git/mercurial/bzr.
- The behavior of the repo-add utility has been changed; it now does not add package digital signature information to the repository. To revert to the old behavior, the '--include-sigs' option has been added.
Additionally, the release of the Archinstall 2.7.2 installer can be noted, which has been included as an option in the Arch Linux installation ISO images since April 2021. Archinstall operates in console or automated mode and can be used instead of the default manual installation mode of the distribution. The installer supports installation profiles, for example, the 'desktop' profile for selecting a desktop environment (KDE, GNOME, Awesome) and installing the necessary packages for its operation, or the 'webserver' and 'database' profiles for selecting and installing the content for web servers and databases.
Among the changes in the new version of Archinstall:
- The '--skip-ntp' option has been documented to disable time synchronization.
- Improved support for unified kernel images (UKI), which combine the boot handler for loading the kernel from UEFI (UEFI boot stub), the Linux kernel image, and the system environment initrd loaded into memory.
- Lithuanian language translation added.
- Locale files updated.
- The package plasma-wayland-session has been replaced with plasma-workspace (KDE 6 now supports operation using Wayland by default).
Source: opennet.ru
