The release of the Archinstall installer version 2.3.0 has been published, which since April has been included as an option in the installation ISO images of Arch Linux. Archinstall operates in console mode and can be used as an alternative to the default manual installation mode of the distribution. A graphical interface implementation is being developed separately, but it is not included in Arch Linux installation images and has not been updated for over a year.
Archinstall provides both dialog (guided) and automated modes. In dialog mode, the user is sequentially asked questions covering essential settings and actions from the installation guide. The automated mode allows the use of scripts for deploying standard configurations. The installer also supports installation profiles, such as the 'desktop' profile to select a desktop environment (KDE, GNOME, Awesome) and install the necessary packages, or the 'webserver' and 'database' profiles for selecting and installing web server and DBMS components.
In the new version:
- Correct support for the GRUB bootloader and disk encryption has been added.
- Support for configuring Btrfs subvolumes has been added.
- The installer now detects the presence of the active espeakup.service (speech synthesizer for visually impaired users) on the installation medium and automatically copies its settings during installation.
- Support for creating multiple encrypted partitions has been implemented.
- The reliability of disk operations such as partitioning, encryption, and mounting has been increased.
- Initial support for plugins, allowing the creation of custom handlers and add-ons for the installer, has been proposed. Plugins can also be loaded over the network using the ‘--plugin=url|location’ option, a configuration file ({"plugin": "url|location"}), an API (archinstall.load_plugin()), or a package manager (pip install yourplugin).
- The interface for manual disk partitioning has been redesigned.
Source: opennet.ru
