The release of the Archinstall 2.5 installer has been published, which has been available as an option in Arch Linux installation ISO images since April 2021. Archinstall operates in console mode and can be used instead of the default manual installation mode of the distribution. A graphical interface installation implementation is being developed separately, but it has not been included in the Arch Linux installation images and has not been updated for over two years.
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.
Among the changes in the new version:
- Support for unlocking encrypted disk partitions using FIDO2 tokens such as Nitrokey and Yubikey has been added.
- An interface for viewing the list of disks and existing disk partitions has been added to the main menu.
- The ability to create accounts has been added to the menu. The functionality for automated user creation via a script processed by the '--config' command has been expanded.
- Support for loading configuration files from external sources has been provided for the parameters '--config', '--disk-layout', and '--creds'. server.
- The ability to create various types of menus (MenuSelectionType.Selection, MenuSelectionType.Esc, MenuSelectionType.Ctrl_c) has been provided.
- Options for selecting the locale and interface language have been added to the main menu, including a translation of the interface into Russian.
- The installation of the network-manager-applet has been ensured when selecting the desktop profile.
- The profile for installing the Awesome tiling window manager has been simplified, now only offering a minimal set without a file manager, image viewer, or screenshot utility.
Source: opennet.ru
