The release of the Archinstall 2.7 installer has been published, which since April 2021 has been included as an option in Arch Linux installation ISO images. Archinstall works in console mode and can be used instead of the default manual installation mode of the distribution. The implementation of the installation graphical interface is being developed separately, but it is not included in the Arch Linux installation images and has not been updated for more than three years.
Archinstall provides interactive (guided) and automated modes of operation. In the interactive mode, the user is asked sequentially questions covering the basic settings and actions from the installation guide. In automated mode, it is possible to use scripts to deploy typical configurations. The installer also supports installation profiles, for example, the βdesktopβ profile for selecting a desktop (KDE, GNOME, Awesome) and installing packages necessary for its operation, or the βwebserverβ and βdatabaseβ profiles for selecting and installing web server and DBMS stuffing .
Among the changes in the new version:
- Added support for kernel images in the UKI (Unified Kernel Image) format, generated in the distribution infrastructure and digitally signed by the distribution. UKI combines in one file the handler for loading the kernel from UEFI (UEFI boot stub), the Linux kernel image and the initrd system environment loaded into memory. When calling a UKI image from UEFI, it is possible to check the integrity and reliability of the digital signature of not only the kernel, but also the contents of the initrd, the authenticity check of which is important since in this environment the keys for decrypting the root FS are retrieved.
- When installing proprietary NVIDIA drivers, the nvidia-dkms package is installed.
- Added "--skip-ntp" option to disable NTP server detection and checking for systems where the time is set manually.
- Added checking for a newer version when running archinstall.
Source: opennet.ru