The release of the new version of the Archinstall 2.3.0 installer has been announced , which was announced in April by the Arch Linux developers and was initially believed to be an April Fool's joke.
For those unfamiliar with the Archinstall installer integration, it operates in console mode and is offered as an option to automate the installation process . By default, as before, manual mode is available, which involves using a step-by-step installation guide.
The installer offers two modes: guided and automated:
- In interactive mode, the user is asked sequential questions covering the basic setup and installation manual steps.
- In automatic mode, you can use scripts to create typical automated installation templates. This mode is suitable for creating your own assemblies designed for automated installation with a typical set of configurations and packages installed, for example for a quick installation of Arch Linux in virtual environments.
With Archinstall, you can create specific installation profiles , such as the "desktop" profile to select a desktop environment (KDE, GNOME, Awesome) and install the necessary packages, or the "web server" and "database" profiles to select and install web content, servers, and DBMSs. You can also use profiles for network installations and automatic system deployment across a group of servers.
Archinstall 2.3.0 Key New Features
This new version of archinstall 2.3.0 addresses the many problems raised by the community, as well as some improvements to the installer, which improves reliability and especially the use of it.
As the developers share:
We would like to thank everyone who submitted issues, provided feedback, and most importantly, suggested or contributed to solutions to all of these issues.
This is by no means a perfect version, there is a lot of work to do. But we think this is a step in the right direction with accessibility and stability improvements and some security improvements for the guided template we ship. Below is a list of all the changes since the previous version, and we'll start with the most important changes to highlight them.
Among the changes that have been made and the most notable ones, we can find that the correct support for the GRUB bootloader and disk encryption has been added , in addition to the support for customizing Btrfs subsections.
It is also highlighted that the presence of an active service, espeakup.service (speech synthesizer for people with visual impairments), was detected on the installation medium and its configuration was automatically copied during installation.
Furthermore, it's also worth noting that multiple encrypted volumes are now supported (somewhat limited; it's either enabled or disabled, but multiple partitions will be encrypted). Therefore, all encrypted partitions are protected by the passphrase.
Furthermore, initial support for plugins has been proposed , allowing users to create their own drivers and add-ons for the installer. 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`).
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Redesigned interface for manual partitioning of disk partitions.
- Improved reliability of disk operations such as partitioning, encryption, and mounting.
- The default installation mount point is no longer / mntsino / mnt / archinstall
Disk layout and configuration has been moved from user_configuration.json to user_disk_layouts.json - BlockDevice (). Device_or_backfile now returns the backfile when the device is a loop device, BlockDevice (). Device still returns limited information of the type (raid, crypt and others).
- Partition (). Size is now a read-only value and therefore the Partition (size = X) parameter has been removed
Partition (). Allow_formatting has been removed / deprecated, this is handled via direct function calls instead of automatically wiping a partition.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more, you can find the details at the following link.