Archinstall 2.4 comes with new menus, bspwm and sway installation, new features and more

Recently released the new version of the installer «Archinstall 2.4», which as of April 2021, as an option, is included in the Arch Linux installation iso images and a separate installation GUI implementation is under development, but is not included in the Arch Linux installation images and is not has updated for more than two years.

For those who are still unaware of the Archinstall installer integration, you should know that this installer operates in console mode and is offered as an option to automate the installation. By default, as before, manual mode is offered, which involves the use of 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, can create specific installation profiles, for example, the "desktop" profile to select a desktop (KDE, GNOME, Awesome) and install the necessary packages to make it work, or the "web server" and "database" profiles to select and install web content , servers and DBMS. You can also use profiles for network installations and automatic system deployment to a group of servers.

Archinstall 2.4.0 Key New Features

In this new version of Archinstall 2.4 that is presented, it is highlighted that a new menu system has been proposed, translated to use the plain terms menu library, plus the set of colors available for highlighting log entries sent via archinstall.log() has been expanded.

Another change that stands out in this new version of the installer is that added profiles to install bspwm and sway user environments, as well as a profile to install the pipewire media server, which enlarges the list of environment installations supported by the installer.

In addition to that, we can find that support for localization and connection of translations was provided for all the data that is shown on the screen, in addition to the fact that support for the Btrfs file system has also been greatly improved, since in this new version of ArchInstall 2.4.0 a option to enable compression on Btrfs and an option to disable copy-on-write mode (nodatacow).

On the part of the new functions, in this new version it is highlighted that the function was added archinstall.run_pacman() to call the pacman package manager and the function archinstall.package_search() to search for packages, as well as the new functions added to load and save configurations (archinstall.load_config and archinstall.save_config) and also the archinstall.list_timezones() function to display the list of time zones.

Of the other changes that stand out from this new version of the installer:

  • The user interaction scripts have been split into multiple files and moved from archinstall/lib/user_interaction.py to the archinstall/lib/user_interaction/ directory.
  • Expanded options for managing disk partitions.
  • The possibility of simultaneous definition of several configurations of network cards is provided.
  • Added pytest based tests.
  • Added function .enable_multilib_repository() to archinstall.Installer() to enable multilib.
  • The new window manager is qtile , written in Python.
  • Added functions to add systemd, grub, and efistub boot loaders.
  • Examples have been created for –disk_layouts, –creds, and –conf. Since they are now split into separate files to meet security concerns when sharing user settings publicly. This makes it easy to support and configure multiple machines, as they can share common –conf things but have different –disk_layouts for example.

Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it about this new version of the installer, you can check the details In the following link.


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