Red Hat's Jiri Konecny announced a few days ago that are working to modernize and improve the user interface of the Anaconda installer which is used in Fedora, RHEL, CentOS and various other Linux distributions.
And is that to date the Anaconda installer has been based on GTK and part of the reason why the decision to take this important step has been taken is due to the process of modernizing the installer with which they have already started work on rewriting the user interface.
With this news there will be two ways to run the installer and it is that one of them will be the one that we have been using, which is the local one and the new way will be the remote one, with which this should serve those who intend to install from a third-party server through programs such as VNC.
It is mentioned that instead of using the GTK library, the new interface will be based on web technologies and will allow remote control through a web browser.
It's been quite a while since we created the current GTK-based user interface for Anaconda : the OS installer for Fedora, RHEL, CentOS. For a long time, we (the Anaconda team) have been looking for possibilities to modernize and improve the user experience. In this post, we would like to explain what we are working on and, above all, tell you about what you can expect in the future.
First, we must express that we decided to share this information quite soon. We are currently at the stage where we have made decisions. We have a 'working prototype' of the solution already available, but don't expect screenshots or demos just yet!
As for components to be used within the renovation of the project, it is mentioned that will be behind cockpit of which its components will be used, since in addition these already are used in Red Hat products to configure and manage servers are used as the basis for creating a new interface.
For part of the reason Cockpit was chosen is because this it's a great well established solution with backend support for interacting with the installer (Anaconda DBus). In addition, the use of Cockpit will standardize and unify the different components of the control system.
Using the web interface will significantly increase the convenience of remote control installation, which cannot be compared with the current solution based on the VNC protocol.
What can you expect?
We will rewrite the new UI as a web browser based UI using the existing Cockpit technology. We take this approach because Cockpit is a mature solution with great support for the backend (Anaconda DBus).
The redesign of the interface will build on the work already done to increase the modularity of the installer and it won't significantly affect Fedora users, since most of Anaconda has already been converted to modules that interact via the DBus API, and the new interface will use the API without internal reworking.
Last but not least, in the article They mention that at the moment the dates are unknown for the project to be announced to the public. and above all that it is not yet entirely clear when the public tests of the new interface will begin and the preparation for its promotion to the upstream at this stage of development, but the developers promise to periodically publish reports on the development of the project.
We also decided to make this step consistent with the rest of the system. More and more projects are supported by Cockpit. With this step, we should make the system more consistent between different applications. The big UX improvement should be easier remote installations compared to the current VNC solution. You can expect many other improvements, but let's wait and see :).
It is noted that the decision has already been made to rework the installer, but the implementation is still at the stage of a working prototype, it is not ready for demo.
Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it about the note, you can check the details In the following link.
I don't understand what you mean by installing remotely with vnc, can you pass me a video tutorial to understand?