Graphical interface for install

mrrg123 · 2018-05-03 02:25:45

Hi everyone id like to know why there is no a graphical interface to install archlinux because the guide it's kind of super general and to people who it's not very familiar with Linux could be difficult to understand.
Maybe you could implement something like debían a graphical interface for newbies maybe and the old way maybe?
Sorry my shitty english
Greetings

Scimmia · 2018-05-03 02:31:00

People who are not very familiar with Linux are not Arch's target audience. Simple as that.

ewaller · 2018-05-03 02:45:08

Please don't use vulgarities for no good reason.
Arch Linux is targeted for those who have a clue about Linux. There are many distributions aimed at those who feel the need for graphical installers. Arch is not one of them.

eschwartz · 2018-05-03 11:24:07

We used to have a menu-driven installer just like Debian. We got rid of it, because no one was interested in maintaining it, and also we decided it did not really fit into Arch's goals (which might be why no one wanted to maintain it), and because it was fragile and broke a lot.

https://www.archlinux.org/news/install- … -released/

Scimmia wrote:

People who are not very familiar with Linux are not Arch's target audience. Simple as that.

Kind of this, except not really. Arch is definitely targeted for people not very familiar with Linux... if and only if they are willing to learn and read the documentation. Arch is very explicitly a distro for people who understand how their system works, and want more control, or for people with that do-it-yourself attitude who are interested in, and in the process of, learning how their system works and getting more control.

It is the opinion of most Arch users and developers, that this goal is incompatible with using any sort of installer.

Trilby · 2018-05-03 11:31:08

Eschwartz wrote:

We used to have a menu-driven installer just like Debian. We got rid of it ...

And never looked back.

I installed arch at least three times with the old installer, it sucked - at the time I didn't know how much it sucked as it was on par with many other OSs (that suck). It took a while, was a bit confusing (too much "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain") and resulted in no learning about or understanding the system I just installed*.

I've installed arch a dozen times with the new approach. The first time doing so is when I really started learning. Even the first time was pretty quick, but each time since has gotten *much* faster (the old method always stayed just as slow and frustrating).

* it's certainly possible for someone to follow the installation guide checklist without ever engaging their brain and learning anything, but this is on them: the process is transparent, and the opportunities to learn, to stop and ask "why" or "what if", are all right there. With the current process, one might ask what fstab is for, or how partitioning works and whether fdisk and gdisk do different things. With the old process, one might only ask what a white progress bar on blue background actually represents.

Last edited by Trilby (2018-05-03 11:33:44)

V1del · 2018-05-03 11:36:45

Eschwartz wrote:

https://www.archlinux.org/news/install- … -released/

That was like a month before I first installed Arch, does that mean I just missed the window to an easy installer? Oh the pain of my first Arch install I jest, but it did take me a few hours to ensure I understood everything of relevance in the Beginner's Guide, which did likely do more good than bad in the long run, so it's probably for the better.

sevendogs · 2018-05-03 12:38:25

It takes me less time to install Arch by hand then it does to install some distros with installers 8-) Less than 30 minutes.

eschwartz · 2018-05-03 13:19:13

V1del wrote:

Eschwartz wrote:
https://www.archlinux.org/news/install- … -released/
That was like a month before I first installed Arch, does that mean I just missed the window to an easy installer?

*An* installer, yes. An *easy* installer? Well, I refer you to our esteemed former colleague:

Trilby wrote:

I've installed arch a dozen times with the new approach. The first time doing so is when I really started learning. Even the first time was pretty quick, but each time since has gotten *much* faster (the old method always stayed just as slow and frustrating).

But to take this one step further, it seems to have been a common complaint about the installer, really, that it didn't quite work and you had to drop out of it into a root shell to run the necessary commands by hand... that weren't well-documented... then switch back into the installer to continue on where you left off. This is even if you aren't using some odd setup that the installer wasn't compatible with.

jasonwryan · 2018-05-03 17:41:09

Arch has an excellent graphical installer. Just scroll and click as you go through the process. It even has a a non-graphical one.

circleface · 2018-05-04 00:17:43

I used the AIF (tui) installer the first time I installed arch, and although I don't remember how long it took, I did find it kind of slow and confusing. On the other hand, the current installation guide took me about 5 minutes of editing files and running commands, and about 30 minutes to download and install everything while I just sat there waiting. So, I would say the current installation guide is even better than any graphical installer.

murffatksig · 2018-05-05 04:58:31

Call me crazy because I liked the Arch installer. But I also completely understand why most Arch users don’t see a need for it. The wiki and install guide provide all you need.

I also miss my rc.conf

ugjka · 2018-05-05 08:21:04

AIF was the reason why in the early days I ended up reinstalling my system many times, because I simply didn't know what the hell was going on under the hood.

Roken · 2018-05-05 08:23:54

When I got my laptop, it came with Windows, which was to be ejected. It took about 15 minutes to get to a desktop boot of Arch (and the laptop is SLOW).

Conversely, I have Mint on a VM on my, significantly more powerful, desktop, which seemed to take ages using the graphical installer, by comparison.

And, to echo Trilby's comments, you know better how your system is set up doing it manually, which makes fixing in the event of something failing so much easier.

hemicepha · 2018-05-05 09:43:40

The combination of pacstrap, genfstab, arch-chroot and systemd-boot make the installation process automagically enough imo.

Lone_Wolf · 2018-05-05 14:29:04

One of the problems i had with the AIF was that it's menu structure suggested you could do things in any order when you had to do that in strict sequence.

Occasionally I help people with other OSes, the biggest frustration then is having to wait until the blackboxes aka installers have finished and I can start the real job :
configuring the system so it will do what what the user wants[1] , not what the OS creators want.

[1] Or get as close to that goal as the OS allows

d_fajardo · 2018-05-05 17:24:03

I've only been with Arch for a year and I learned so much about computers. On my first install, it took me a long time, making sure I haven't misunderstood the instructions, and I found it laborious. After my first reboot the bootloader couldn't find the initram and couldn't boot. I was ready to give up right away, but I persevered and looked for answers and I begin to understand chroot, mkinit, etc and grew from there. And now when problems arise, I have some intuition on where to look. And I must say, pacman is great.

Last edited by d_fajardo (2018-05-05 22:47:52)

Jens Clasen · 2018-05-06 16:00:50

Just to add another 2 cents: An installer was about the last thing I was missing, when installing arch the first time. A bit more information about what pacstrap can do an what it can't would have been nice, but otherwise? I didn't miss much. I probably belong to the intended audience, though. I've had some exposure to Linux long before my first arch install.

Regards, Jens

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-05-06 16:48:50

Jens Clasen wrote:

A bit more information about what pacstrap can do an what it can't would have been nice

empty@Xanadu:~ $ pacstrap --help                                                                                    
usage: pacstrap [options] root [packages...]

  Options:
    -C config      Use an alternate config file for pacman
    -c             Use the package cache on the host, rather than the target
    -G             Avoid copying the host's pacman keyring to the target
    -i             Avoid auto-confirmation of package selections
    -M             Avoid copying the host's mirrorlist to the target

    -h             Print this help message

pacstrap installs packages to the specified new root directory. If no packages
are given, pacstrap defaults to the "base" group.

empty@Xanadu:~ $

Slithery · 2018-05-08 12:13:14

Maybe we should help with development for Mark Shuttleworth's latest idea instead?

Phoronix wrote:

What he is basically getting at is for a new desktop Ubuntu installer with an Electron-powered HTML5 installer re-using existing Curtin/MAAS components and also leveraging Snaps as their preferred app delivery technology. It will be interesting to see where this leads.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= … biquity-NG
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubunt … l?anz=show

Surely that's a far better solution than a couple of easily audited bash scripts

Jens Clasen · 2018-05-08 18:19:50

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

empty@Xanadu:~ $ pacstrap --help                                                                                    
usage: pacstrap [options] root [packages...][...]

I know. that was part of the problem. I attempted to install all wanted packages at once - base and every single package i wanted to install afterwards. That did not turn out so well. The whole thing started with some unmet dependencies and it ended with a broken certificate chain. Afterwards, I've wiped the system, kept the package cache and I've started again, doing the whole thing step by step.

The main problem was, that I didn't really know, what I was doing at that time, though. I knew, pacstrap was a wrapper for pacman with a couple of additions, but I tried to apply the Gentoo configure use flags, fire and forget philosophy afterwards. I guess, that was part of my mistake. Doing things step by step worked a whole lot better.

Regards, Jens

Last edited by Jens Clasen (2018-05-08 18:20:25)

eschwartz · 2018-05-08 18:39:26

Slithery wrote:

Maybe we should help with development for Mark Shuttleworth's latest idea instead?
Phoronix wrote:
What he is basically getting at is for a new desktop Ubuntu installer with an Electron-powered HTML5 installer re-using existing Curtin/MAAS components and also leveraging Snaps as their preferred app delivery technology. It will be interesting to see where this leads.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= … biquity-NG
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubunt … l?anz=show
Surely that's a far better solution than a couple of easily audited bash scripts

Oh wow.

used by world class app developers. Skype, Spotify and a ton of GREAT apps on Ubuntu are Electron apps

No obvious biases there, no siree!

Interesting he'd want to associate so strongly with proprietary software.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-05-08 21:45:40

Jens Clasen wrote:

I attempted to install all wanted packages at once - base and every single package i wanted to install afterwards.

That should work fine, perhaps your connection dropped or you had a bad mirror.

ewaller · 2018-05-08 22:02:48

I'll just drop this little nugget for your consideration.
https://news.softpedia.com/news/next-ge … 1032.shtml

There you go...

eschwartz · 2018-05-08 23:38:19

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Jens Clasen wrote:
I attempted to install all wanted packages at once - base and every single package i wanted to install afterwards.
That should work fine, perhaps your connection dropped or you had a bad mirror.

Implying that dropped connections resulting in download errors could bork your system? No... all mirrors are synced and the packages are downloaded to cache, and *then* pacman starts upgrading things once it knows it has everything it needs.

Pretty sure every package manager created does that, in fact.

...

Bad mirrors, if they contain false, mismatched data, could ruin things. I suspect it is more likely they don't get synced at all, though, rather than getting borked. In theory, they're supposed to do atomic updates.

jasonwryan · 2018-05-09 00:40:31

This has drifted off-topic and has exhausted its original intent.

Closing.

Arch Linux

#1 2018-05-03 02:25:45

Graphical interface for install

#2 2018-05-03 02:31:00

Re: Graphical interface for install

#3 2018-05-03 02:45:08

Re: Graphical interface for install

#4 2018-05-03 11:24:07

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#5 2018-05-03 11:31:08

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#6 2018-05-03 11:36:45

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#7 2018-05-03 12:38:25

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#8 2018-05-03 13:19:13

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#9 2018-05-03 17:41:09

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#10 2018-05-04 00:17:43

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#11 2018-05-05 04:58:31

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#12 2018-05-05 08:21:04

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#13 2018-05-05 08:23:54

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#14 2018-05-05 09:43:40

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#16 2018-05-05 17:24:03

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#18 2018-05-06 16:48:50

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#19 2018-05-08 12:13:14

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#20 2018-05-08 18:19:50

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#25 2018-05-09 00:40:31

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