graphical arch installer

pseudomind · 2008-04-28 22:38:42

I have begun writing a generic graphical installer for which I plan to support arch. I realize this has been discussed in the past and it was deemed an unnecessary complication that is contrary to the arch philosophy. However I think the particular way I am intending to implement this will address many problems which are even experienced with the text based installer. Because I am fairly new to programming I would like some feedback on my ideas whether it be suggestions, possible complications, or general hate.

-The installation environment will likely be a modified slax livecd.
Slax is based on slackware which has fairly similar package structure and so it will be reasonably easy to create packages required for installation of various distributions using their native installers (i.e. apt-get, pacman). I plan to run a modified kernel to support nearly all file systems that the linux kernel is capable of writing to and make use of the fuse kernel module for future expandability. By using such a platform I can focus on solely developing the installation frontends, backends, their associated routines and general infrastructure.

-Installation scripts will not be located on the livecd.
Running the installer will connect to a server or multiple servers and get the most recent installation instructions. By doing this, the installer can support many different distributions even if they did not exist at the time of the cds creation. In arch's case this will be ideal, its rolling release structure sometimes produces a broken system after an initial install and full update from even the most recent snapshot cd. With this particular setup, a major migration to a different means of doing things will not render all installation cds useless as happens with old arch install cds. All that would need to happen is a modification of the remotely fetched script and instantly the installation routine of all the cds would be up to date.

-Software required to install will also not be on the cd.
For similar reasons the various package managers, disk partition utilities, formatting utilities etc. will not be included on the cd. they will also be fetched depending on the particular type of install requested.

I feel bad that so many distributions have to reinvent the wheel to make live-cd installers and even more so they have to periodically re-release to keep it up to date. I think this is a horribly inefficient idea. I'm hoping that by its design this installer will be something which is reasonably easy to maintain for developers and easy for end users to use.

I did not go too much detail on how I plan to acheive all these goals however, I am working on the program when I have free time. Please give me some feedback guys!

Here are some preliminary screenshots.

phrakture · 2008-04-28 22:43:43

Wow, nicely done. I look forward to seeing the end result.

PS I laughed pretty hard at "I'm Scared, Nevermind"

gradgrind · 2008-04-29 07:08:17

That's a nice idea. It should not be difficult to fit Arch into such a framework.

pyther · 2008-04-29 10:49:14

Please stop, we have to many noobs as it is. The community is becoming crappier every month

Allan · 2008-04-29 11:01:20

I looks very interesting to me. I will definitely give it a go once it gets released... Probably to try Dragonfly though! I've always been interested in it.

pyther wrote:

Please stop, we have to many noobs as it is. The community is becoming crappier every month

Bad pyther, bad! That comment is very crappy itself.

tomk · 2008-04-29 11:19:50

pyther - if you can't be constructive, the best option is to say nothing. Please note that this board is called "Community Contributions". You are not required to use this installer, any more than you are required to use Arch itself.

phrakture · 2008-04-29 16:11:07

I, for one, think this is great. Everyone and their brother bitches about our installer. pseudomind is actually doing something about it. Hooray for him being proactive.

Now, truth be told, this will most likely NOT end up on an official install CD, but the ISO tools are hopefully in a state now where one could easily create their own CD that boots to a GUI and uses this installer. I think it'd be neat.

3nd3r · 2008-04-29 16:27:33

hurray! I was wondering when something like this was going to be made. I cant wait to test it out

Endperform · 2008-04-29 17:11:53

Looks like you have a great start to a cool piece of software. Keep up the good work

pyther wrote:

Please stop, we have to many noobs as it is. The community is becoming crappier every month

It's people like you, pyther, that give Linux users in general a bad name. You were a noob once too, and I for one would rather see more people interested in Arch.

Sigi · 2008-04-29 17:15:12

gradgrind wrote:

That's a nice idea. It should not be difficult to fit Arch into such a framework.

And it also shouldn't be difficult to fit that into larch...

zodmaner · 2008-04-29 17:52:07

Impressive! This sounds really cool! I will keep my eye on this one.

PS. Looking forward to see more screenshots.

Last edited by zodmaner (2008-04-29 17:56:01)

GGLucas · 2008-04-29 18:09:53

.

Last edited by GGLucas (2022-06-24 09:09:16)

Mikko777 · 2008-04-29 18:31:40

nice, lets see how it compares to kdemod4live

mockup:

http://www.kdemod.ath.cx/wiki/doku.php? … ller_style

kdemod4live = arch+larch+kdemod4+tribe+shaman+arxin = awesomeness!

Slammer64 · 2008-04-29 18:38:42

Best of luck on that psuedomind, I'll be keeping an eye peeled for further developments, after all, anything that improves Arch is good, right? :-)

Sigi · 2008-04-29 18:41:43

Mikko777 wrote:

nice, lets see how it compares to kdemod4live
mockup:
http://www.kdemod.ath.cx/wiki/doku.php? … ller_style
kdemod4live = arch+larch+kdemod4+tribe+shaman+arxin = awesomeness!

Nice! Another awesome project to keep an eye on. The mockups look pretty smooth...

zodmaner · 2008-04-29 18:49:08

Mikko777 wrote:

nice, lets see how it compares to kdemod4live
mockup:
http://www.kdemod.ath.cx/wiki/doku.php? … ller_style
kdemod4live = arch+larch+kdemod4+tribe+shaman+arxin = awesomeness!

Holy smoke! That looks good indeed!

Glad to see your project with KDEmod guys took off, Mikko777. Can't wait to see it in action!

Last edited by zodmaner (2008-04-29 18:50:10)

drf · 2008-04-29 18:49:47

Sigi wrote:

Mikko777 wrote:
nice, lets see how it compares to kdemod4live
mockup:
http://www.kdemod.ath.cx/wiki/doku.php? … ller_style
kdemod4live = arch+larch+kdemod4+tribe+shaman+arxin = awesomeness!
Nice! Another awesome project to keep an eye on. The mockups look pretty smooth...

Mockups? What? That thing is real guys, and it's taking shape quickly :

This is not a mockup, you can already compile it

Last edited by drf (2008-04-29 18:50:19)

Sigi · 2008-04-29 18:57:34

Even better, but please keep posting thumbnails instead of big images. Thanks

Maki · 2008-04-29 19:11:15

This stuff is cool ( although lt's unconventional to run a livecd to install various os's ). This could be an all new & fun way to install some free os to you system. Glad to see so much cool stuff from the community KDEMod, shaman, larch, yaourt, tupac, wocka, all the stuff in AUR, the unofficial repo's, etc, etc

Sjoden · 2008-04-29 19:19:44

Pseudomind, your screenshots look great, and I think you have a great idea with making it work for more than one distrobution! I'm going to keep my eye on this also.

_Marco_ · 2008-04-29 20:01:31

this is really a good idea!
I hope to hear news soon
bye

ora · 2008-05-02 11:12:52

Great work.
But I think kdialog is enough. No need to re-invent the wheel.
And it's easier to change /arch/setup to use kdialog, it also has a RAD tool kommander.

Last edited by ora (2008-05-02 11:15:16)

b9anders · 2008-05-02 15:19:19

drf wrote:

Sigi wrote:
Mikko777 wrote:
nice, lets see how it compares to kdemod4live
mockup:
kdemod4live = arch+larch+kdemod4+tribe+shaman+arxin = awesomeness!
Nice! Another awesome project to keep an eye on. The mockups look pretty smooth...
Mockups? What? That thing is real guys, and it's taking shape quickly :
http://drfav.files.wordpress.com/2008/0 … _scrot.png
This is not a mockup, you can already compile it

that looks mightily impressive. Did you borrow the layout from opensuse 11? looks very similar.

drf · 2008-05-02 15:55:03

Yes, got inspiration, but code, layout and images are 100% from scratch

peets · 2008-05-02 16:13:01

pseudomind, I'm trying to understand what you're going to write. Basically you're creating a lean liveCD that will launch a graphical environment and connect to the internet, and then hand over control to whatever scripts the distros wrote? You're designing a general framework that every distro can conform to in order to quickly get a nice installer?

If you manage to make the interface between what you're making and the distro-specific scripts clear and simple, this could be really cool and a big time-saver!

Arch Linux

#1 2008-04-28 22:38:42

graphical arch installer

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