Arch Linux installer now slightly less masochistic Version 3 of the Arch Linux installer is out, with usability improvements and clarifications to its licensing. Arch is one of the trickier Linux distros to get working, which is one reason it has a certain cachet to it – many of its users are proud of the fact that they got it working, and want to tell you. The installation …
“Archinstall 3 is still very basic and text-based…”
I have seen this comment many times over the years; often applied to BSD installers.
Why does an installer need to be anything but text based? Being text based does not mean it’s primitive or old. It means it’s probably a heap more reliable and will likely run on anything without much fuss, compared to an unnecessarily complex, resource hungry graphical interface that needs to install drivers etc etc just to get off the ground.
I'm just vaguely wondering why a TUI or GUI at all?
An installer gathers information about user details and other configurations and then basically copies and unpacks files. A choice earlier in the dialogue may require different choices later, so a simple forking graph of question and answer strikes me as the best model to use.
As an example, the OpenBSD installer uses a simple series of questions presented in the console. For each question, a default answer is provided, or you can type your own response. In some cases you can respond with ? for more details (e.g. disk drive names and capacities). The only tricky bit is if you want to edit the disklabel (for Linux, I'd just suggest use of fdisk/cfdisk before starting the installer a la Slackware).
"I'm just vaguely wondering why a TUI or GUI at all?"
It's the installer equivalent of a shell script. The first time you perform a complex set of steps, you research the commands, finding the options that fit your use case, and documenting them. The second time, you work from your document, fine tuning the commands as you go. The third time, you edit your document, adding # and ${} and $() where needed, with #! /bin/sh at the top. Now you at least won't miss a step.
The TUI or GUI donates the benefits of scripting to people who know _next to nothing_ about installing your distro, or indeed any distro. Of course _you_ don't need the hand-holding, but you are not the audience.
"The only tricky bit is if you want to edit the disklabel ..."
Another tricky bit is lack of a Back or Previous function.
It depends a little on who is running, but not as much as your comment suggests. Let's consider the part where you'll possibly erase and partition one or more disks. Let's also say that you have something else running, for the sake of simplicity on another drive. When you get to the point in the installer where you specify where it is supposed to install to, which partitions it should use, and what it should create, how do you select that? For a lot of users, the GUI is the way that makes sense and anything else doesn't. CLI tools would just confuse them and mean they can't install the OS, so they won't use the OS, so developers who are targeting them won't build for the OS, and the OS is less successful than it could be.
But who cares about those lusers anyway. We don't need anyone who doesn't have at least two terminal windows as soon as they log in. We only need an installer that works for us. Great. I live in the CLI a lot of the time and I'm quite familiar with the tools to get information about and modify disks and partitions. So I run the CLI installer, it gets to the part where I specify that information and I ... well wait a minute. I would know what to do if I dropped to a shell and could start executing some commands, starting with lsblk. That shell isn't an available option right now because I'm in the installer. I don't have multiple windows, and if I exit this, I have to start from scratch again. So what happens is that I have to start an Arch environment, get a shell, find all the information I'll need during installation, write that down somewhere, then enter it during installation. At that point, why shouldn't I just script this; it will mean less risk of typos at any rate.
So who needs an installer. Anyone who uses a CLI installer is just dumbing it down from the script they should be writing. Amateur idiots, all of you. Is that approach helpful? A GUI installer is not dumbing anything down from a CLI installer, assuming they both let you do the same things. It's just presenting exactly the same options in a different form, and a form that may reduce complications, allow users to configure their installation more quickly, and attract others to using and therefore benefiting the software.
The vast majority of people doing it have either never done it before, or haven't done it for years because their old machines ran for ages with regular updates, not reinstalls.
So almost everyone needs handholding through it, and everyone needs it to show you what's going to happen before it happens, as it's generally very difficult to make it un-happen.
Hence the need for a GUI of one form or another.
ncurses is perfectly good for this of course.
Exactly. From the position where you know everything about what you're doing, an installer isn't very important, but not that many people are in that position and those who are are already scripting it. For those who remain, a GUI installer is more convenient for some users and, if it is as powerful, it's often no less convenient for those who would be comfortable with the CLI. Thus, the people saying that a GUI installer is advisable have a point and should not be dismissed, especially with incorrect claims of "dumbing down". At most, the argument could be, and in my case is, that the lack of a GUI installer isn't a big deal for me personally. That isn't a very convincing argument for any broader point, though.
That might be the case for Arch, since its live installations tend to boot to a shell directly. That problem has cropped up for other CLI installations that don't start up a shell first. Other TTYs might not work if the environment isn't processing the key commands that normally access alternates. Even if they do, if the environment I'm in doesn't have a shell running or doesn't have utilities I'd use to find information, then I'm also stuck. That's why a lot of installers provide information about the thing they're asking you to select.
I agree that text-only interfaces require less dependencies and can be made more reliable, but why call anything else “dumbing it down”? Why is “dumbing it down” considered a bad thing?
I think other people on this thread have responded on some of the potential use-cases — for the most part, not everyone has to install a new installation of Linux very often, and often, they will need some kind of guidance. Others are new to Linux. Still others don't want to make mistakes that are often irreversible, or force you to try again from the start if you make a mistake. Automating the installation process is good, and putting it in a graphical interface makes it less intimidating to new users.
It also should be noted that installers, even text-based ones, are more than just widgets — they streamline and automate some of the installation process, and allow for defaults to be used. It means people spend less time on customizing, sure, but also… there's less opportunity to make mistakes. Some processes can be done automatically once you've decided on a course of action. Others often don't need to be set unless it has the most niche of use-cases. Sometimes you may change your mind halfway through an install, or you may need to reverse a step. Installers allow you to review steps before you take the plunge.
Like, what is the benefit of making the installation process hard? If you wanted to learn how to put a Linux system, there's Linux from Scratch. Other than signaling one's, you know, virtue to the cognoscenti, what's the actual utility of not using a dumb-downed process if you don't need to customize your setup?
> what is the benefit of making the installation process hard?
A misplaced and out-of-date attitude of “this’ll separate the men from the boys”?
Or perhaps, more likely, a deep-seated ancestral memory of The Eternal September, when a previous step-change in how hard it was to do things that were previously the domain of hardcore geeks, resulted in a so-far-uncontrolled flood of n00bs?
Arch install have had various problems and bugs in the past, and its track record for reliability is certainly not better than some of the better GUI installers. The problem is often the scripts/tools running in the background and interfacing with them, the rest is just pixels, whether text based or more graphically appealing.
After almost 30 years of Linux, while there's always stuff to learn I do consider myself fairly confident but still prefer a nice GUI installer, nothing wrong in making the experience pleasant and information is often presented better IMHO. While a text based installer can be a useful option to have, any Desktop distro would be well served by defaulting to GUI.
Anyway, whenever someone use the words "dumbing down" a little "elitism alarm" goes off in my head, something for which I harbour a certain disdain.
I think a lot of the hate for text-based software (not just OS installers, but more generally) has to do with a lot of such programs being crap to use. I commented in the documentation for one of my TUI programs that a lot of people look at a console-based program and think : "The 1980s called, and they want their software back." And the 1980s were not (with some exceptions) a heyday of good UIs.
TUIs don't necessarily have to be crap. I write a good bit of curses-based software, and am the maintainer for the PDCursesMod library that gets used for many such programs. You can use a mouse within such a program and have buttons and so forth. But you can also write crappy software, and many do.
"TUIs don't necessarily have to be crap."
See Midnight Commander, a clone of the old MS-DOS utility Norton Commander, that has been tweaked for the *nix environment. It's a useful tool, and a lot more powerful than it looks at first glance. I use it near daily, and have done for around 30 years. 40 years if you include the DOS version from Norton. Try typing mc at a command prompt. Recommended.
Free tip: Be extremely careful if you choose to run mc as root ... it will do exactly what you tell it to do. Don't say I didn't warn you.
> Why does an installer need to be anything but text based?
Multiple reasons.
1. A lot of people are used to point-and-click. A live medium gives them that option; a text-only shell-based one does not.
2. Many Unix folks have not got a clue how to make an easy TUI-driven app. I mean, for evidence, go look at Vim and Emacs.
3. A live install medium means you have seen, right there, a demo that your machine works and can run the OS, complete with graphics. You can check and verify everything works, that you have full screen resolution, networking, sound etc. So you know it should work.
4. It lets you go online and look stuff up. That can be a huge help.
5. It lets you run other programs. E.g. run Gparted, check your partitions, maybe make new ones, then go back and rerun the installer. Or mount a volume, or fix a volume, or whatever. This is much harder from a bare shell.
6. It improves accessibility via screen readers and for other people with disabilities.
Those are the first half a dozen reasons that spring to mind. There are doubtless more.
The original was from a Usenet .sig:
Ubuntu: An ancient African word meaning "Slackware is HARD!".
It was a joke combining 1992's controversial Teen Talk Barbie phrase "Math class is tough" (which had mutated in the collective psyche into "Math is HARD!") with the perception that the kiddies flocking to Ubuntu in 2004 were somewhat wet behind the ears.
At the time, it was both clever and funny, at least to the folks who had already been running Linux for a decade or so.
Maybe you had to be there ...
Are you a bot, @jake? You used exactly the same gag 2 months ago, complete with formatting
https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/10/11/ubuntu_oracular_oriole_released/#c_4946812
Anyway, the gag was that it means "I can't install Debian". I've quoted it before:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/31/the_cynics_guide_to_linux/
And I wasn't the first:
https://www.theregister.com/2013/05/08/debian_seven_review/
My first short experience with Manjaro was the version installed by default on my PinePhone shipped together with the equally wobbly Plasma Mobile GUI. I found my way to the relative stability of mobian/Phosh and the more familiar territory of apt very quickly.
Some time not so long after that there was a minor schism in the fractured PinePhone community where a group of non-Manjaro developers asked the Manjaro team to stop shipping stuff they knew to be broken.
As an example - within my first hour of using Manjaro/Plasma I discovered that brightness slider was obviously inspired by the colour scheme of the cockpit of Hotblack Desiato's stunt ship. If you moved the slider all the way to the left the screen dimmed to such an extent that the slider, and all the text and other controls on the display turned the same shade of black as the background.
I think I've missed the "I use Arch! HAHA!" train. I tried it out on bare metal years ago and man, I tried my best but my best wasn't good enough. I had read enough that I began to think I may be very close to being qualified to be a Linux kernel maintainer but still, no Arch.
Tried it again recently, found out about "archinstall", then nothing but pacman -Syu and pacman -S install [packagename], and now I'm like "It installed. It works great. Updates fine. Installs packages fine. But where's the challenge in that?' lol
"We suspect that Arch now has more useful derivative meta-distros than any Linux distribution especially the Debian/Ubuntu family".
There are way more Debian spins than Arch, but most of them are crap or pointless...you're almost always better off using just Debian or Ubuntu...most of the spin offs just feel like using someone elses setup rather than an alternate solution.
With Arch derivatives there is usually some point to them and heavy customisation that translates into an actual time saver.
There are also shitty derivatives of Arch...like Garuda for example...which come with some of the most toxic communities and developers on Earth...I've singled out Garuda because of their weird forum and community management.
Hands up if you posted there with a well laid out post with all the required technical information and still been told "post inxi, it's the rules". Fuck off...they're also big fans of blaming "upstream"...I've never see a distro that goes so hard on blaming "upstream" it's insane.
Indeed. I don't mind posting massive amounts of debug output if the problem is complex and requires detail.
But the last question I asked was about the NVIDIA driver when the 4080 Super came out and when they were intending on updating it in their repos...it wasn't even a technical question...I got absolutely slammed for not posting my inxi output. You literally cannot post a question without an inxi dump. Fucking morons.
I got a DM from the "founder" of the project lecturing me on how hard it is to run the support side of things etc etc...yeah it's fucking hard, I worked in support for nearly a decade...and what made it really hard was when people sent me way too much information that wasn't relevant to the problem.
"My laptop has started crashing, nothing has changed but I bought a new Ninja Air Fryer 3 months ago, could it be that?"
> any Linux distribution especially the Debian/Ubuntu family".
I didn't say that, though. I just went back and checked, and the article says what I wrote:
«
We suspect that Arch now has more derivative meta-distros than any Linux distribution except the Debian/Ubuntu family.
»
Ta for "inxi" though. Nearly 30 years of Linux and I'd never seen that one before. I had to Google it.
I'm a Fedora/XFCE user. So every six months all the machines at Linux Mansions need an upgrade.
Thankfully the Fedora folk supply dnf scripts so that the updating is completely an online process. (Most of items 1 through 8 listed below are not needed!)
My brother on the other hand is an Elementary user. Just last week Elementary 8.0 hit the streets. Bare metal install only:
1 make a list of the extra software you use (not in the download ISO)
2 download ISO
3 burn DVD (or thumb drive)
4 back up machine
5 run installer
6 check to see if install looks OK
7 restore backup
8 re-install extra software
9 .......and maybe you are back in business
So...yes....I agree that a nice simple installler is good to have.....but it really would be a pain to have to use it every six months on every eligible machine!!
Arch is a rolling release, it's nothing like Fedora, there is no new release every 6 months. I've been using the same Arch install, on my dev machine, for nearly 8 years and it is bang up to date...never had to reinstall it...I've had to roll back snapshots on rare occasions...but never reinstalled it.
The point of manually installing is you choose what you want to install, and you learn the basics of those decisions. Using an installer is quicker, but the installer is doing things you are not aware of and when something breaks you have no idea where to start. The Arch Wiki and support forum are amazingly good. Arch is a rolling distro, so installation is a one-off thing, might as well do it right.
I was already very comfortable with Linux when I installed Arch manually for the first time, so I was able to follow along with the Arch Wiki easily enough and I usually knew which option I wanted when multiple options were presented. That said, I used the archinstall script first, to play around with the distro and see if it was even something I liked. When I finally did install manually on both my workstation and main laptop, I definitely did learn a lot more about Arch, and about some general Linux stuff which I didn't previously know as well as I thought I did.
Both methods have their place for tech-savvy users already familiar with Linux. If I was to set up a new bare-metal install that I intended to use for a long time, I would likely do it manually again. For testing purposes, or for spinning up a quick virtual machine, the archinstall script saves a ton of time and it would be silly in my opinion to do a manual install.
For those who are new to Linux or for those who don't know or care how anything works under the hood, a manual Arch installation is never going to happen. A good installer is the only way these users will ever be able to use Arch. I hope it continues to improve and transitions into a GUI installer one day.
I have been in a process for the last few years to audition all the major Linux distros to see which one I will adopt when I abandon Windows, an OS that only seems to get more bloated and kludgy by the day.
Manjaro has been a pleasure to use as my primary OS on my laptops and my primary desktop, all of which dual-boot also into Windows 11 Pro.
I also have my eye on other mainstream distros, like Ubuntu, Mint and Bodhi, running them as VM's on my primary desktop since it has 48GB of RAM. I know that MX Linux seems to be more popular, according to Distrowatch, but I can't seem to generate any love for that particular variant.
FWIW, I find Manjaro to a reliable and polished distro that is easy to install, easy to update and easy to love. I suspect it will win out as my primary OS once my divorce from Windows is complete.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
