Arch Linux's Install Media Adds "Archinstall" For Quick/Easy Installations

[Torxed]

The best thing about this installer is not needing a second PC to look at the wiki.

Have seen a video where this installer only created 2 partitions: EFI and / with btrfs.
So the question is, can I also create a swap, a /home partition with XFS and do the btrfs snapshots really work without subvolumes?

You can, sort of. The installer will allow you to use existing partitions but currently doesn't support creating complex setups. So the short answer is no sadly.

In regards to subvolumes, that's coming soon: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/93

ZFS is coming too: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/99

But for advanced users, this is probably the best option: https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/124

[AdamOne]

I use a distro that shall remain nameless, because it is, believe it or not, maintained by a corporation!!!

And I can tell you: if that company had tried the: "educate the user, must install manually" principle then it would be complete bullshit.

Ive used Gentoo, arch, what have you, I understand the install process of a diy-distro and, any way you look at; setting up a distro, even with many steps "automated", it takes _time_. Time and, depending on distro; a lot of effort.
Is a quick installer helpful? Absolutely. Should there be a "hurdle" to "educate" users? Optional.
Should there be a "process" that basically separates decent users from elitists with a blue triangle?
Fuck no.

Edit: Some have written that the manual install of Arch takes five minutes.
It didnt take five minutes before you got to that point, right?
Youve probably had more practice than the average user.

Dont worry, I know about partitioning the hard drives, and running a systemd command that does everything in a jiffy, but understanding each action in a manual process is not the same as crawling through the manual Arch install, because its not as educational.

I hate to plug Gentoo, its not my favorite, but the install guide for it is waaay more educational than the guide for arch, obviously many more steps involved, but at least you begin to _understand_ them.

[Torxed]

I use a distro that shall remain nameless, because it is, believe it or not, maintained by a corporation!!!

And I can tell you: if that company had tried the: "educate the user, must install manually" principle then it would be complete bullshit.

Ive used Gentoo, arch, what have you, I understand the install process of a diy-distro and, any way you look at; setting up a distro, even with many steps "automated", it takes _time_. Time and, depending on distro; a lot of effort.
Is a quick installer helpful? Absolutely. Should there be a "hurdle" to "educate" users? Optional.
Should there be a "process" that basically separates decent users from elitists with a blue triangle?
Fuck no.

Edit: Some have written that the manual install of Arch takes five minutes.
It didnt take five minutes before you got to that point, right?
Youve probably had more practice than the average user.

Dont worry, I know about partitioning the hard drives, and running a systemd command that does everything in a jiffy, but understanding each action in a manual process is not the same as crawling through the manual Arch install, because its not as educational.

I hate to plug Gentoo, its not my favorite, but the install guide for it is waaay more educational than the guide for arch, obviously many more steps involved, but at least you begin to _understand_ them.

I had a rough time gauging if you liked it or not at first.
But the gist essentially is that, it wasn't as educational as it could have been?

If you have a moment to spare I'd love to hear if you have any suggestions on how to make it more educational.
As with any project, you become some what blind to your own creation's shortcomings after a while and fresh ideas are always welcome.

Anyway, if that's to much to ask I completely understand and I'll just have to settle for us having different views on the topic for now

//Main developer

[dylanmtaylor]

Dont worry, I know about partitioning the hard drives, and running a systemd command that does everything in a jiffy, but understanding each action in a manual process is not the same as crawling through the manual Arch install, because its not as educational.

Following step-by-step commands from a wiki page isn't necessarily educational, and after the first few times simply becomes toil; it is tedious to do so. Having a scriptable installation library is a fantastic step forward. Not only does it handle guided installations for most users, but it makes it far easier to write your own python script/project that invokes it and pulls in your fully customized configuration automatically. For server use-cases and other instances where you might want to reinstall to try new things out or simply have a lot of computers to deploy to, this makes Arch far more accessible than it has ever been. And for elitists -- having more users vastly improves testing of packages and discovering bugs, hence better code quality. More people using it will inevitably be good for the project.