Archinstall 2.7 Brings Unified Kernel Image Support To The Arch Linux Installer

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Archinstall 2.7 Brings Unified Kernel Image Support To The Arch Linux Installer

The very convenient Archinstall for quickly deploying new Arch Linux installations with some level of defaults and making it effortless to setup an Arch Linux desktop is out with a new release...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arch-Linux-Archinstall-2.7

[Kjell]

Maybe one day we'll get a Unikernel (UKL) in Arch Linux

[fallingcats]

I've been using a UKI efi file to boot a full arch system installed on a ventoy (multi-boot) flash drive. I must say it came pretty handy and made things a lot easier. Just put the UKI with the isos and ventoy can boot into the arch partition.

[skeevy420]

I switched to using UKI earlier this year and it's been great except for one thing -- it wasn't part of my original planning so my 750MB EFI ran out of space when I was trying out different kernel and schedulers. Arch Stable and LTS + their fallbacks is half my damn EFI. Switching from Zstd 10 to Zstd ultra 22 only gains an extra 34MB with the two Arch kernels.

[maveric7911]

UKI is in AUR, easy peasy!

[fallingcats]

UKI is in AUR, easy peasy!

UKIs can be built just by adding a line or two to your mkinitcpio.d presets. No aur packages needed.

[EvilHowl]

I have been using Arch Linux with Secure Boot + UKI + systemd-boot (dualbooting with Windows 11) in both of my machines for a few weeks and it has been a hassle-free experience so far, though I really need to resize the EFI partition I share with Windows as I don't even have space for a fallback image, lol. I know I could create an XBOOTLDR partition but I couldn't make systemd-boot read UKIs there, which kind of makes sense given that you should put just kernels and initramfs there, not UKIs.

I might try different compression algorithms.

[ehansin]

Any here use Limine at all? I looked it up previously after seeing it referenced here previously in an Archinstall article. Looks like a good alternative to Grub, but wondering why I might consider vs. systemd-boot. I have a single boot laptop I'm thinking of maybe putting Arch onto to give it a run (been a bit), and figured I'd just go with systemd-boot. Time to do my homework!

[skeevy420]

I have been using Arch Linux with Secure Boot + UKI + systemd-boot (dualbooting with Windows 11) in both of my machines for a few weeks and it has been a hassle-free experience so far, though I really need to resize the EFI partition I share with Windows as I don't even have space for a fallback image, lol. I know I could create an XBOOTLDR partition but I couldn't make systemd-boot read UKIs there, which kind of makes sense given that you should put just kernels and initramfs there, not UKIs.

I might try different compression algorithms.

With both the stable and LTS kernels with their fallbacks installed my EFI is 342MB with Zstd 10, 308MB with Zstd 22, and 374MB with Zstd 3 (default). Going uncompressed I ran out of space running mkinitcpio -P and it only managed to add LTS and its fallback. With LZ4 it used 532MB.

I use Zstd 10 because it isn't stupid slow. I also use multi-threaded compression.

# COMPRESSION
# Use this to compress the initramfs image. By default, zstd compression
# is used. Use 'cat' to create an uncompressed image.
COMPRESSION="zstd"
#COMPRESSION="gzip"
#COMPRESSION="bzip2"
#COMPRESSION="lzma"
#COMPRESSION="xz"
#COMPRESSION="lzop"
#COMPRESSION="lz4"
#COMPRESSION="cat"

# COMPRESSION_OPTIONS
# Additional options for the compressor
COMPRESSION_OPTIONS=(--ultra -10 -T0)​

[murlakatamenka]

skeevy420 --ultra is only needed if you go beyond -19 in zstd