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

This month's Arch Linux install media update now provides "archinstall" as the guided installer for Arch Linux for those preferring a quick and easy route for deploying Arch Linux.

For those short on time or not wanting to manually install Arch Linux on your systems and wanting to use Arch Linux directly rather than one of the more desktop-friendly options like Manjaro and EndeavourOS, this month's Arch Linux install media is shipping archinstall.

The Archinstall utility has been in development for some time while this month's install media updates has added it so that it's available by default. Back in January is when the archinstall package was promoted to being official and has continued maturing since.

With Archinstall it's very quick and easy to install Arch Linux, granted not as user-friendly / polished as say the Debian Installer, Red Hat's Anaconda installer, even Ubuntu's Subiquity, and other TUI/GUI Linux installers out there. But in any case within a few minutes I had Arch Linux installed via this method. Archinstall does allow automatically partitioning the drive with your choice of file-system options, automatically installing a desktop environment if desired, configuring the network interfaces, and all the other basics.

The method is quick enough that I'll likely use archinstall for future Arch Linux benchmarks on Phoronix as it also then applies a sane set of defaults for users asking otherwise how the distribution was installed/configured, among other questions that often come up when a distribution doesn't have defaults / sensible stock values, while also being very quick to deploy.

Five minutes or less and off to the races, ready for Arch Linux.