Fedora Workstation 39 Eyes Switch To Anaconda WebUI For Installations

For the past year and a half Red Hat engineers have been developing a new web-based UI for their Anaconda OS installer and with the Fedora Workstation 39 release later this year they are looking at possibly switching to it by default.

Fedora has been trialing this new Anaconda WebUI and it's matured quite a lot over the past year. It's been matching parity and excelling in various areas over its long-standing GTK-based user-interface and more robust with being web-based and Cockpit integration.

The new Anaconda user interface has reached the point that it's largely ready to begin its roll-out. Rather than having all Fedora editions/spins immediately switch to it, the currently expressed plan would be for Fedora Workstation to initially switch over to it for the Fedora 39 cycle.

This change proposal is now filed and will be reviewed by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) for approval to modernize the Fedora Workstation installation experience.

Some key information from the change proposal:

What is going to change with the new Web UI?

The new web UI is not just a change of the UI technology, which is based on the React and Cockpit framework, but also a complete overhaul of the user experience. The new UI is trying to be easier to use by removing most of the complexities but still leaving possibilities to do everything you might need to do. We are trying to achieve a state where even users who don’t have previous experience with the Linux operating system will be able to do the installation smoothly.

List of what is part of the new UI:

- Wizard solution instead of hub and spoke
- New welcome screen to select language (will be preselected from a language configured in system)
- Timezone and date configuration
- Disk selection
- Guided partitioning
- Review configuration
- Installation progress
- Build-in help
...
Benefit to Fedora

Fedora Workstation installation will have a more comfortable and better user experience, especially for the new-to-distro users. We are also targeting to have a consistent look and feel with Cockpit and Image Builder projects, so that users might be more familiar with the new Anaconda. By this, we would be more aligned with Fedora Workstation SIG goals of simple and easy-to-use solutions, and hide the complexities to make the installation experience more robust. It should be easier for users to reinstall the existing system. It will also allow the Anaconda team to make the extensions to the UI faster than it was before and should be less prone to errors compared to the current UI.

Given the change is being pushed by Red Hat engineers, it will likely be approved for Fedora 39.

Another change proposal filed today is for building the Fedora Workstation Live ISO with Image Builder as the new set of tools aimed at making the OS images more reliable and reproducible. Details on that change proposal here.