[gentoo-dev] Announcing GLI ("the installer") 0.5

[gentoo-dev] Announcing GLI ("the installer") 0.5

[Andrew Gaffney]

The Gentoo Linux Installer team would like to announce version 0.5[.4] (we've
found a few bugs since the initial 0.5 release) of the installer. This release,
which is available on the 2007.0 x86 and amd64 LiveCD/DVDs, has a lot of changes
from the previous one (so many that it really should have been a new major
version, but we haven't even reached 1.0 yet, so it's a bit hard to jump to
2.0).

The major change is that the installer is now interactive, so instead of
configuring everything and then letting the install go, it acts more like every
other installer that has ever existed. If you're looking for something to do
automated installs, check out the installer's sister project, Quickstart at
<http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/quickstart.php>.

As always, there are many improvements (and bugfixes) since the last version.

  * Yet Another Partitioning Code Overhaul: partitioning is now done in real
    time, so all of the problems that affected previous installer versions are
    now gone. It is completely and absolutely safe. The worst it can do is mess
    up when deleting a partition you wanted to delete or creating a new
    partition, neither of which will result in data loss.
  * GTK+ frontend redesign: most of the screens have been redesigned from the
    ground up to go along with the new real-time functionality of the installer.
    The content of the screens is drawn dynamically as you reach the screen,
    instead of just disabling elements that don't apply anymore due to previous
    decisions. This makes the interface seem a lot less clunky. We also have some
    cool new graphics for the splash screen and banner image thanks to blackace.
  * GTK+ frontend allows you to choose from 3 modes: Networkless, Standard, and
    Advanced.
  * GRP mode is now only available in Networkless mode.
  * When existing prematurely from the installer, it will offer to clean up after
    itself (unmount partitions, move logfiles, etc.)
  * Dialog frontend has been given an overhaul and now has complete i18n support
    along with 5 translations.
  * CLI frontend fixup: the non-interactive CLI frontend has been fixed up. It
    can be used to do automated installs with GLI if you create an install
    profile by hand if you pre-partition or use the recommended partition layout.

As always with improvements, there are new bugs created to go along with them.
If you do encounter a bug, make sure to save your /tmp/installprofile.xml and
/var/log/installer.log.failed from the LiveCD right after the install fails.
File a bug at http://bugs.gentoo.org/. Select the "Gentoo Release Media" product
and the "Installer" component. If you can't find that, just use the following
link:

http://bugs.gentoo.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Gentoo%20Release%20Media&component=Installer&format=guided

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                            http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer                                   Installer Project
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