What If Arch Linux Had An Official GUI Installer?

I'm not sure how helpful this really would be. I think it is a fair assumption that the vast majority of people doing a manual Arch install are planning on having a second device there already, so that negates most of the need for this. I think it's a lot of work that would be better spent developing a true GUI installer as an option. In other words, it seem to me like a half measure that doesn't accomplish much.

what would be great is if they made a iso that asked you at boot, what environment you will be using/installing, then have it fetch that and boot into it, then use those same files as an installation source. So you are not hammering their servers because you would have downloaded it anyway.

Is there a way to support arch with my computer/connection?

You literally do not have to open the browser check the command close the browser run the command and repeat. That's absoloutely ridiculous. First, its been a while since I did an arch install, but you can still open up a second tty with alt+f2-9. Additionally, even if you can't do that you can still put the browser in the background (i.e. ctrl+z) and then just bring it back up with fg.
Its like people don't understand how to work in a tty, but when you run truly shitty hardware like I do, you learn to live off of that shit and you can just use a computer that's 20 years old. . . Maybe I shouldn't be so proud of knowing how to work like this . . .

Call me gatekeeper and No....!
The forum will be flooded by new users who will always ask about :
- display manager.
- starting x.
- wireless connection.
- etc.

Sacrilege

The way I usually end up installing Arch is that the install box boots up, from that point on I give it internet / network access and I enable SSH and fetch its IP.
On my main system, I then SSH into the install box and do the commands needed...
However with ZFS and rebooting, it gets very annoying pretty quickly as I have to deal with the ZFS pool ids and unmounting requirement.

In short, if you stumble with ZFS, it can get frustrating to get back in balance again, especially if you are SSHing into the box.

Not crazy I just feel, like with gentoo, if you can't be assed to make it through install then I'm not sure it's going to be the most productive distro for you.

Konqueror is absolute garbage of a program. Firefox is fine no need to change lol.

It would be funny if someone made a GUI installer that looked first like C64, then Amiga, then regular PC, then x86, and end with Win10... Add system components as they are needed in the progression. Too bad it would be huge.
Make it a text based adventure?
*First question, do you know what processor(s) and other components you main board has? No.
*we need to run several GNU and Linux core programs to find out! Allow this invasion of your hardware? No
*installation terminated, try again?

Please give me a GUI installer, I stuffed up trying to install it and gave up.

I haven't done a reinstall in more than 4 years now. But back when I had time for this I would install Gentoo from an Ubuntu Live CD or even from an Ubuntu installed on another disk. It just makes opening the GUI much simpler and I didn't have multiple devices back then. I don't remember if I tried it back when I switched to arch but I definitely think it's a good idea.

Instead of increasing the iso size, could make the GUI option a downloadable through a script.
Example typing in "archgui" could take you into a dwm environment with a browser and terminal, or something like "archgui --kde" could take you to a full blown desktop.


The scripts could take the packages from the official repos and install them into the live environment.


For me, the only reason I would like this is for gparted. Much easier to partition the HDD using a GUI, mainly due to the text ones insisting on showing size in sectors instead of human readable MB or GB.

Seriously, does anyone actually define partition sizes using sectors?

I didn't like the idea coming in, but I can see it makes sense. and yeah sticking with just one environment, like KDE on Xorg makes sense.

Personally I would like that they just adding a TUI or a GUI installer like on Debian. That's enough and take less space. A full blown DE would be ridiculous. There are ArchLinux based Distros who does this, and that's okay.

Tty1 installation commands. Tty2 browser. Or tmux Session with 1 split. Problem solved, no need 2 devices at all But a GUI it would be somthing nice to have as an alternative.

their concept gui seems even more complicated than needing a second screen whilst doing manual installation. everybody has a phone anyways. even shepherds on a god forsaken mountain uses smartphones, everybody has that second screen. also, if you are willing to put a huge desktop environment tweaked to serve as a helper in manual installion in your live cd, then just put a calamares for installation already, i'm sure someone will be volunteering to maintain it, arch is one the biggest linux braches, it has a large community.

My 2 cents worth: the archinstall script is enough, just polish any bugs out of it. This is not gate keeping as some might think, it is just that there are many dedicated arch-based distros who's sole existence is to provide a GUI for installing Arch, leave the GUI to them. Let's face it, one of the great things about Gentoo and Arch (and LFS if you are extreme) is being able to put as little on your computer as possible, this reduces the chances of things going wrong, for two years I've noticed how stable (as in not crashing, not that nothing changes like in Slack) my Arch install has been compared to Arch-based distros.
A GUI opens a gate for new users to load it up to the gills with everything they might think they'll need, and then when the system breaks they have an uphill battle as they don't know where to start because they don't know how their monstrosity came together to begin with.
These module by module distros are also great for learning as you have to add things yourself. You find that you are missing some other functionality, you investigate to find out what is it that you need to remedy the situation, while you are doing this, you also learn how the system comes together to become the whole. There's a lot of distros that provide GUIs for installation, it's not like without Arch or Gentoo a new user would need to return to Windows or MacOS.

If I were to do it I would make sure the bootloader has a selection between graphical and tty, like that you're avoiding a ton of potential graphics bugs.

In terms of environment, this is just going to be used for installation, this isn't a "try arch before installing". So I'd pick a light DE like LXDE or XFCE. Then just add a minimal set of packages on top, Firefox is a fairly standard browser, so I'd go with that, and for a terminal I'd use the DE native ones, so LXTerminal or XFCE Terminal, alternatively, we could use one of the newer fancier terminals like Alacritty or Kitty.

Additionally, a few extra utilities like a file manager and GParted should also be included.

100% think that it should be an option, but you are overcomplicating linksxterminal install when you hack ctrl z and fg

I just don't see why, the archinstall script is more than perfect, its done so well that the only excuse for not using it is you're just lazy and it's just another thing to maintain that arch devs really shouldn't need to. It's also an easy, knee-high gate, if you can't get past that despite how easy its been made for you, then you probably shouldn't be using arch since you've already proved you can't be bothered to read the documentation lol. Arch isn't for everybody, Gentoo isn't for everybody, I think too many people want to get in on the meme and make something out of arch that it isn't.

No matter how many good thumb drives I buy, the only one I can ever find when I need one is the crappy 1gb stick I got for free at a trade show. That small Arch iso has helped me out a few times

I think they should package the installation guide with the iso, in a text file.

a gui environment would definitly make it easier 👍

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions neckbeards suddenly cried out in terror....

I'm all for making arch that much easier

Yeah you do have a point there probably tens of people that use a CD ROM somewhere in the world

I think that the manual tty install method, including the 'archinstall', it's part of the Arch philosophy, which means DIY and don't want to appeal to most people.

I believe a TUI would be enough; you have something graphical and it barely consumes any space.

"I may even consider actually trying it" This brings me right back to when Ubuntu 6 was making rounds at work and blowing everyone away with its livecd and graphical installer. We were used to Debian's textmode installer but it even made XP's installer look so ancient. You better believe we were excited to try it out! Nobody got any work done that week, we were all playing with Compiz.

I switched to arch so that I can flex on Ubuntu shitters than I can install arch on my own. Now that arch has an installer-archinstall(tui)

I'm thinking of switching to gentoo

Openbox or i3 will help to stay minimalist and let people use utiities such a browser and a disk format tool without taking much place.

I've long used systemrescuecd to install arch. It's about 800 mb, has xfce, Firefox, gparted, and even emacs.

I don't think a graphical installer is necessary in Arch Linux, but I do think it would be useful to have some tool to automate the installation by putting some configuration file, so that you can create "templates" with which users would only have to fill in some data and have installations done automatically without losing the ability to customize. This is already available in distributions like Fedora, Ubuntu or Debian and I think it would be very useful for Arch Linux.

God officially died.

I'd rather have a GUI installer, but the reason is pretty dumb
I don't know exactly why, but Nvidia cards don't really like to switch to efficient power state without some display manager running. It's definitely more painful on Gentoo where installing takes a few hours and for me my RTX 3090 could casually draw 120W while rendering GCC output. After running KDE it drops to like 15W idle (both numbers reported by Nvidia smi)

Man, if we choose desktop environment X, people from Y are gonna flip out, but if we choose Y, people form X are gonna loose their /dev/sht. What do we do?

Make a custom one!

Thanks for making a video on this. I also did a proof of concept video on this issue to just show how it would look like. I showed with X + Plasma + Firefox :)

The recently added cli archinstall works so well, I don't see a need for a gui installer.

I don't get the obsession with trying to squeeze an ISO into a CD, given most new machines don't even have CD Drive anyway. And USB flash drives are far better anyway. The current Mac OS install ISO is like 11GB so even the bloated Ubuntu installer seems reasonable.

I've never actually used Arch, but when I was doing a Linux From Scratch installation by following the guide several years ago, I found that the easiest thing to setup was a minimal Xorg install with MWM or TWM and a bunch of XTerms. I think that going to a full-fat DE and having full-fat Firefox would really kill the minimalistic feeling of a text install. But being able to use multiple XTerms so that you can run Lynx in one, Vim in another, maybe have Top going in another, watch your build going in another, and finally just have one free for commands would still be very much in line with the feeling of a simple text install that bootstraps your system. Basically, I think bog-standard X with no frills and three XTerms would be the perfect step-up from a plain terminal without feeling like you're making it TOO easy on yourself. Just give people TTYs they can move around and resize without having to deal with Tmux or swapping between screens you can't see.

TMUX

Just use a window manager and put the shortcuts to control b and control T for browser and terminal. Then have em pop up side by side. Or maybe even just boot straight to a terminal that says “welcome to arch. Would you like to open the arch wiki in the browser?” And then it opens

Short answer: heads would explode.

Switch to VGA and write directly to the address space of the display. It should look and sound like the installer from Command and Conquer.
. . . on a more serious note: A GUI installer is a good idea, but it should be the bare minimum needed to get the job done. Choose the smallest / most efficient way to do it, then focus on the user experience and not behind-the-scenes bells and whistles. It's a temporary thing that will go away when the install is finished.

It already exists, it's called Manjaro.

The bloat factor is already a moot point as the ISO is already well over 700MB. While CD-ROMs can 'technically' support capacities up to 900MB, in the real world good luck finding any CD-R at any vendor that can hold more than 700MB. They might as well not even exist for the average person. If Arch really does want to move forward with a GUI then it would be a good idea to approach the creators of SystemRescueCD to make it an official part of the Arch Linux project. It's now Arch based instead of Gentoo, it comes with Xorg, it comes with all kinds of useful utilities not included in the official ISO, and it's roughly the same size as the Arch ISO already. Little work would need to be done to adapt the thing, so why not?

I mean i'm still new to linux, only daily driving a distro for about 10-11 months, but i always thought arch and gentoo were supposed to be the hardest of the hard, neck beard of the neck beard kinda distros, and i feel like adding a GUI installer would make it too easy, sure make a user friendly distro or allow a web browser in tty so you dont need 2 devices for an arch install, but dont make a hard distro meant to be hard, easy because some people dont want to learn the hard way. I installed arch through the wiki and video tutorials when the wiki didnt make sense. It was a huge pain in the ass, but i rather do it like that than have every distro. even the ones that are designed to be hard or non user friendly, become a 'user friendly' distro with a ton of features that 99% of the actual users wont use.

This sounds like a lot of extra maintenance work for the Arch team, while most people who would be installing arch have multiple devices

What if they switched to the MIT license, and started charging for a premium version of the OS, and thus could afford actual proprietary driver blobs and proper optimization?

Now that people are pointing it out to me it makes a lot of sense, I had never considered opening a browser in a 2nd TTY whilst installing Arch. With that in mind the other points are still relevent to having a GUI, plus you get the benefit of not having to jump around between TTYs to see your browser it can just always be visible.