Lets users select Plasma Look-and-Feel from the installer

Feb 27, 2018 17:19 GMT  ·  By

Work on the major Calamares 3.2 universal Linux installer framework release for GNU/Linux distributions continues at a fast pace with the first development release, which gives a first look at the new features and improvements.

Calamares is a distribution-independent system installer featuring advanced partitioning with full-disk encryption support used in popular GNU/Linux distros like KaOS, KDE Neon, OpenMandriva, Netrunner, Sabayon, Siduction, Tanglu, Bluestar Linux, Chakra GNU/Linux, GeckoLinux, and others.

Calamares 3.2 will be the next major update of the universal installer framework, promising a plethora of attractive new features and enhancements for OS developers who want to implement it as default graphical installer in their next releases, such as Lubuntu Next 18.04 (Bionic Beaver).

One of these new features is a module for the KDE Plasma desktop environment that will allow the selection of the Plasma Look-and-Feel from the installer. However, the module will only be enabled if both KDE Plasma and KDE Frameworks are present at build time on the target system.

"This module is enabled only when the KDE Plasma and KDE Package frameworks are available at build time, and requires run-time support through the Plasma look-and-feel tool," said the Calamares team. Therefore, the module will be disabled by default if these KDE Plasma development files aren't present.

Calamares 3.2 expected in March 2018 with many other features

The final Calamares 3.2 release is expected to arrive in March 2018 with many other interesting features, including the ability to get a phone notification when an installation finishes, support for OpenRC initialization of encrypted filesystems, better detection of keyboard layouts, and machine-specific URLs for the update-manager.

There will also be better error reporting from Python modules, documentation improvements, new language translations, as well as some polishing all over the place for better installation experience. Those who want to get a head start on Calamares 3.2 can download and test drive the latest release candidate right here.