Available for select GNU/Linux distributions

Aug 25, 2016 22:45 GMT  ·  By

A new stable version of the Calamares universal installer framework used by various GNU/Linux distributions as default graphical installer has been released with various improvements and bug fixes.

Calamares 2.4 is now the latest build, coming two months after the release of the previous version, Calamares 2.3, which introduced full-disk encryption support. However, Calamares 2.4 is not as big as the previous update as it only polished existing functionality and address various annoying issues reported by users.

"The focus of the Calamares 2.4 development cycle was fixing bugs and polishing existing functionality, including locales management and partitioning, but we’re also shipping an all-new package selection module," reads the release announcement. "The partitioning module of Calamares 2.4 depends on KPMcore 2.2 or later."

Here's what's new in Calamares 2.4

According to the release notes, Calamares 2.4 adds support for reusing a certain Home (/home) disk partition if available in the /etc/fstab file of an existing OS, revamp of the locale module to support new timezones and languages, as well as better installation of a bootloader on UEFI systems that have an EFI partition.

Moreover, Calamares 2.4 adds a new module called netinstall to allow the choice of installing various packages during installation, implements support for using a mounted loop device as the source for unpackfs operations, and improves multiple configuration files and the handling of partition colors for logical partitions.

Last but not least, there's a fix for an issue with user name validation that could cause the installation to fail in certain conditions. Calamares 2.4 now KPMcore 2.2 or later and it is available for download right now from its website. OS maintainers are urged to update the Calamares installer to version 2.4 as soon as possible.