[experimental] Manjaro-Architect Test-ISO

[oberon]

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT READY FOR PRODUCTION ! ONLY USE IN A TEST-ENVIRONMENT !

@Chrysostomus 's very ambitious CLI-installer project manjaro-architect is beginning to really take shape. Very recently there has been a lot of input and feedback on dedicated threads here and development has been quickly gaining momentum with a great amount of work and improvement that went into this fork of Carl Duff’s and @mandog’s Architect, originally designed to install Archlinux, of course.
Meanwhile the present version is taking more and more advantage of Manjaro’s specialities and advantages and also its own set of clever tools.

So for a first broader testing we have now managed to put together a real test-ISO for you to

[ download ]

#What to expect ?

Similar to the good old Manjaro netinstall ISO this (hopefully future) install medium comes without any graphical environment.
We are still looking for ways to make this as small as possible, for now it is at least under 500MB.

After you have been greeted by this tty login screen you may launch the installer with setup:

As you can see some translations are already available, German is in preparation - more to come… your help will be more than welcome
Then you’ll be guided through the install process sometimes with quite verbose comments.
The recently improved pacman-mirrors also works really nicely in the text only environment

The installation is completely netbased - the downside is that all packages have to be downloaded, which, depending on the internet connection of course can take quite a long time.
On the other hand the packages will of course be the newest ones and you have the immediate choice of branch and kernel and the highlight is, that you will be able to choose from the different available Manjaro profile including their settings packages.
So if all goes well and in the end everything works as intended, you should end up with a Manjaro edition just like the preconfigered ones we have now on a list of different ISOs.

Of course this project still has quite a long way to go, but I am very optimistic that in the not so far future we might be able to present a very intriguing alternative install option for Manjaro edition.
Thank you to everyone involved and thank you for your testing and feedback, which will make further development even possible.

[linux-aarhus]

Good work

[Widgeteye]

So is this going to remain 64 bit only or is there going to be a 32 bit version?

Thanks

[fatboy]

Ahh Damn! This is epic! Well done @oberon!
Is this based on Mandog’s installer?
Architect is a beautifully efficient installer.

[sueridgepipe]

Is this based on Mandog’s installer?

No, @Chrysostomus’s handy work, details are in the first post.

[Chrysostomus]

I know @mandog is somehow associated with architect, and I don’t know if he is with any other installers, so it might very well be based on “mandogs installer”. It is a fork of architect installer, which was written by CarlDuff. As far as I know, architect itself is currently abandoned (though the installer still mostly works fine). I would not have been able to write anything nearly as good if I started from scratch.

Once manjaro support is solid, I may included the original aif with packages, with the necessary fixes for it to work on manjaro (but still installing arch).

[fatboy]

Aaah, I see. Good work, though! Super excited about this! Thank You!

[Chrysostomus]

I’m so happy @oberon also joined developing it, he has done some great things with it.

[kb41]

I just finished using this to install a avnilla enlightenment desktop works well. I forgot to install pacman and yaourt but getting ready do that now. At first I oculdn’t get it work properly but I decided to redownload the iso and try again. That worked I will probab;ly try to install some other dekstops in VMWare as well

[oberon]

I forgot to install pacman

I hope you mean pamac? Thanks for playing with our new toy anyway!

[mandog]

No Architect was Carls and my project nobody else was ever involved thank you very much!

[sueridgepipe]

I worked this out not long after making the post… I was wondering how long it would take for you to respond.

[mandog]

Easily done in the world of Linux FUD

[kb41]

yep pamac sorry I always get them confused

[oberon]

Well, it’s a fork. Just like our old CLI installer was derived from Antergos’ chnchi, if I’m not mistaken. Chrysostomus started off from the original architect as he mentions in his post, a lot of work, changes, adjustments and novelties have since gone into the baby - github says that we have since diverged a roughly 150 commits from the parent And more rework and additions are currently going on also from my side.
I think that in a few months the final result might be quite different from what the original architect was in the beginning. However we are extreeeeemely thankful for this great piece of software to start off from.
In any case. I mentioned Carl Duff as the author in my initial post here, I didn’t know how much you were actually also involved, @mandog, I would have mentioned you, too, of course, and will edit that, sorry! @Chrysostomus already said that he wouldn’t have been able to write this from scratch, neither could I - even remotely… The name also is still “-architect” in reference to the model… I really don’t see a problem here, @mandog, do you?

[Ste74]

And if i remember fine before the architect project Carl and other write a fork of a cli installer by manjaro so this is free philosophy

[oberon]

I fully understand that it must feel peculiar and emotionally all but neutral when someone takes the child of your hard work and takes it home to a different house - at the same time, isn’t it also the biggest compliment and appreciation?

[mandog]

I feel proud myself to have been involved with Carl and stood by him when others were putting him down, We are both very honoured that Chrysostomus you and others has done something good with the Architect installer. We always hoped somebody would take the project over or make a fork using the code that is why its all freely available,
It is such a shame Carl has totally turned his back on Linux, Their were many reasons that I will not go into, He is now a Vegan and very much into animal rights, He and his wife even make their own clothes, the Linux world does not know how to appreciate people like Carl,and others like him, Its all our own loss.
The Manjaro-architect installer is a good step in the right direction for advanced users I really hope you guys make a success with it I have closely followed the progress from the start, I did say early on i’m not interested in getting involved, I’m looking forward till the project becomes final to test it out with openRC, old school init,systemd, with old school installer, and the only way I feel comfortable installing is with CLI and full control over every action Good luck Guys.

By the way Carl did not fork the Manjaro CLI it was the Original Arch-Live Installer its been forked a few times. I have forgotten the name of the author he was the Arch live project Dev, a few years ago. It all shows how Linux evolves from one generation to the next.

[oberon]

Thank you for your kind words, @mandog, it would have really troubled me if you’d have been offended in any way by our project. Let me share a snippet from the original code:

if [[ $(cat ${PACKAGES}) == "hen poem" ]]; then

[sot]

just installed LXQT in a VM, went pretty smooth. Once booted, the clock was off had to sync with NTP servers.
Will test with another install later…Good work!!