Gentoo Linux Installer 0.2 Release Announcement

1.  Version 0.2

The installer team is proud to announce the release of version 0.2 of the Gentoo Linux Installer. There have been many improvements over the 0.1 ("alpha") release including many new features and many annoying bugs squished.

2.  Improvements

New features

• Sub-progress bar (shows the progress of the individual install step).
• Tarball extraction progress (shows how far along it is extracting a tarball).
• New code for dynamic-stage3 that cuts the time in half along with not cluttering up your new install with binary packages.
• Optional verbose logging for debug purposes.
• Notification of which packages are available in GRP form (gli-dialog only).
• More graceful failure cleanup (now unmounts mounted partitions) (gtkfe only).
• Pre-configured xorg.conf is now copied to the new system when xorg-x11 is installed.
• If selecting a graphical desktop xdm is set to boot automatically in standard mode (prompt in advanced) (gli-dialog only).
• Automatic snapshot/make.conf screens for dynamic stage3 installs (this is necessary to prevent b0rkage).

Bugs fixed since 0.1

• NTFS/FAT32 code problem that left you with an empty partition table.
• Attempting to mount unallocated space.
• Various bootloader bugs.

Issues not resolved in 0.2 but fixed in CVS

• Mounting windows partitions can cause filesystem format issues (fat16/32 instead of vfat).

3.  Issues not yet resolved

• gli-dialog error cleanup (should be an option).
• Bootloader customizability. Currently the boot device is determined by /boot (or / if no /boot) and the MBR of that device is written to instead of whatever device boots first. This is currently being fixed.
• Internationalization support in gli-dialog is still only at "ready to go" status.

4.  New LiveCD

Along with the new version of the installer, there is also a new LiveCD (extra thanks to wolf31o2 for that). Some of the changes include:

• Gimp and bittorrent have been added.
• Fixes to allow Gnome to install properly via GRP.

5.  Coming soon to a LiveCD near you! (i.e. what to expect from 0.3)

• Dynamic/virtual hard-drives! You can define partitions with percentages.
• A brand new FE! Webgli, a web-browser-based FE, combines aspects from the previous two FEs into a new and simple interface for creating install profiles.
• Mastergli (TEMPORARY NAME), a mass-installation utility, which will be combined with webgli to help create profiles. This finally addresses the second half of the Gentoo Installer's project goals. It will allow users to PXE boot client machines that will be detected by the mastergli server (these can also be defined manually) and specify which install profile to use for that machine. This lets you create template machines such as "image-server" or "mail-server" or "normal-workstation" for example and pick and choose boxes and profiles. It then will spawn off the selected installs and provide status updates via the same web interface. The mastergli settings will of course be able to be saved/loaded with a master profile XML file. Since this interface will work remotely (if allowed) and in links2, it is not likely that there will be a command-line version of mastergli anytime soon. Mastergli utilizes SecureXMLRPC code from samyron as well as backend code from chotchki and of course agaffney.

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