Arch Linux is getting easier to install

Published 2 hours ago

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The popular Arch Installer script, more commonly known by its package name archinstall, got an update this week that will make installing Arch Linux a little bit easier for those who don’t have a wired connection to the internet.

Specifically, archinstall version 3.0.13 makes connecting to Wi-Fi during installation easier. Developer Daniel Girtlera developed a dedicated Wi-Fi connection menu for archinstall that automates activating the Wi-Fi adapter and getting a list of networks to easily connect to.

Previously, if you had no Ethernet connection, you had to put in some work to get a wireless connection. You needed to use a series of iwctl commands to identify your Wi-Fi adapter, enable it, scan for networks, and connect to a known SSID.

This feature was actually requested in the archinstall issue tracker all the way back in 2023, so this Wi-Fi interface has been a long time coming.

That wait might have its origins in the fact that a user interface for Wi-Fi connections is more complicated than you might expect. In the release notes, Girtlera wrote about some challenges with its development:

When implementing it it became clear that curses already has challenges with inputs of non ASCII characters which was “okay” for the existing inputs such as username and password configurations. But for existing wifi passwords that most likely contain a special character beyond ASCII it will not work. It could be run in raw mode but it would require more customisations and handling.

Therefore I opted to introduce textual https://textual.textualize.io. It currently lives alongside the curses implementation and is only used for the new Wifi connection menu which is only triggered if archinstall is run in offline mode and wpa_cli can be run/enabled successfully.

If this is a good way forward and accepted I will migrate existing menus over from curses to textual.

The Python-based archinstall script has been around since 2021 when developers decided to address the issue of how difficult Arch is to install manually. That fact had played a role in the “I run Arch BTW” meme where folks using an Arch device do a lot of unsolicited gloating about it. Indeed, it’s no small task installing the operating system by hand, so to speak, but the archinstall script and this Wi-Fi-centered addition to it undeniably helps.

To use archinstall, head to the Arch Linux downloads page and get an image file. You can burn it to a USB drive and live boot it, at which point you can run the archinstall script by simply entering this command: