Calamares is a graphical installation framework for Linux operating systems.
The new version of Calamares 3.3 It has already been released and arrives shortly after a year and a half of work and five and a half years after the formation of the 3.2.x branch (which represents a long work on a specific branch). The new version has a large number of important changes, as well as improvements and bug fixes.
For those who do not know about squid, you should know that it is a tool that allows you to easily install different Linux distributions, provides features such as manual and automatic modes of disk partitions, flexible appearance adaptation system, modular architecture, a large selection of ready-made modules (from bootloader management to user management).
Squid includes an advanced partition function, with support for both manual and automated partition operations. It is the first installer with an automated “Replace Partition” option, making it easy to reuse a partition over and over again for distribution testing.
Main novelties of Squid 3.3
This new version that is presented of Calamares 3.3 comes with the update of various modules, and now Calamares is completely compatible with Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 libraries, In addition, it has a set of Qt6-compatible QML files for all QML modules. It is worth mentioning that the ability to compile with Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5 is preserved.
Coding style requirements in Calamares 3.3 have undergone significant updates, Well now, the code format fits Clang 15 or 16 format. Also, namespaces used in C++ code have been reworked, as now all calls have been moved to the Calamares namespace and references to the CalamaresUtils namespace have been removed.
An additional modification includes removing the dependency on the Boost::Python library. Instead, development in Python now relies on the built-in pybind11 set of bindings. To disable this change and recompile from Boost::Python, the variable can be set CON_PYBIND11=OFF.
In addition, Calamares 3.3 incorporates a new module called "zfshostid", designed specifically to copy files generated by ZFS to /etc/hostid. Another notable improvement is the introduction of the ability to configure the kernel name customization in Dracut module and that a modernization of the user interface has been carried out for the "keyboardq" and "localeq" modules, it has been moved from the ComboBox to the Drawer widget, providing a more intuitive and updated experience.
The moduleo "bootloader" features expanded options for use on the kernel command line. In the "fstab" module, working with the /etc/fstab configuration has been completely redesigned. Many configurations have been moved to the "mount" module.
I also know that it has been implemented support for LUKS or LUKS2 disk encryption in the partition module offering an extra layer of security as it is now possible to skip bootloader installation. The functionality of the KPMCore 21.12 (KDE Partition Manager) library is used.
Regarding the module Netinstall, a new “non-checkable” option has been added for groups, which prevents a group from being marked or unmarked in its entirety. It's important to note that despite this restriction, users still retain the ability to check individual items within the group, as noted by the developers.
Of the other changes that stand out from this new version:
- Added support for AppStream 1.0 metadata in the “packagechooser” package selection interface.
- The keyboard module allows you to choose whether you want to use the X11 configuration or the FreeDesktop locale1 DBus service. Ensures that keyboard layout settings are saved for all non-ASCII layouts.
- The "displaymanager" module is no longer supported by the kdm display manager.
- ${var} is used as a substitution mask instead of @{var}.
The machineid module has been updated with support for several variations of writing the /etc/machine-id file - unpackfs now uses rsync -S option for sparse file support
finally if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details In the following link.