Frugalware 1.9pre1 (Arcturus) released

This is the first preview release of Frugalware 1.9. It also marks the first public testing for our new live CD environment, FVBE, and our new installer called fwsetup.

This has been in development for 8 months already, and is a compilation of 4 older projects. They are fwlive, setup, fwife, and frugalwareutils. In this new project, they are integrated so they will share a common codebase. This should help avoid the fragmentation like we had with setup and fwife.

The new installer should be feature complete in terms of replacing the old installer. However, some parts were removed because of disuse or just plain uselessness. And some features are entirely new, such as the keyboard layout selection that also configures your X11 XKB layout.

The main feature that is not yet implemented is a replacement for netconfig. It should be finishd by pre2. There are no other major features planned for the new installer during this release cycle, as the existing stuff needs to be tested more.

There has also been changes to what kinds of ISOs we will build from now on. Starting with this release, we will only provide ISOs with packages from the main package groups. Anything from -extra will only be available via net install or after install is complete. By pre2, net install ISOs should also be available.

Also of interest is that our new ISOs are now using GRUB2 to boot and no longer using isolinux to boot. GRUB2 natively supports BIOS hybrid ISOs for our i686 branch and BIOS/UEFI hybrid ISOs for our x86_64 branch. UEFI mode is only supported for booting at this time, and not for installation.

One other thing is that the new installer has been primarily tested on x86_64 using the ISO mode of the hybrid ISO. So, we need the most testing on i686 and USB mode. Any feedback will be examined, to help improve the new installer.

Current known issues include network not working after initial install. For now, run netconfig after logging in as root. This should work as a temporary fix until we can implement the netconfig replacement.

To use the new installer, you will need to login as root after the ISO boots using the password fvbe. To run the installer, use the command fwsetup.

One final note is that we are looking for someone to design a new 16 color palette for the new installer. Currently it uses the color palette from Mandriva’s NEWT patches. If you are interested, then contact us on IRC or the forums.

Download for i686 or x86_64: See our mirror list. Don’t forget to check the integrity of the install images before burning!