VSIDO installer

[hakerdefo]

Perhaps now is the time to invest some energy into incorporating a new installer. Possible candidates,

https://calamares.io/

https://github.com/linuxmint/live-installer

Cheers!!!

[VastOne]

I have looked long and hard at both of these..

The Mint live-installer is quite old and has not been updated in a long time and I could never get it to work

The Calamares looks interesting but documentation is terruble

[hakerdefo]

Paweł Pijanowski aka pavroo has recently managed to integrate calamares as the installer for his Debian testing based project. May be we can contact him for his insights into integrating calamares with Debian based distro. Here is his mail,
pavroo@onet.eu

Cheers!!!

[VastOne]

Thank you..  I will contact him.  Have you seen the installer work?  Does he have a working ISO?

[PackRat]

I think mrneilypops uses calamares in his debian-based distros; I forget what his user name is here. Maybe contact him.

[VastOne]

Thanks..  I will PM him from here.  I do not have rights to view that link you posted and I refuse to be forced to log into any site for general information

[PackRat]

Looks like his projects sites are locked too, can't get to an iso download. Wonder if he is on a hiatus?

[hakerdefo]

Thank you..  I will contact him.  Have you seen the installer work?  Does he have a working ISO?

Here is 32 bit version,

SparkyLinux 4.4-dev20160617 MinimalGUI i686 non-pae

And here is 64 bit version,

SparkyLinux 4.4-dev20160617 MinimalGUI x86_64

Cheers!!!

[PackRat]

Sparky! That's a good project.

[VastOne]

Paweł Pijanowski aka pavroo has recently managed to integrate calamares as the installer for his Debian testing based project. May be we can contact him for his insights into integrating calamares with Debian based distro. Here is his mail,
pavroo@onet.eu

Cheers!!!

I sent Pawel the following email

Thanks!

Hello Pawel,

I am Terry Ganus, aka VastOne, aka the sole dev of the debian distro VSIDO

I have looked at the Calamares installer in the past but found it very lacking in documentation specifically on setting it up for a debian distro

I have installed SparkyLinux in a V-Box session and really like your installer. Great job with your distro and getting the installer working

My question is do you have a guide that you followed to get Calameres working?  and If I have questions, could I come to you for assistance?

[VastOne]

I got information back from Pawel and he said he gave up on Calamares because it does not work with Debian... QT dependencies are the downfall ... he says his installer is a fork of the live-installer that was used in LMDE

If that is the install on his Sparky-Linux I can simply look at his live-cd and figure that one out

Thanks

[hakerdefo]

Sparky Linux code is hosted on a git repo on sourceforge. Here is live-installer page,

https://sourceforge.net/p/sparkylinux/code/ci/c95455fd65bee44667b72ab15f0bf0f926481902/

Cheers!!!

[pavroo]

Hi everyone

I just would like to add that the Calamares works fine on Debian based distros, but...
1. The last version I could compile was 2.2.3. After updating qt5 libs, some tools have been removed, including one important Calamares dependency. So building could not be done.
2. The UEFI support works on Arch based OSes fine, but on Debian's - not yet.
3. The last important feature - disk encryption has been implemented into Calamares and works on Arch based dists too... only.

I'd like to change our present 'live-installer' to Calamares but it's not ready for Debian's yet.
So I still keep the 'live-installer' alive 

[hakerdefo]

Hi there Pawel,
A very warm welcome to VSIDO forums
Thanks for your valuable input on Calamares. Do you think that Calamares being developed by developers of Arch based distributions pays little attention to compatibility with other distributions?
And I think you have another installer system beside live-installer on sparky, don't you? I think it's called advanced installer, isn't it? How is it different from live-installer?
Keep up the great work with Sparky
Cheers!!!

[pavroo]

Do you think that Calamares being developed by developers of Arch based distributions pays little attention to compatibility with other distributions?

They already posted info that, other distros devs should/could implement the new features in the specific distro way and let the Calamamares devs know about that. Then they will implement the other distros changes into the main line of the installer.

I think you have another installer system beside live-installer on sparky, don't you? I think it's called advanced installer

I forked the Sparky Advanced Installed of the Remastersys installer a few years ago, and it was the first installer I've been using in Sparky (and still do).
It is based on Yad (gui mode) and Dialog (text mode), and I suggest to use it on low power machines, but it works on newer as well (with Bios or UEFI).
An another different is that I implemented a multi-desktop installation (minimalgui or minimalcli iso only) module. It lets users install one of over 20 desktops and one web browser of your choice, and minimal set of apps. But it needs a little more attention than the live-installer.