The developers of the Opensuse published the installation of the installer agama 8 (formerly D-Installer), which has been developed to replace the classic SUSE and Opensuse installation interface. It is remarkable for the user interface built from the internal components of YAST. AGAMA offers the flexibility of using various frontends, such as a web interface. To test the new installer, a live assembly has been created for architectures x86_64, PPC64, S390x, and ARM64, supporting OpenSuse Leap installation, continuously updated assembly of Opensuse TumbleWeed, and several SUSE ALP editions based on isolated containers.
The new installer provides functionalities necessary for tasks like choosing an initial set of applications, configuring network connections, language, keyboard, time zone, and localization settings, preparing storage devices, creating partitions, and adding users to the system. Among the main goals of AGAMA’s development are the elimination of existing restrictions on the graphical interface, expanding the usage possibilities of YAST functionality in other applications, moving away from reliance on a single programming language, and encouraging the creation of alternative configurations by community members.
For package installation, hardware checks, disk partitioning, and other installation functions on AGAMA, YAST libraries are still utilized. Service modules are built on top of these libraries to provide abstracted access through a unified communication protocol based on HTTP. The installer employs a multi-threaded architecture to ensure that the user interaction interface remains responsive during other operations. The primary interface for installation management is constructed using web technologies. The web interface is written in JavaScript utilizing the React framework and PatternFly components. The messaging service and built-in HTTP server are written in Ruby.
The new version introduces new architecture to further enhance its capabilities.