The developers of the Opensuse have announced the release of the installer Agama 10, designed to replace the traditional SUSE and Opensuse installation interface and incorporating the user interface elements from the internal components of YAST. AGAMA offers the flexibility to use various frontends, including a web-based frontend. A live collection for x86_64, PPC64, S390x, and ARM64 architectures has been created for testing the new installer, supporting the installation of Alpha version of Opensuse Leap 16, continuously updated versions of Opensuse Tumbleweed, and Microos editions based on containers. The installer’s components are distributed under the GPLV2 license and are written in Ruby, Rust, and JavaScript/Typescript.
The main objectives of AGAMA development include removing existing limitations on the graphical interface, expanding the use of YAST functionality in other applications, moving away from reliance on a single programming language, and encouraging the community to create alternative configurations. The installer offers features such as selecting initial set of applications, configuring network connection, language, keyboard, timezone, localization settings, preparing storage devices, partitioning, and adding users to the system.
For package installation, hardware checks, disk partitioning, and other installation functions in AGAMA, Yast libraries are utilized, with service interfaces implemented on top to abstract access to the libraries through a unified communication protocol based on HTTP. The installer employs a multi-threaded architecture to ensure that user interaction is not blocked during other processes. The primary interface for managing the installation is built using web technologies, with the web interface written in JavaScript using the React framework and PatternFly components. Additionally, a messaging service and a built-in HTTP server are