Survey of existing graphical installers

This page aims to list and describe some existing graphical installers for unix-like operating systems, in order to present existing solutions from which good ideas can be used in the finstall project.

A FreeBSD installer aimed mostly for desktop users. Screenshot gallery

Pros:

• Nice user interface
• Has partitioning
• Has simple RAID setup
• simple firewall setup (pf)
• I18N capable
• Installs a complete (KDE) desktop, not only base system
• Rudimentary audio card setup (?)

Cons:

• Apparently lacks advanced / server-like options
• No network login setup

Architecture:

• KDE-based (?)
• C++, QT
• Monolithic (GUI code contains the install engine)
• No internal scripting

License: BSD (except QT/GPL issues)

Used by: PC-BSD (http://www.pcbsd.org/)

Notes:

• No new releases on SourceForge page since 2005.

Installer not specifically tied to a BSD variant, intended for both server and desktop users. Screenshot gallery

Pros:

• Aims to be multiplatform and extensible
• Supports multiple user intefaces (curses and web/CGI)
• Has partitioning
• Internal scripting via Lua (?)
• Low system requirements (memory)

Cons:

• No RAID setup
• No firewall setup
• Basic UI types are not particulary pretty
• Apparently lacks advanced / server-like options
• No multimedia devices setup
• No remote login (LDAP/SMB) setup

Architecture:

• C
• Back-end (install engine) and front-end (UI) are separate

License: BSD

Used by: DragonflyBSD, FreeSBIE v1, pfSense

Notes:

• Last page update of http://www.bsdinstaller.org/ is in 2005.

This is a installer for RPM-based Linux systems, made originally by RedHat. Now it's used in Fedora Core, Red Hat Enterprise Linux & others. Screenshot gallery or A second screenshot gallery

Pros:

• Nice user interface
• Multiple UIs (curses, Gnome)
• Has partitioning
• Has LVM RAID setup
• Has (very) simple firewall setup
• I18N capable
• Installs a complete desktop, many variations / “metapackages” (“server”/“workstation”)
• Audio card setup
• Can set up remote (LDAP/SMB) logins
• Supports kickstart (?)

Cons:

• Resource intensive (256MB minimum RAM)

Achitecture:

• Python, GNOME
• Scriptable

Used by: Fedora Core, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, others

License: GPL

Notes:

• Pretty & usable

Ubuntu is a risingly popular Linux distribution that emphasises ease of use. It's based on Debian and the installer uses Debian packages. Screenshot gallery

Pros:

• Nice user interface
• Multiple UI front-ends (including text mode but as separate engine)
• Has partitioning
• Has LVM RAID setup
• Has (very) simple firewall setup
• I18N capable
• Installs a complete desktop, many variations / “metapackages” (“server”/“workstation”)
• Audio card setup
• Can set up remote (LDAP/SMB) logins
• Supports kickstart (?)
• Supports GPT
• Support for configuring multimedia devices
• Advanced features: VPN setup, 3D desktop effects, tools for migration from other / older systems

Cons:

• Resource intensive

Architecture:

• Python, Gnome (?)

Used By: Ubuntu Linux

License: GPL

Notes:

• Pretty & usable

Installer used for Solaris 10 is based on Java. Screenshot gallery

Pros:

• Relatively simple

Cons:

• There's a relatively long console-based step before the GUI

Architecture:

• C, curses, Java

Used by: Solaris 10

License: unknown, probably commercial