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. [http://docs.pcbsd.org/guide/chap2.3.html 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 (])

Notes:

• No new releases on SourceForge page since 2005.

Installer not specifically tied to a BSD variant, intended for both server and desktop users. [http://www.bsdinstaller.org/screenshots.html 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 ] 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. [http://shots.linuxquestions.org/?linux_distribution_sm=Fedora%20Core%206 Screenshot gallery]

Pros:

• Nice user interface
• 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