The Manjaro developers have recently announced that the Blue Systems and Calamares teams are proud to announce the immediate availability of Calamares 1.1 RC1, a distribution-independent installer framework.

According to the release notes, Calamares 1.1 RC1 is here to add support for the Gummiboot and GRUB2 boot loaders, as well as for UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) in the bootloader and partitioning modules.

Moreover, the detection, mounting, and unmounting of partitions has been improved, the Python modules Application Programming Interface (API) has been enhanced, and the branding mechanism received support for translations and QML.

Among other changes, we can mention support for Swap partitions in the automatic partitioning functionality, as well as all-new diagnostics interface for system integrators, Summary and Welcome pages.

"This is a pre-release product for testers and early adopters, and it brings countless improvements over 1.0. We are declaring it releases candidate quality, but testing is crucial in order to deliver an amazing final 1.1 release in a few weeks," reads the announcement.

Calamares 1.1 RC1 is now available for testing in the current unstable snapshot of the upcoming Manjaro Linux 0.9.0 operating system. Please note that both products are pre-release versions, not recommended for production environments.