Installer sprint



Last week the System76 and elementary OS teams got together to build a new distribution installer. First impressions are really important to us and there’s no better place to start than installation. We built a simple, no frills installer that only lays down and configures the OS while a separate tool like Gnome Initial Setup configures users. There are two parts to the installer:

Distinst

https://github.com/system76/distinst

The Distinst backend handles partitioning and installation. It features an API for the front end as well as a command line interface.

Installer

https://github.com/elementary/installer

The Installer frontend walks customers through the installation process.

Pop!_OS is targeting 18.04 by default for the new installer. We’ll have a separate 17.10 .iso for testing the installer at release October 19th. The .iso boots directly to a live session, request language, KB layout, install or try, installation drive, then installation progress. That’s it! We’ll add dual booting and advanced partitioning features down the road.

Theme

Design and engineering got together to review theme colors in detail. The work overall was taking brand colors and adjusting them for an operating system user interface. Careful attention was paid to creating the right contrast between background colors and text while keeping the hue within the Pop!_OS feel. We’ve also adjusted terminal theme colors for better contrast. The changes are in the latest Pop!_Theme.



Upgrade with:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Install with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:system76/pop

sudo apt update

sudo apt install pop-theme

17.10 Internal Builds

We’re currently perfecting our .iso build process. We anticipate releasing the 17.10 .iso within the next couple of weeks.

Have a great weekend!