Just days after the Archinstall 3.0.12 release for this text-based Arch Linux installer, Archinstall 3.0.13 is now available to deliver a new feature. That new feature is a text-based interface for being able to connect to a WiFi network within Archinstall.
For addressing a nearly three year old feature request to be able to connect to a wireless network from the Arch Linux installer, Archinstall 3.0.13 adds such support similar to other Linux distribution installers.
Open-source developer Daniel Girtler worked on this support for Archinstall to add a WiFi connection menu to ease the installation process for those relying on a wireless network connection for Internet.
In addition to the WiFi connection menu itself, the change also introduces an important lower-level change: adding the Python Textual library as an alternative to Archinstall’s existing curses implementation. Daniel Girtler explained in the merge request:
“When implementing it it became clear that curses already has challenges with inputs of non ASCII characters which was “okay” for the existing inputs such as username and password configurations. But for existing wifi passwords that most likely contain a special character beyond ASCII it will not work. It could be run in raw mode but it would require more customisations and handling.
Therefore I opted to introduce textual https://textual.textualize.io. It currently lives alongside the curses implementation and is only used for the new Wifi connection menu which is only triggered if archinstall is run in offline mode and wpa_cli can be run/enabled successfully.
If this is a good way forward and accepted I will migrate existing menus over from curses to textual.”
Archinstall 3.0.13 is now available via GitHub for this updated Arch Linux installer.
