Releasing version 24

Yes, we know: version 23 came and went without a blog post. As it has happened before, we were busy enough with several tasks and blogging fell down the priority list. So consider this a two-for-one announcement covering the most relevant changes introduced in both Agama 23 and Agama 24.

But do not expect a long list of shiny new features. During the last months the team poured most of its energy into testing, polishing and fixing corner cases, so this post is a bit more modest than usual. Still, there are a few improvements worth highlighting.

Better interface to configure language and region

Configuring the internationalization settings -language, keyboard layout and time zone- in previous versions of the web user interface used to require jumping into three separate full-page selectors. Those three settings now live together in a single form, each one as a searchable field that filters the available options as you type.

The matching is accent-insensitive, so typing "ingles" finds "Inglés". The time zone selector even shows the current local time and UTC offset for each entry. A single "Accept" button applies all the changes at once, saving a couple of round trips in the process.

Binding network connections to their devices

Agama offers the possibility to configure several network connections. Some of those network connections can be associated with a specific network adapter, but telling several similar devices apart used to be tricky when the interface only offered their names and MAC addresses. The web UI now includes a "Browse with details..." option that opens a sortable table listing each device along with its type, IP addresses and connection state, so you can pick the right one with confidence.

In addition, other small improvements regarding the binding of network connections and devices were implemented here and there.

More usability and accessibility improvements

Beyond the changes already mentioned, this stabilization phase brought a long tail of smaller usability and accessibility refinements scattered across the whole web interface: better keyboard navigation, more consistent forms, clearer wording, improved screen reader support and many other little touches. There are far too many to list here, but together they make the installer noticeably more pleasant to use.

More theming capabilities

And things are especially pleasant when they feel consistent and in-place. To achieve that, every distribution can restyle the whole installer as explained in our previous blog post about theming Agama. Those styling capabilities keep growing: recent versions expanded the set of customizable roles and refined how the light, dark and high-contrast schemes are handled, giving products even more freedom to make Agama look like their own.

More possibilities to select storage devices

But the recent Agama improvements go beyond the web user interface. When using JSON to configure the installation, for example in an unattended installation profile, it is often important to define how each individual disk or partition must be processed. That requires a reliable way to identify the devices in the system and to match them against the definitions in the JSON configuration. As you may know, that is done using a search section within each of those definitions.

We recently made those search sections much more expressive. In addition to the logical operators and, or and not to combine and nest conditions, it is now possible to match devices by their kernel driver, by their filesystem (type, label or simply whether they are formatted), by the ID type of a partition and even by the number and content of partitions or logical volumes within a disk or LVM volume group. That allows queries as specific as "the smallest of those NVMe disks that are bigger than 100 GiB and contain an ext4 partition".

Improved AutoYaST compatibility

Talking about unattended installations, one of the key features of Agama is its ability to consume AutoYaST profiles. Agama reads those profiles and automatically converts them into its own configuration, which is then processed as usual. The latest versions improve that conversion for the network configuration and also handle errors more gracefully while processing AutoYaST profiles, resulting in a more intuitive user experience if some feature is not fully supported by Agama.

More to come

With this stabilization phase behind us, the team is eager to switch back into a more innovative mode. So we hope the next release will bring a bunch of more exciting features to write about. Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, if you want a closer look at the development of Agama and wish to help shaping its future, you can take a look at the project at GitHub or drop by the #yast channel at Libera.chat.