ArchInstall 4.4 Lands with Better Font Handling, Niri Profile, and a Few Fixes for Broken Displays
The Arch Linux organization's guided installer just got some polish, new desktop support, and finally stops breaking your screen when you choose certain configurations.
ArchInstall 4.4 is now available. The update is bringing a mix of quality-of-life improvements that you've likely been waiting for since the last major version. Console font handling gets an overhaul, so you can actually see what you're installing without guessing about character support.
The niri compositor joins the supported desktop list, joining the ranks of KDE Plasma, GNOME, and Hyprland. If you're building something on the fringes of the Wayland ecosystem, that's a welcome addition.
archinstall
That's all you need to run it. The installer pulls from the official repositories, so if you're already on a current Arch setup, you've got it sitting right there.
The New Features That Matter
Font selection now defaults automatically when you pick a language. You won't have to dig through configuration files to make sure your console renders the characters you actually need. There's also a manual font picker in the Locales menu if you want to override it.
The install summary finally displays when your configuration is valid. Before this, you'd select everything, hit enter, and hope for the best. Now there's a clear breakdown of what's about to happen before the installer goes nuclear on your disk.
Network configuration gets an IWD standalone option with a fix for the NetworkManager + IWD combo. If you've been wrestling with wireless setup in a TTY, this is the change you've been waiting for.
archinstall --config <config.json> --creds <credentials.json>
There's also a new share-log subcommand that uploads install.log to paste.rs. Not glamorous, but when you're troubleshooting an install failure at 2 AM, having a one-command way to share logs is genuinely useful.
The color-coded install preview shows errors in red, warnings in yellow, and green for ready. Visual feedback that actually means something.
The Bug Fixes That Matter More
The Cutefish desktop profile has been removed. It's dead, and the team's not bringing it back. Budgie's display server got updated along with package versions, and the terminal and file manager replacements were swapped to something more stable. The sway + NVIDIA confirmation dialog was fixed. If you've ever tried to run sway with proprietary drivers and got stuck in an infinite confirmation loop, this is your fix. bspwm's black screen issue is resolved with a proper provision() delegation and default configs. That one's been around longer than most users have been installing Arch.
pip install --upgrade archinstall
UEFI partition permissions now get restricted with fmask/dmask=0077. Security improvement for systems that skip Linux permissions entirely. LUKS decryption failures now show the actual cryptsetup error instead of generic messages. You can finally see what went wrong.
WiFi network selection in the TUI prompt was broken, and now it works. This sounds small, but wireless installs in a TTY are painful enough without the network picker being unusable.
The Technical Side
The project has migrated to Python 3.14+ as the minimum requirement. The Textual library is now on 8.2.7 for the TUI, Pydantic v2.13.4 handles schema validation, and cryptography v48.0.1 manages LUKS2 encryption. Translation work continues across Japanese, Ukrainian, Finnish, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Danish, and Vietnamese. The project now has CI validation for translations, so you won't have to deal with broken strings in your preferred language.
Configuration files got refactored for better structure, and the old curses-based TUI code has been removed entirely. If you were still using the legacy interface, you're on your own.
git clone https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall.git
What It's Not
ArchInstall still doesn't bundle AUR helpers. The decision came from a community discussion on the Arch Linux development mailing list, and the team's holding firm. You'll still need to handle AUR packages manually after install or use a separate tool.
The live ISO ramdisk remains limited. If you're running low on space, you'll need to increase root filesystem size or use the copytoram=y boot parameter. That's not new, but it's worth remembering. Console fonts for non-Latin scripts still aren't shipped with all character sets. You can pick fonts now, but if your language needs something specific, you might still have to hunt down the right one.
The Bottom Line
ArchInstall 4.4 is a solid update. It's not the massive rewrite people were hoping for, but the incremental improvements to font handling, desktop profiles, and bug fixes make it worth upgrading. The installer has matured over 8 years and nearly 100 releases, and this version shows it.
pacman -Sy archinstall
If you're running a current Arch install, you're good. Head to the GitHub repository for source. You find the documentation here. The project has 8,300+ stars and a team that's clearly still committed to making Arch installation less of a rite of passage.
