v1.2.0

Fixed several issues and made many improvements, including:

Partitioning

• Created option to select a second drive during auto-partitioning to serve as a separate home partition.
• Added hibernation support for systems with significant swap space.
• Changed encrypted auto-partitioning method from LUKS on LVM to LVM on LUKS, in part to better facilitate hibernation.
• Improved swap size input handling and error checking.
• Made additional improvements and bug fixes for all partitioning methods.

Software

• Shifted from the vanilla Linux kernel to Zen (linux-zen and linux-zen-headers) for slight performance enhancements.
• Ensured system remains fully functional after kernel updates without requiring a reboot thanks to kernel-modules-hook. Redundant modules thus created are periodically removed via linux-modules-cleanup.service.
• Improved Timeshift configuration for Btrfs systems and ensured inotify-tools is installed for grub-btrfsd.service.
• Ensured vmware-usbarbitrator.path and vmware-networks.path are enabled if installing as a VMware guest.
• Improved printer detection and other Avahi-related functionality by enabling avahi-daemon.service and installing and configuring nss-mdns. Also, cups.socket is now enabled instead of cups.service.
• Set up weekly pacman cache cleanup by enabling paccache.timer.
• Removed VDPAU drivers from GPU package lists as they're inessential and can cause issues for some video-related software. Consult the ArchWiki if you want to set up hardware video acceleration.
• Updated and improved the handling of all package lists.
• Default packages:
  • Shifted fully to PipeWire by removing pulseaudio-alsa and pulseaudio-bluetooth and adding pipewire-alsa, pipewire-jack, pipewire-pulse, and gst-plugin-pipewire.
  • Replaced p7zip with 7zip, youtube-dl with yt-dlp, and mlocate with plocate.
  • Removed sl, pipes.sh, cpupower-gui, etc., and added duf, fwupd, vulkan-tools, etc.
  • Added compsize to Btrfs package list for convenient analysis of file compression.
  • Removed breeze-amber-cursor-theme from default AUR packages as it seems permanently gone. It is now always provided manually.
  • Moved LibreOffice and xCHM from default packages to optional.
• Optional software:
  • Improved menu system, allowing backward movement without loss of selection data.
  • Added bsd-games2, flax, o3de-bin, ogre, ogre-next, defold-bin, raylib, sdl3, sfml, decker, visual-studio-code-bin, proton-vpn-gtk-app, and signal-desktop to existing categories.
  • Added a new "Writing and Office Software" category with libreoffice-fresh, libreoffice-still, calligra, onlyoffice-bin, inky, twinejs-standalone, obsidian, standardnotes-bin, and xchm.
  • Replaced stone-soup with crawl-tiles, planeshift with planeshift-legacy, and minetest with luanti.
  • Removed openmw-tes3mp, pygtk, scratch, atom, vscodium-bin, nerd-fonts-complete, and authy.
  • Removed steam-native-runtime as a supplementary package for steam.
  • Improved handling of locale-specific supplementary packages.

KDE Plasma

• Added AUR package plasma5-themes-matchama as a new source for the Matchama KDE theme.
• Replaced packagekit-qt5 with packagekit-qt6.
• Removed vlc-plugin-fluidsynth-bin as FluidSynth support is now a built-in feature of VLC.
• Improved KDE Wallet configuration.

GNOME

• Removed gnome-shell-extension-clipboard-indicator, gnome-shell-extension-gamemode-git, and gnome-software-packagekit-plugin.
• Added archlinux-appstream-data, gdm-settings, and the Pano clipboard manager (gnome-shell-extension-pano-git).
• Replaced surfn-icons-git with beautyline.

Cinnamon

• Removed gnome-software.
• Replaced clipit with gpaste, celluloid with mpv, and surfn-icons-git with beautyline.
• Ensured GNOME Keyring can act as a wrapper around ssh-agent.

Xfce

• Fixed xfce4-panel issue for VM installs.
• Removed gnome-software.
• Replaced gcolor2 with gcolor3, celluloid with mpv, and surfn-icons-git with beautyline.
• Ensured GNOME Keyring can act as a wrapper around ssh-agent.
• Updated configuration files and the toggle-touchpad script.

Misc.

• Enabled SysRq keyboard shortcuts and potential improvements to gaming performance, etc., via gdl-system.conf.
• Ensured installer font size is increased for HiDPI displays.
• Provided option to cancel force-quit (Ctrl+C) of the installer.
• Removed all customizations affecting /root and ensured gdl.log is now copied to the new user's home rather than /root.
• Added reinstallgrub/grubreinstall aliases for convenient GRUB repair (in addition to updategrub/grubupdate for simply updating GRUB) and made various other alias adjustments in .bashrc, which also now runs gdl-config-script at user's first login.
• Improved log messages.
• Created test.sh to automate testing of shell files, package lists, etc.
• ISO built using: archiso 83-1
• Installer kernel: linux 6.13.8.arch1-1

Known issues

• Do not select the optional pulseaudio-equalizer package as it results in a pacstrap error due to the shift to pipewire-pulse.
• If IBus packages are installed, their configuration under Wayland might be incomplete.
• If installing to a VM, do not use NVMe for the root virtual drive unless EFI boot is enabled. Also, note that Wayland may cause visual or input issues: if so, log into an Xorg (X11) session instead.

v1.1.0

Auto-Partitioning

• Fixed some minor bugs and logging issues associated with UEFI systems (however, see "Known Issues" below).

Manual Partitioning

• Fixed a few logical errors and made various cosmetic improvements.
• Improved handling of Btrfs subvolumes.
• Improved handling of input for custom mount points.
• Improved enabling/disabling of swap and added [SWAP] to the mount point menu for more convenient creation of swap partitions.

Software

• Configured GameMode to also enable NVIDIA PRIME render offload for systems with an NVIDIA card plus another GPU.
• Provided option to try again if keyring update fails.
• Streamlined default packages, improved package list management, and added a pre-pacstrap check for anything that should be moved to the AUR list as packages are occasionally removed from official repos.
• Improved process for installation of yay-bin and AUR packages.
• Added radeontop for ATI/AMD systems and improved overall handling of GPU-related packages.
• Ensured thermald is installed and enabled for Intel systems to improve CPU temperature management.
• Ensured tlp is installed and enabled for laptops to improve battery power management.
• Added foliate (and its optional dependency dictd) to default packages as it handles .mobi and other major eBook formats beautifully; also added mlocate, pipes.sh, and cpupower-gui.
• Made noto-fonts optional, added ttf-liberation and ttf-dejavu as default font packages, and ensured noto-fonts-cjk is installed when needed.
• Added bottles as an optional package, adjusted the Wine-related package list, and ensured Wine-related packages are installed, not only if lutris is selected, but also if bottles or playonlinux is selected.
• Replaced sdl with sdl12-compat, libcanberra-pulse with libcanberra, opencl-icd-loader with ocl-icd, qemu with qemu-desktop, and itch with itch-setup-bin.
• Removed xcursor-breeze from package lists for GTK-based DEs and added breeze to default packages as it provides Breeze cursor themes and dark theming for certain KDE apps, such as Kdenlive.
• Ensured python-pip is installed with Kdenlive as it's needed for certain features, such as speech to text.
• Installation of insync now includes a DE-specific supplemental package: insync-dolphin, insync-nautilus, insync-nemo, or insync-thunar.
• Increased default window size of Terminator to 900x600.
• Improved default GRUB appearance for common monitor resolutions.

KDE Plasma

• LightDM is now available as a display manager option in addition to SDDM.
• Fixed keyboard shortcuts for changing window opacity.
• Improved configuration of KWin, Kate, and Dolphin.
• Added UFW rules to open KDE Connect ports.

Xfce

• GNOME services (such as gnome-keyring) now properly launch at login.
• Default keyboard shortcuts for screenshots now automatically save a file, or copy the screenshot to the clipboard if Ctrl is added to the shortcut, instead of opening the xfce4-screenshooter GUI.
• Touchpad (if any) now activates at login if no mouse is detected and deactivates whenever a mouse is connected.
• A toggle-touchpad command is now available and triggers whenever the touchpad toggle key is pressed.
• The "pop art squares" screensaver has been replaced by a slideshow of GDL's default wallpapers.
• Improved configuration of Xfce Panel, Whisker Menu, Default Applications, Power Manager, Galculator, and Thunar.

Misc.

• Resolved a sudoers issue: (ALL) -> (ALL:ALL).
• Fixed a few logical grep issues.
• Improved input handling for hostname, username, and full name.
• Improved language files and the overall flow of messages.
• Improved log file formatting and, at the end of a successful install, disk usage (df -Th) is now appended to the log.
• Improved handling of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, battery-detection, USB device-detection, gamemode group creation, locale-gen, and GDL version number.
• Improved build.sh, gdl-config-script, .zlogin, and .bashrc files.
• ISO built using: archiso 63-2
• Installer kernel: linux 5.17.7.arch1-1

Known Issues

• In some cases, the "Auto-partition with Encrypted LVM" option may fail completely or may seem to succeed and yet result in a system that doesn't boot properly. This is still being investigated.

v1.0.0

• First official release!
• Built using: archiso 60-1
• Installer kernel: linux 5.15.12.arch1-1
• Project details: README.md