[gentoo-installer] 0.2 Release Announcement and GLI Status update

[Preston Cody]

The installer team is proud to announce the release of version 0.2 of the
Gentoo Linux Installer. There have been many improvements over the 0.1 ("alpha")
release including many new features and many annoying bugs squished.

(appologies in advance if gmail kills my formatting)

New features
------------
* Sub-progress bar (shows the progress of the individual install step)
* Tarball extraction progress (shows how far along it is extracting a tarball)
* New code for dynamic-stage3 that cuts the time in half along with not
  cluttering up your new install with binary packages.
* Optional verbose logging for debug purposes.
* Notification of which packages are available in GRP form (gli-dialog only)
* More graceful failure cleanup (now unmounts mounted partitions) (gtkfe only)
* Pre-configured xorg.conf is now copied to the new system when xorg-x11 is
    installed.
* If selecting a graphical desktop xdm is set to boot automatically in
    standard mode (prompt in advanced) (gli-dialog only)
* Automatic snapshot/make.conf screens for dynamic stage3 installs (this is
    necessary to prevent b0rkage)


Bugs fixed since 0.1
--------------------
* NTFS/FAT32 code problem that left you with an empty partition table
* attempting to mount unallocated space
* Various bootloader bugs

Issues not resolved in 0.2 but fixed in CVS
-------------------------------------------
* Mounting windows partitions can cause filesystem format issues (fat16/32
 instead of vfat)

Along with the new version of the installer, there is also a new LiveCD (extra
thanks to wolf-31o2 for that). Some of the changes include:

* Gimp and bittorrent have been added
* Fixes to allow Gnome to install properly via GRP

Issues not yet resolved
-----------------------
* gli-dialog error cleanup (should be an option)
* bootloader customizability.  currently the boot device is determined by
    /boot (or / if no /boot) and the MBR of that device is written to instead
                of whatever device boots first.  This is currently being fixed.
* internationalization support in gli-dialog is still only at "ready to go"
    status

Coming soon to a LiveCD near you! (i.e. what to expect from 0.3)
----------------------------------------------------------
* Dynamic/virtual hard-drives!  You can define partitions with percentages.

* A brand new FE!  Webgli, a web-browser-based FE, combines aspects from the
    previous two FEs into a new and simple interface for creating install
                profiles.

* Mastergli (TEMPORARY NAME), a mass-installation utility, which will be
    combined with webgli to help create profiles.  This finally addresses the
                second half of the Gentoo Installer's project goals. 
It will allow users
                to PXE boot client machines that will be detected by
the mastergli server
                (these can also be      defined manually) and specify
which install profile to
                use for that machine.  This lets you create template
machines such as
                "image-server" or       "mail-server" or
"normal-workstation" for example and
                pick and choose boxes and profiles.  It then will
spawn off the selected
                installs and provide status updates via the same web
interface.  The
                mastergli settings will of course be able to be
saved/loaded with a master
                profile XML file.       Since this interface will work
remotely (if allowed) and
                in links2, it is not likely that there will be a
command-line version of
                mastergli anytime       soon.  Mastergli utilizes
SecureXMLRPC code from samyron
                as well as backend code from chotchki and of course agaffney.

Enjoy your new release!
-Codeman

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