Modular popularity

While Calamares modules come in all shapes and sizes, Teo believes that perhaps the most technically challenging is the partitioning module. The modules he’s most proud of are those that were contributed by the wider Calamares community: “Some of these modules are just a few lines of Python to handle a distribution-specific quirk, but we couldn’t have made it without them.” Continuing on the same lines, Adriaan points to the downstream modules, that is “stuff that isn’t in Calamares proper, but that distros have developed for their own use.”

The one module that, in our experience, hasn’t been widely adopted by the distros is the encryption module. “Assuming disk encryption isn’t used much, I’m going to suppose that either the UI doesn’t match expectations, or the module doesn’t provide the features that distros (and in extension, users) want,” opines Adriaan. He points out that there are several issues open on the subject. “The thing is, getting encryption right is hard, and getting it wrong is disastrous, so I’m cautious, and I think distros are cautious, too. That said, going over the encryption support is certainly on the roadmap. I’ve chosen to deal with other feature requests and bug reports first, but encryption will be buffed up, polished and pushed into the limelight eventually.”