Nixstaller 0.5: Installation Assistant for Linux and Co.

The new dependency manager establishes the installation configuration and installs said configurations according to the user’s wish. With the new UTF-8 support, the project has expanded software localization. At the user’s specification, Nixstaller is capable of incorporating the user’s given application software language. Among the new additions is the current option to incorporate an autonomous installation process that does not require user interaction.

Software developers are able to control and view installations or to allow installation to proceed automatically with the use of Nixstaller. For controlled installation, Nixstaller enables three separate interfaces: the text-based Ncurses, the X11 based FLTK, and a GTK+2 based interface. When a user activates the controlled, diagramed installation a series of screens are displayed which can be configured using text boxes and prompts according to preference. In contrast, the automatic installation option is executed via paramaters the programmer sets on the command line. Further information is available on the project website, in addition to Tarball, the version available for download (with Nixstaller installation script included, of course). The installer works with the MIT licensed script Lua, which first appeared in 1993.

The name Nixstaller refers to the project goal of making Nixstaller compatible with as many Unix systems as possible. As a further technical goal, the project seeks to increase efficiency by making the compressed version as close to the original version as possible. In addition, the installer requires few other packets. On the project website, Opensuse 11.1 and Fedora 10, Debian Lenny, or Ubuntu 8.10 are listed as being supported by Nixstaller.