Calamares installer issue

Other Distributions
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I have tonight completed a hard install of Artix/Xfce/S6 .
Artix uses the Calamares installer
I did a UEFI install to a preformatted partition on hd0, so I chose ‘Custom’ partitioning and defined the ‘/’ mount point.
The installer then insisted I define the EFI partition and mount it to /boot/efi
It then went ahead and installed all the system files
It then did something REALLY ANNOYING…it went ahead
and installed the bootloader, without even asking me if I
wanted that.
No harm in this case, there was no other OS on the disk…
it just meant Artix on hd0 became the default boot, whereas I
prefer MX on my SSD to be the default.
So, the way out of it, was to boot MX, do an update-grub and
a grub-install there and that puts the SSD disk back as the default boot.

Otherwise, Calamares is a friendly helpful installer. I am not sure if the bootloader issue is the way Artix configured Calamares, or an inbuilt Calamares problem.
Either way , it would be nice if they could give users the choice
of whether to install the bootloader.

Does anyone else have this issue with Calamares?

So why Artix… well, I have tried it before in VM, and I discovered it had by far the best configuration for managing
alternate init systems.
The big issue with using runit or S6 init systems is that the packages require modification to properly setup startup scripts for services. Artix deals with this quite elegantly by
providing separate startup script packages for S6, runit, etc
in addition to the base app package. Other non-systemd distros like Devuan simply leave it to the user to provide
S6 or runit startup scripts. That is unsatisfactory in my opinion. Devuan is really only properly configured for
sysVinit.
So I am looking forward to making Artix one of my workhorses. That is the best way to evaluate a distro… work in it for 6 months. If it performs it will replace Devuan.

Do we have any Artix users?

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Have not used Artix at all.

I was wondering of Calamares installer automatically installed the bootloader because there was no other OS on the disk?

You didn’t really say if there was anything installed on other disks.

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There are 2 other disks with lots of distros installed.
I put an efi partition and grub on all 3 disks… so I can boot from any disk. Each disk has one Linux that controls its grub.

The disk I was installing Artix on had only one distro on it, and I reformatted that partition to install Artix. The rest of the disk was for data and swap, and it has an efi partition, which I left intact, so there would have been an entry there for the Linux I deleted. Maybe it looked at that?
I actually wanted Artix to control the grub on its disk, so what the installer did was OK, but I would have preferred to have done it by hand after the install to make sure it wrote on the correct efi partition.

Installers make too many assumptions. By trying to make it easy for the user, they actually make it dangerous.

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Assumptions can be bad. I just thought if that was the first distro on the only disk then it would have to install the bootloader.

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Most users would want that, but it is not necessary. You can always install grub from a live CD or flash drive. Some users might not even want grub… there are alternatives like Refind.

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