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# Arch Installer Goes 4.0 With a New Face and Fewer 'Curses'
- URL: https://itsfoss.com/news/arch-installer-4-0-release/
- Published: 2026-04-01T12:36:51.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-01T12:36:51.000Z
- Description: The release drops curses in favor of Textual, but that's just the highlight.
- Author: Sourav Rudra
- Tags: News

Arch Linux needs no introduction around here. It is the distro people flock to for its no-nonsense, [rolling release](https://itsfoss.com/rolling-release/) approach and, of course, the right to say "*I use Arch, btw*" at every given opportunity.

Setting it up used to mean having the wiki open in one window and a terminal in another, hoping you didn't miss a step. [Arch Installer](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall?ref=itsfoss.com) (*archinstall*) changed that.

It is Arch's official guided installer that is bundled with the live ISO. It takes you through the whole process, from disk partitioning to desktop environment selection, without requiring you to memorize yet another command. I have used it while installing an [Arch-based distro](https://itsfoss.com/arch-based-linux-distros/) in the past ([*Omarchy*](https://itsfoss.com/news/omarchy/)), and it was quite reliable.

The developers have now introduced **Arch Installer 4.0**, and it is a major overhaul.

## What to expect?

**Video courtesy of* [**Sreenath*](https://itsfoss.com/author/sreenath/)**.*

We begin with the most obvious change, where Arch Installer has ditched [curses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses%5F%28programming%5Flibrary%29?ref=itsfoss.com), the old C library powering most terminal interfaces you've come across, in favor of [Textual](https://textual.textualize.io/?ref=itsfoss.com), a Python TUI framework by [Textualize.io](https://www.textualize.io/?ref=itsfoss.com).

This brings a cleaner look, and menus [are now async](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/pull/4308?ref=itsfoss.com) too, with the installer running as a single persistent *Textual* app throughout rather than spinning up a new instance for each selection. This means the user interface won't freeze or stall between selections while the installer is doing work in the background.

Moving on, you can now set up a firewall during installation, with [firewalld](https://firewalld.org/?ref=itsfoss.com) available right from the menu. GRUB also picks up [Unified Kernel Image](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified%5Fkernel%5Fimage?ref=itsfoss.com) (UKI) menu entry support. A Btrfs bug that had the installer choking on partitions with no mountpoints assigned [has been fixed](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/pull/3992?ref=itsfoss.com) too.

On the translation front, **Galician and Nepali are in as new languages**, and a good chunk of the existing ones, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Czech, Finnish, Spanish, and Hindi included, have been refreshed.

Worth noting too is that [Arch Installer 4.1](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/releases/tag/4.1?ref=itsfoss.com) has already arrived shortly after, and it drops the NVIDIA proprietary driver option since [nvidia-dkms is no longer in the Arch repos](https://itsfoss.com/news/arch-linux-old-nvidia-gpu-issue/).

## Closing words

You can grab the latest [Arch Linux](https://archlinux.org/download/?ref=itsfoss.com) ISO to try the new installer or update an existing live ISO by running `pacman -Syu`. For the full changelog, head to the [releases page](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/releases/tag/4.0?ref=itsfoss.com) on GitHub.

[Arch Linux](https://archlinux.org/download/?ref=itsfoss.com)

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