CALAMARES(8)

💖 CALAMARES — the manual, bestie edition 💖

okay so you're looking at the manual page for calamares — that's CALAMARES(8) from the System Manager's Manual section, iykyk. pull up a chair, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

calamares — a distribution-independent system installer. that's it, that's the whole vibe. 👑

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

calamares [options]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so calamares is a distribution-independent system installer, which basically means it does not care which distro you're repping — it shows up and installs. 💅

it comes with an advanced partitioning feature that handles both manual and automated partitioning operations. and here's the iconic part: it's the first installer with an automated "Replace Partition" option, which makes it super easy to reuse a partition over and over again for distribution testing. like, recycle that partition, bestie, it's sustainable. ♻️

and the way it's designed?? calamares is meant to be customizable by distribution maintainers without any cumbersome patching, thanks to third party branding and external modules support. no patching, no drama, just vibes. ✨

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

here's the whole menu, no skips, no skips at all:

• -h, --help — displays this help. like, this exact help. hi. 👋
• -v, --version — displays version information. which version? the version info, bestie. 🎀
• -d, --debug — debugging mode, for testing purposes. it implies -D8 and -c.. yes, that's a real implication, it's giving dependency energy. 🔥
• -D <level> — sets the logging-level. higher numbers = more verbose. so if you want the tea spilled in detail, crank that number up. 💀
• -c, --config <config> — configuration directory to use, for testing purposes. you point at the dir, it uses the dir. 🫶
• -X, --xdg-config — use XDG environment variables for file lookup. XDG girlies rise. 🌈
• -T, --debug-translation — use translations from the current directory. translation debugging, but make it local. 🧚

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📁 FILES 📁

okay so calamares reads its configuration from many files — plural, multiple, a whole collection. 💖

the first configuration file is settings.conf, and it lives in one of the configuration locations. where exactly depends on how you launched it:

• when started with -d, calamares looks in the current directory for a settings file.
• when started with -X, calamares looks in the directories specified by XDG_CONFIG_DIRS for a settings file.
• if no settings file is found elsewhere, calamares looks in pre-configured directories like /etc.

and the plot twist?? the contents of the settings.conf file dictate where the other configuration files are located, and which configuration files are used. so that one file is basically the group chat admin of the whole config situation. 👑

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• the calamares website: https://calamares.io — go look, it's cute. 🦋

also important, fr fr: the command-line arguments for calamares are primarily for developers' convenience and should not be needed in nearly any situation in which calamares is deployed. most live CD environments and OEM installations should have installed configuration files in their correct system-wide locations already. so like... you probably don't need to touch the flags. let the system-wide locations do their thing. periodt. 💅

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🐛 BUGS 🐛

found a bug? please report any bugs to https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues. don't suffer in silence, bestie, tell the maintainers. 😭

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

calamares is written by:

• Teo Mrnjavac <teo@kde.org>
• Adriaan de Groot <groot@kde.org>
• and an international group of contributors 🌍 — the whole squad, honestly.

this man page is written by Jonathan Carter <jcarter@linux.com>. give them their flowers. 💐

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and that's a wrap!! 🎀 this whole thing comes to you from the System Manager's Manual, living under the name CALAMARES(8). go install something iconic, you've got this. 🫶✨