WIP: skeleton for Agama 7 announcement

_posts/2023-12-21-agama-7.md

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+---
+layout: post
+date: 2023-12-21 12:00:00 +00:00
+title: Announcing Agama 7
+description: Year 2023 comes to an end with a new version of our next-generation installer
+permalink: blog/2023-12-21/agama7
+tags:
+- Project
+- Programming
+- Systems Management
+- YaST
+- Agama
+---
+
+It's vacation season at Europe and most of the YaST development team will be busy for a couple of
+weeks singing Chistmas songs, celebrating the arrival of a new year and opening presents from the
+Three Wise Men. But we didn't want to leave the openSUSE fans idle for so long. So we decided to
+release another prototype of Agama, so you can have fun testing it and giving us feedback.
+
+Meet Agama 7 and its corresponding [Agama Live ISO
+images](https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/systemsmanagement:/Agama:/Devel/images/iso/) for
+testing.
+
+## Localization Settings for the Target System {#l10n}
+
+One of the biggest changes compared to previous versions is the possibility to fully configure all
+the localization aspects of the target system to be installed. That includes the language, the
+keyboard layout and the time zone.
+
+{% include blog_img.md alt="Localization" src="l10n-mini.png" full_img="l10n.png" %}
+
+Note these aspects don't affect the Agama interface. The language used by Agama during the
+installation process is determined by the browser, although it can be changed through the Agama
+sidebar as already explained [in our previous blog post]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2023-10-25/agama5).
+
+## Keyboard Selector for Local Installation {#keyboard}
+
+But what happens when the browser you are using to connect to Agama is not in a remote machine
+properly configured but is the full-screen browser offered by the Agama Live testing image? Don't
+worry, your localization needs are also covered.
+
+As you can see in the description of [this pull request](https://github.com/openSUSE/agama/pull/917),
+the Agama sidebar can also be used to change the keyboard layout if the browser is running in the
+same system that is executing Agama, like is the case of Agama Live.
+
+We plan to create a proper welcome screen for users that don't know enough English to reach that
+sidebar, but meanwhile we hope the current options will be enough both to use Agama in your
+preferred language and to get a properly localized system as result of the installation.
+
+## Reduce RAM Usage in the Testing Image {#zram}
+
+Talking about the Agama Live testing image we recently reduced the RAM required to succesfully
+install openSUSE with it. In fact, Agama's memory usage has not changed much, but we enabled
+[zram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zram) by default in the live image and now everything should
+work better in system with limited amount of RAM. If you want to disable zram, just open a terminal
+and execute the following command.
+
+```
+systemctl stop zramswap
+```
+
+To be honest, we cannot foresee any good reason to disable zram, so let's us know if you think we are
+mistaken in that regard.
+
+## Installation of openSUSE MicroOS {#microos}
+
+We also reorganized the Agama configuration included in the openSUSE flavor of Agama Live. Now you
+can use the very same testing image to install both openSUSE Tumbleweed and openSUSE MicroOS.
+
+{% include blog_img.md alt="Product Selection" src="product-mini.png" full_img="product.png" %}
+
+## First Step to Simplify Selection of Software {#patterns}
+
+TO BE WRITTEN
+
+Show curated list of patterns for each product (early preview, first step)
+
+## Registration Support {#registration}
+
+TO BE WRITTEN
+
+As you may know, some products SUSE Customer Center.
+Both Web UI and CLI (auto-installation)
+
+## More Customization Options {#storage}
+
+TO BE WRITTEN
+
+Select filesystem type (including snapshots)
+Policy to make space
+
+## Other Improvements
+
+TO BE WRITTEN
+
+Preserve installation logs
+Improvements in internationalization (some messages were not translatable)
+Accesibility improvements in the web UI (by adding aria-label, aria-live-region and aria-busy attributes
+Support for network bonding
+
+## The Year of Agama {#future}
+
+Agama 7 is the first protype we could consider to be "functional enough". It finally covers all the
+areas we consider as essencial during the installation of the system: localization, network
+configuration, storage setup, authentication basis (including the optional creation of a first user)
+and an intentionally simplistic selection of the software to install.
+
+Of course, all those areas need to evolve much further and that's exactly the goal for this new
+year - take Agama to the next level in which it could even replace YaST for some scenarios and
+distributions.
+
+Your contributions and opinions are an important element for that. So don't hesitate to contact
+the YaST team at the [YaST Development mailing
+list](https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/yast-devel@lists.opensuse.org/), our `#yast`
+channel at [Libera.chat](https://libera.chat/) or the [Agama project at
+GitHub](https://github.com/openSUSE/agama).
+
+See you again in 2024!