Archinstall 4.4 - Bye Cutefish Hi Niri DMS

Archinstall 4.4 - Bye Cutefish Hi Niri DMS

Table of contents:-

What's new on the desktop front

Installer workflow and usability improvements

Security and stability fixes worth flagging

Trying it safely in a virtual machine

Conclusion

Arch Linux's guided installer has just clocked up another release, and version 4.4 of archinstall brings a tidy mix of housekeeping, security polish, and one genuinely exciting addition for the scrollable-tiling crowd. Released on 28 June 2026 by maintainer Anton Hvornum (Torxed) and the wider archinstall team, this update trims a dead desktop profile, hardens a few install-time checks, and rolls out the welcome mat for niri paired with DankMaterialShell. Here's everything worth knowing.

 

What's new on the desktop front

The standout change in 4.4 is the addition of a niri plus DankMaterialShell profile, contributed by community developer bbedward. This lets anyone running the installer pick niri, the Rust-based scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor, and have DankMaterialShell (DMS) wired up automatically as its desktop shell. Niri arranges windows in columns along an infinite horizontal strip per monitor, with dynamic vertical workspaces, so opening a new window never forces everything else to resize, a refreshingly different way of working compared with conventional tiling layouts. DankMaterialShell, built with Quickshell and Go, fills in everything niri intentionally leaves out: a panel, launcher, notification centre, control centre, lock screen, and wallpaper-based dynamic theming, replacing the usual patchwork of waybar, swaylock, swayidle, mako, and fuzzel with one cohesive package. 

Alongside this addition, the long unmaintained Cutefish desktop profile has been removed entirely, having been flagged as dead weight in the project's profile list. Budgie also received attention, with its display server handling corrected and its default terminal and file manager swapped out for better-supported alternatives. A new Plymouth boot-splash configuration option has also landed, complete with a sensible warning before it's enabled in the bootloader menu, since Plymouth can complicate troubleshooting on some setups.

 

Installer workflow and usability improvements

Several quality-of-life tweaks make the TUI feel sharper. The install summary screen now colour-codes feedback, red for errors, yellow for warnings, and green once the configuration is ready to go, so users get an instant visual read on whether they're good to proceed. Console font selection has been folded into the Locales menu and is now set automatically based on the chosen language, removing a small but recurring point of confusion for non-Latin keyboard layouts. The profile and seat-access selection logic has been refactored for clarity, and a new share-log subcommand uploads the install log straight to paste.rs, making it far easier to share diagnostics when asking for help. Network configuration also gained a standalone IWD option alongside fixes to the NetworkManager and IWD interplay, and WiFi selection within the TUI prompt itself was repaired after reports of it misbehaving.

 

Security and stability fixes worth flagging

Archinstall 4.4 carries a handful of fixes that matter for anyone building a fresh system. EFI partition permissions are now correctly restricted using fmask/dmask=0077, tightening up access to the boot partition. Error output from cryptsetup is now properly surfaced when a LUKS unlock fails, rather than failing silently and leaving users guessing. Bootloader layout validation has been extended with additional UEFI-dependent checks, and a fix ensures a standalone initramfs is preserved for grub-btrfs setups when Unified Kernel Images are enabled. A previously reported crash, where selecting no disks in the disk menu threw an unhandled exception, has also been resolved.

 

Trying it safely in a virtual machine

For this overview, archinstall 4.4 was trialled on a fresh Arch Linux installation running inside a virtual machine using Oracle's VirtualBox, a sensible and low-risk way to explore a new installer release, test the niri and DankMaterialShell profile, and get a feel for the updated TUI before committing to bare metal.

Spinning up a snapshot-friendly VM first is generally good practice whenever trying an installer's freshly added desktop options.

 

Conclusion

Archinstall 4.4 is a release that quietly tidies the house while opening a new door: out goes an abandoned desktop profile, in comes first-class support for one of the more interesting compositor-and-shell pairings in the Wayland world today. Combined with its usual run of security hardening and TUI refinements, it's a solid, incremental step forward for anyone setting up Arch Linux, whether they're chasing the niri scrollable-tiling workflow or simply want a smoother, safer guided install. 

Disclaimer: All product names, logos, and trademarks mentioned in this article, including Arch Linux, archinstall, niri, DankMaterialShell, and any other referenced software, are the property of their respective owners. This article is published in good faith for informational and educational purposes, drawing solely on official public sources, and The Distrowrite Project makes every reasonable effort to ensure factual accuracy at the time of writing. We do not endorse, promote, or encourage any activity involving malware, viruses, or other harmful content capable of compromising the integrity of networks, devices, or infrastructure.

 

References:

• Archinstall 4.4 release notes – GitHub

• Archinstall repository – GitHub

• Niri compositor – GitHub

• DankMaterialShell – GitHub

• Niri – Arch Wiki 

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W🅔🅛🅒🅞🅜🅔 Archinstall 4.4

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