Debian Installer 7.0 Beta1 release

August 4th, 2012

The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the first beta release of the installer for Debian 7.0 Wheezy.

Improvements in this release of the installer

debian-installer: Switch the boot backgrounds to the Wheezy joy theme.
debian-installer: Adjust syslinux boot menu to not overlap with Debian logo.
debian-installer: Update to 3.2.0-3 linux ABI.
apt: Fix crashes on s390x.
apt: Improved behaviour with proxies (redirection handling improved, and HTTP/1.1 pipelining disabled by default).
brltty: Add new braille USB IDs to d-i udev rules.
busybox: Enable ping applet for udeb build.
debian-archive-keyring: Wheezy keys were added.
fonts-lohit-telu: Fix some glyphs for Telugu language support.
grub2: Prevent EFI systems from running out of memory due to large disk cache.
hw-detect: check-missing-firmware now supports looking into xz-compressed udebs.
linux kernel: Updated from 3.2.15 to 3.2.21 (many fixes).
- [sparc,sparc64] Build virtio-modules-udeb for use in qemu (#673320).
- [ia64,powerpc] udeb: Add crc-itu-t to crc-modules; make firewire-core-modules depend on it.
- udeb: Add missing dependencies for various modules (see #678587).
lowmem: Improved low memory mode.
mkvmlinuz: Compress initrd with xz to significantly reduce vmlinuz size (#549681).
netcfg: Fix for "Enter the passphrase for WPA PSK" missing a "go back" button (#636211).
netcfg: Make link detection timeout preseedable (#610752).
netcfg: Fix link detection progress bar.
network-console: Add support for public-key authentication (#592550).
newt: Fix 'Escape' detection when 'No' is selected (#665784).
pciutils: Update pci.ids to the 2012.06.25 version.
rootskel-gtk: Use the Wheezy Joy theme for the installer.
wpa: Fix authentication issues with WPA2 passwords.

Behavioral changes in this release

Businesscard images are no longer provided. The netinst images can be used instead.
kfreebsd-*: When more than one kfreebsd version is available, make kfreebsd-9 the default boot option.
preseed: Point the keymap alias to keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap instead of the now-gone console-keymaps-at.
rootskel-bootfloppy support has been removed (#653840).

Hardware support changes

libdebian-installer: Add support for LaCie Kirkwood NAS devices (#670527).
linux kernel: Updated from 3.2.15-1 to 3.2.21-3.
- rt2x00: Identify rt2800usb chipsets (#658067).
- [armhf] Add vexpress support (#670462). More work is required to provide an installer though.
- [armel] Introduce a new udeb module for leds and use it on kirkwood kernel (#671200).
- rt2800usb: Add support for Ralink RT5392/RF5372 chipset (#673186).
- be2net: Add support for Skyhawk cards.
- [x86] udeb: Add hyperv-modules containing Hyper-V paravirtualised drivers.
- [x86] ata_piix: defer disks to the Hyper-V drivers by default.
- DFSG: video: Remove nvidiafb and rivafb.
- input: Add Synaptics USB device driver (#678071).
- [armel/kirkwood] Add dreamplug and iconnect support (#675922).
network-console: Set LED signal on LaCie Kirkwood NAS devices when SSH is ready (#670941).

Localization changes

Welsh language enabled.
Sinhala, Burmese, and Tibetan now really supported with the right font for each.
73 languages are supported in this release. Full translation for 56 of them.

Known issues in this release

See the errata for details and a full list of known issues.

Feedback for this release

We need your help to find bugs and further improve the installer, so please try it. Installer CDs, other media and everything else you will need are available at our web site.

Thanks

The Debian Installer team thanks everybody who has contributed to this release.