Debian Installer Stretch RC 1 release

January 15th, 2017

The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the first release candidate of the installer for Debian 9 Stretch.

Important changes in this release

The switch to merged-/usr as the default setting for debootstrap was reverted since it uncovered a number of important issues which might not be all fixed in time for stretch. This setting is expected to come back as the default at the beginning of the next release cycle.
As noted in the Stretch Alpha 6 release announcement, Debian Pure Blends appeared in the Software selection screen. Unfortunately, concerns voiced back then weren't worked on until after the freeze started, and a freeze isn't the time where critical screens should be revamped. Support was disabled accordingly.

Improvements in this release

apt-setup:
- Tweak which images will offer to scan more discs.
brltty:
- Switch to espeak-ng.
- Add support for LXQt.
- Improve detection of USB devices.
cdebconf-terminal:
- Switch from ttf-dejavu-mono-udeb to fonts-dejavu-mono-udeb.
debian-installer:
- Add HTTPS support through new ca-certificates and wget udebs (#842040).
- Switch from ttf-dejavu-udeb to fonts-dejavu-udeb.
- Switch from fonts-lklug-sinhala to fonts-noto-hinted-udeb for Sinhala (#837926).
- Bump Linux kernel version from 4.7.0-1 to 4.8.0-2.
- Update theme to softWaves by Juliette Belin.
debian-installer-utils:
- Add checksum verification to fetch-url.
espeakup-udeb:
- Avoid issues with sound board names containing spaces.
- Fix race conditions when starting espeakup.
- Switch to espeak-ng (#833658).
linux:
- [armhf] udeb: Replace dwmac-socfpga with dwmac-altr-socfpga in nic-modules (#837110).
mklibs:
- Add support for both DT_RUNPATH and DT_RPATH (#845418).
netcfg:
- Improve /etc/network/interfaces handling: Stop writing netmask, network, and broadcast lines; just set the prefix length as part of the address (#646860).
pkgsel, tasksel:
- Only show tasks from tasksel-data within the Debian Installer (#758116, #846002).
preseed:
- Update auto-install/defaultroot for stretch (#845326).
- Add support for optional checksums.
rootskel:
- Fix starting screen in ssh when Debian Installer is already running inside screen on serial port (#844549).
rootskel-gtk:
- Switch to stretch theme: softWaves, by Juliette Belin (#793125).
- Use Noto Sans Sinhala for Sinhala locales.
s390-netdevice:
- Do not ask for the relative qeth port by default.
user-setup:
- Update list of reserved usernames.

Hardware support changes

debian-installer:
- Disable u-boot images for OpenRD because they've been removed (#837629).
- orion5x-qnap: Exclude packages to satisfy size constraints (HTTPS-related packages, wpasupplicant-udeb).
- EFI: Fix up FAT filesystem size calculation.
debootstrap:
- Remove scratchbox2 support (#796189).
flash-kernel:
- Add support for USB armory board.
- Add support for Cubieboard4.
- Restore support for DTBs with absolute paths.
- Add support for Netgear ReadyNAS 104 (#806926).
- Add support for Marvell ESPRESSOBin.
- Improve DTB handling (#789886, #836679).
- Call mkimage with correct architecture (#845779).
partman:
- Improve DASD support.
u-boot:
- u-boot-imx: Add mx6cuboxi4x4 target (#848911).
- u-boot-sunxi: Add orangepi_zero target (#848557).
- u-boot-sunxi: Add nanopi_neo target (#845932).
- u-boot-sunxi: Enable Cubieboard4 target.

Localization status

75 languages are supported in this release.
Full translation for 8 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.