Debian Developers' Corner / Debian-Installer / Latest News for Debian-Installer / Debian-Installer News from 2021 / News -- Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release

Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release

April 23rd, 2021

The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the first release candidate of the installer for Debian 11 Bullseye.

Improvements in this release

• base-installer:
  • Re-add the removed is_ports_architecture() function - it's used by other packages and library.sh looks like a fair central place for it to be (#979193).
• brltty:
  • Update udev rules.
  • Make sure the hardening flags are used in the udeb build.
• choose-mirror:
  • Update Mirrors.masterlist.
• debian-archive-keyring:
  • Add bullseye keys, remove jessie keys.
• debian-cd:
  • Shorten "ppc64el" to "p64el" in the volume ID.
  • Include eatmydata deb for the installer to use offline (#986772).
• debian-installer:
  • Build in libinput instead of evdev driver for the graphical installer. This should improve support for touchpads in particular.
  • Bump Linux kernel ABI to 5.10.0-6.
  • Add wireless-regdb-udeb to all Linux arch images (#979104).
  • Correct keyword for bootloader arguments in netboot/xen/debian.cfg example file (#904131).
  • Update debian-internals manual to current development state.
  • Update minimum disk and memory sizes.
• debian-installer-utils:
  • list-devices-linux: Support partitions on USB UAS devices.
• espeakup:
  • Carry over the alsa mixer levels into the installed system.
• grub-installer:
  • Make sure that efivarfs is loaded and the efivars pseudofs is mounted when needed.
• grub2:
  • Add support for SBAT.
  • grub-install: Fix inverted test for NLS enabled when copying locales (#979754).
• installation-report:
  • bugscript: do not include template in script output (#980929).
• libdebian-installer:
  • Remove the arbitrary limitation on maximum line length in Packages and Sources files (#971946).
• libinih:
  • Add libinih1-udeb for Debian Installer (#981864).
• libinput:
  • Drop libwacom support from the udeb.
• libmd:
  • Add a udeb package needed by libbsd.
• libwacom:
  • Drop the udeb, libinput no longer needs it.
• linux:
  • Add bonding driver to the nic-modules udeb.
  • Remove efivars from the efi-modules udeb.
  • arm64: Fix i2c-mv64xxx module name.
• localechooser:
  • Disable Kabyle for the text-based installer, as switching keyboard fails there (#973455).
  • Correct Kabyle locale definition in languagelist to its real naming.
• lowmem:
  • Delete graphical terminal related files when memory is low (#977490).
  • 5lowmem: Rename to 05lowmem so that rescue actually overrides it (#870574).
  • S15lowmem: Update minimum memory sizes.
• nano:
  • Compile the udeb with --without-included-regex to make binaries substantially smaller.
• netcfg:
  • Update testcases to work with current Check API (#980607).
  • Satisfy GCC pedantry for strncpy() calls.
• os-prober:
  • Probe Microsoft OS on arm64.
• partman-btrfs:
  • Add minimal subvolume support for / (#964818).
• partman-efi:
  • Make sure that efivarfs is loaded and the efivars pseudofs is mounted when needed.
• rootskel:
  • Use /dev/tty0 as a console even if it's not in /proc/consoles.
  • Do not remove the font when bterm is not started (#977466).
• rootskel-gtk:
  • Switch to Homeworld theme for Debian 11 by Juliette Taka.
• user-setup:
  • Allow underscore in username of first account (#977214).

Hardware support changes

• debian-installer:
  • arm64: Add support for puma-rk3399.
  • arm64: Update to use u-boot-install-sunxi.
  • armhf: Make hd-media and netboot sdcard images start at offset 32768, for compatibility with rockchip platforms.
  • arm64, armhf: Update SD-card-images sizes for netboot, netboot-gtk and hd-media.
• flash-kernel:
  • Add support for Orange Pi One Plus (#981328).
  • Add support for ROCK Pi 4 (A,B,C).
  • Add support for Banana Pi BPI-M2-Ultra (#982089).
  • Add support for Banana Pi BPI-M3 (#981561).
  • Fix missing ESPRESSObin variants (#969518).
  • Fix several DTB-Id entries that incorrectly referenced the .dts instead of .dtb file.

Localization status

• 78 languages are supported in this release.

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.