Debian Installer Bookworm Alpha 2 release
February 19th, 2023
The Debian Installer team is pleased to
announce the second alpha release of the installer for Debian 12
Bookworm
.
Following the 2022 General Resolution about non-free firmware, many packages containing firmware files that can be requested by the Linux kernel at runtime were moved from non-free to non-free-firmware, making them eligible for inclusion on official media per the updated Social Contract #5.
Starting with this release, official images include firmware packages from main and non-free-firmware, along with metadata to configure the installed system accordingly. Our installation guide has been updated accordingly.
Improvements in this release
- apt-setup:
- Add an apt-setup/non-free-firmware template, similar to the non-free and contrib ones, used by 50mirror to enable the non-free-firmware component: expert install only, disabled by default, but automatically set when non-free firmware packages are installed.
- Factorize component handling across Debian generators, and add support for non-free-firmware to all of them.
- Avoid leaving duplicate cdrom: entries in comments at the end of the installation (#1029922).
- base-installer:
- Ignore multi-arch qualifier (#1020426).
- cdebconf:
- text: During progression, provide user feedback at least every minute.
- newt: Align more items on top-left in braille mode.
- debian-cd:
- Refresh modalias information for firmware-sof-signed.
- Extend generated firmware metadata with component information.
- Include firmware packages based on the configured components (e.g. main and non-free-firmware for official builds).
- Bump maximal image size to 1G for netinst CD images: 650 MB is no longer enough, but current images are still below 700 MB.
- Implement a more robust installer lookup when booting from grub-efi, using .disk/id/$UUID instead of .disk/info (#1024346, #1024720).
- All amd64 installation images will now boot on amd64 machines using 32-bit UEFI firwmare. Users no longer need the multi-arch installer for those machines.
- Stop building multi-arch images accordingly.
- Delete support for win32-loader, which is no longer maintained.
- debian-installer:
- Switch to using bookworm artwork for the splash screens (Emerald).
- Fix missing glyphs for Georgian (#1017435).
- Bump Linux kernel ABI to 6.1.0-3.
- debootstrap:
- Add specific handling for the usr-is-merged package.
- espeakup:
- Set speakup_soft direct parameter to 1 in the installed system for non-English language, to fix the pronunciation of symbols and numbers.
- Avoid warning about missing mbrola voices.
- Run espeakup in a loop, to compensate for crashes.
- grub-installer:
- Fix missing debconf module integration.
- grub2:
- hw-detect:
- Add support for Contents-firmware indices to speed up firmware lookup (from requested files to available packages), keeping the manual lookup as a fallback.
- Add support for component detection, enabling apt-setup/$component automatically.
- Resolve “usb” module into the underlying module when it requests firmware files (e.g. rtl8192cu for a RTL8188CUS USB Wi-Fi dongle), to reload the right module after deploying the relevant firmware package.
- Delete support for loading udeb firmware packages (*.udeb, *.ude).
- Note: Use cases regarding loading firmware from external storage remain to be clarified (#1029543). With firmware packages being included on official images, this is expected to be much less useful than it was.
- Skip the historical link up/link down dance on some network interfaces: while it's useful to ensure modules request firmware files they might require, it's actively harmful if the interface has been configured (e.g. manually or via preseed): the link is up and/or it's involved in a bond.
- Implement support for the hw-detect/firmware-lookup=never setting (#1029848).
- libdebian-installer:
- Ignore multiarch qualifier suffix (#1020783).
- localechooser:
- Enable Vietnamese in non-bogl console.
- ifupdown:
- Fix missing /etc/network/interfaces configuration for wireless connections when NetworkManager isn't installed, changing its mode to 600 for secure connections since it ends up containing secrets (#1029352, first issue).
- Adjust /etc/network/interfaces configuration for wireless connections with both DHCP and SLAAC: only write a DHCP stanza and let RAs do the rest at runtime (#1029352, second issue).
- preseed:
- Add “firmware” alias for “hw-detect/firmware-lookup” (#1029848).
- rootskel:
- reopen-console-linux: When speakup is requested, prefer tty1 which is the only console that speakup can read.
- rootskel-gtk:
- Update artwork with the Emerald theme.
- user-setup:
- Remove support for unshadowed passwords.
Hardware support changes
- debian-installer:
- [amd64, arm64] Build netboot images for ChromeOS devices. More changes are required for these images to be useful.
- grub2:
- linux:
- udeb: Move ledtrig-audio from sound-modules to kernel-image
- udeb: Also add drivers in subdirectories of drivers/net/phy
- [arm64] Add nvmem-imx-ocotp driver to kernel-image udeb
- [arm64] Add imx2_wdt driver to kernel-image udeb
- [arm64] Add i2c-imx to i2c-modules udeb
Localization status
- 78 languages are supported in this release.
- Full translation for 40 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.