The first release candidate of the Debian 8 installer is now available



Here the announcement from Cyril Brulebois:

The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the first release
candidate of the installer for Debian 8 "Jessie".


Note: One shouldn't worry about the noticeable delta between the file
timestamps (which match when the build happened) and the date of this
announce. The delay in announcing this release is entirely my fault,
and I'm very sorry the inconvenience.


Important changes in this release of the installer
==================================================

* check-missing-firmware (in hw-detect) was updated to look at the
kernel logs to determine which firmwares might be missing. This
fixes the longstanding regression in this area compared to the
Wheezy release (#725714).
* Artwork was updated to use the new "Lines" theme by Juliette Belin.
* Due to a change on the linux kernel side, the "---" separator is
now used instead of the historical "--" one to separate kernel
parameters from userland parameters. This makes it possible for
user-params to do its job, and copy e.g. console="..." settings
where they're expected in the installed system.
* On the i386 architecture, the 486 kernel flavour was renamed to 586
since it was determined that 486 hadn't been supported in a long
while.


Other changes in this release of the installer
==============================================

* brltty-udeb:
- Update autostart rules with newer devices.
- Fix auto-starting at-spi and orca in XFCE and LXDE.
* choose-mirror: Update the mirror list (this includes dropping
cdn.debian.net).
* console-setup: Define missing X keysyms (#762399).
* debootstrap: Add support for Debian stretch and Ubuntu vivid.
* debian-installer:
- Update documentation of required minimum disk size.
* efibootmgr: Better handle unreadable boot variables (#768880).
* espeakup:
- Fix spelling keystrokes and char-by-char echo (#767595).
- Fix spelling capital keystrokes (#770753).
* grub2:
- Add support for forcing an extra copy of grub-efi to the
removable media path /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOT$ARCH.EFI (#767037,
#773092, #773004).
* grub-installer:
- Recognise the new ignore_uefi flag from partman-efi.
- Add extra support for forcing installation to the EFI removable
media path (#767037).
- Add support for grub-installer/bootdev=default (#759737). To be
used with caution!
* libdebian-installer: Recognise the new ignore_uefi flag from
partman-efi.
* linux: Add ".0" to the kernel version string (#742226, #745984).
* netcfg:
- Add support for /etc/network/interfaces.d/ (#770078).
- Fix missing bounds check on nameserver array iteration, leading
to a crash when 4 (or more) nameservers are available (#768218).
* partman-crypto: Add support for preseeding passphrases (#656710).
To be used with caution!
* partman-efi:
- Set the "esp" flag for the ESP System Partition (#768788).
- Warn the user if we've booted in UEFI mode but we seem to have
only non-UEFI existing OS installations - give them the option
to switch the installer to non-UEFI mode from this point
forwards so they don't break potential dual-boot setup (#763127).
- Force umask for /boot/efi in mount options (#770033).
- Only display "Force UEFI installation" dialog for x86 (#773311).
* partman-md: Fix mdadm.conf generation (#763073).
* win32-loader:
- Disable "Download Debian GNU/kFreeBSD as stable" as this won't
be possible in jessie.
- Drop now-redundant desktop selection (#762478).
- Avoid dll dependency issues (#772898).


Hardware support changes
========================

* debian-installer:
- Add hd-media support for the armhf platform.
- Add scsi-modules to the cdrom flavour on ppc64el to be able to
access the CD-ROM drive.
- Add grub.cfg to x86 netboot mini.iso for use on EFI systems
(#762618).
- Add virtio-modules udebs to more arm images.
- Provide a PXE bootable grub.efi in the netboot flavour for amd64
and arm64.
* linux:
- [armhf] Add udeb modules to support video and keyboard for imx6
(#770635).
- [i386] Rename 486 flavour to 586 for udebs (#768288).
- [armhf] add chipidea usb host driver to usb-modules for i.MX6.
- [armhf] Add mtd-modules udeb.
- [armhf] Add Exynos5 disk/usb/nic modules to udebs.
- [armhf] Backport BananaPi device tree files (#763897).
- udeb: Add pata_rdc to pata-modules (#633128).
* partman-base: Improve detection of bootloader area, for Freescale
and AM33XX systems (770666).
* u-boot:
- [armhf] Add Bananapi target.
- Enable A10-OLinuXino-Lime, A20-OLinuXino-LIME, Cubieboard2,
and Cubieboard2_FEL targets (#762383).
- Disable efikamx and efikasb targets.
- Add nitrogen6q support to u-boot-imx.
- Add support for the Arndale board (#763186).
- Build FEL variants for all sunxi platforms.


Localization status
===================

* 75 languages are supported in this release.
* Full translation for 19 of them.


Known bugs in this release
==========================

* There seems to be no known major bug as of yet.

The errata page[2] will be updated if needed.


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[3].


Thanks
======

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

1. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
2. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
3. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer

  Debian 8 Installer RC 1 release