The Debian installer team has released a first alpha version of the new installer for Debian 8 (Jessie)

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


Improvements in this release of the installer
=============================================

* Many components were updated during the beginning of the Jessie
release cycle, so a full list of changes is not included in this
announcement.
* apt-setup: Avoid hang due to interactive apt-cdrom (#740673).
* grub-installer: Support menu selection of GRUB boot disk (#706112).


Behavorial changes in this release
==================================

* Xfce is the default desktop environment for the time being. Quoting
tasksel's changelog: "this will be re-evaluated in August 2014, and
may change again before Jessie is released".
* It's still possible to select an alternative desktop to install at
the boot prompt; installation images are available for the various
major desktop environments as usual.


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

* The ia64 architecture has been removed from the archive, and is no
longer supported.
* The s390 architecture has been replaced with the s390x architecture.
* It wasn't possible to build the installer for sparc (#731806), so
no installation images are available for this architecture. Its
future as an official port is being evaluated by the release team.
* The Linux kernel has been updated from 3.2 to 3.13.
* The FreeBSD kernel has been updated from 9.0 to 9.2.
* armel: The iop32x flavour has been dropped.
* armhf: The armmp flavour has been added; it covers both mx5 and
vexpress.
* mipsel: The cobalt flavour has been dropped.
* s390x: The tape flavour has been dropped.


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

* Firmware handling: udev no longer reports missing firmware
(#725714), and patches for the kernel need polishing before we are
able to restore support for loading missing firmware.
* Even if accessibility technologies are used during the installation
process, they might not be automatically enabled within the
installed system.
* fontconfig-udeb: Broken fonts in graphical shell (#739011).

See the errata[2] 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[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 8.0 Installer Alpha 1