Cyril Brulebois has announced the availability of the release candidate for the Debian 12 Bookworm installer.

Debian Installer Bookworm RC 1 release

The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the first release candidate of the installer for Debian 12 "Bookworm".


Improvements in this release
============================

* debian-cd:
- Use hard links instead of symlinks for firmware packages (#1031696).
- Delete loadlin support entirely.
* debian-installer:
- Refresh help screen with minimum disk size for installation and better documentation links (#1033193).
* debian-installer-utils:
- Include xterm terminfo entry on all architectures, fixing nano issues in the graphical installer (#1026027).
* grub-installer:
- Basic heuristic for force-efi-extra-removable question.
- Add question for running grub-install with --no-nvram, using similar logic.
* hw-detect:
- Deduplicate the list of requested firmware files, not just the list of requesting modules (#1031631).
- Implement microcode support when /proc/cpuinfo contains a vendor_id field, with one of the following values (#1029804):
+ Install amd64-microcode on AuthenticAMD.
+ Install intel-microcode on GenuineIntel.
+ Enable non-free-firmware accordingly.
+ Perform installation via finish-install, making sure apt-setup has been configured, and using apt-install for dependency resolution.
- Optimize firmware package installation: process dpkg triggers once, after all packages have been installed, leading to a single update-initramfs call.
- Fix condition around moutmedia calls (#1032377).
- Fix files removal for non-accepted firmware packages (#1032377).
- Add a special case for the mhi module (#1032140), using holders information (e.g. ath11k_pci and qrtr_mhi for some Atheros wireless cards).
- Fix dmesg timestamp management.
- Fix package name extraction when removing a firmware package (e.g. it failed to install because it was corrupted).
- Build /var/log/firmware-summary as a 3-column summary of firmware (and microcode) packages getting installed (#1029849).
- Fix removal of temporary files in /target after installing firmware packages (#1033035).
- Determine the package name by using the Package field instead of trusting the filename when installing firmware packages (#1033035).
- Make sure not to include the possible -n option when setting the IFACES variables in check-missing-firmware (#1033035).
* installation-report:
- Store firmware information in /var/log/installer/firmware-summary (#1033325). See the 2.87 changelog entry for details.
- Include firmware-summary in installation reports.
* localechooser:
- Remove AN from country list; move CW to Caribbean region.

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

* debian-installer:
- Enable sound modules and speakup on arm64 gtk images.
* linux:
- Fix reloading mt7921e module after deploying firmware files (#1029116).
- Add michael_mic to crypto-modules, for ath11k and others (#1032140).
- Add qrtr_mhi to nic-wireless, for ath11k (#1032140).
- Add DRM ast driver to fb-modules on ppc64el (#990016).
- Add sound and speakup udebs on arm64 and armhf (#1031289).

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

* 78 languages are supported in this release.
* Full translation for 41 of them.

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

* Encrypted LVM might fail on low memory systems (#1028250).
* Broken “Guided - use entire disk and set up LVM” partitioning in UEFI mode (#1033913).

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. Installation images, 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. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
2. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
3. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer

Cheers,
--
Cyril Brulebois