The second beta release of the Debian 8 installer is now available

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


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

* Gnome is now the default desktop environment on Linux again.
* A list of desktop environments is displayed in tasksel, making it
easy to install another desktop environment (or several of them).
Unfortunately that is currently a bit underdocumented (#764026).
* Preliminary support for the arm64 and ppc64el architectures has been
added.


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

* brltty: Append the configuration inherited from d-i to the end of
brltty.conf instead of overwriting it (which was thus losing the
documentation for the user).
* brltty: Enable accessibility in XFCE, LXDE and MATE sessions too.
* busybox: Add support for /32 subnets in udhcpc script (#652573).
* choose-mirror: Strip off any scheme part found at the start of
mirror/*/hostname (#706191).
* console-setup: Correct default keymap for South Korea (#756052).
* console-setup: Use nepali keymap for Nepali and Tharu by default.
* debian-installer:
- Fix the PXE boot images built for kfreebsd, hurd (#759686).
- Add fonts-lohit-guru-udeb to gtk images, fixing rendering for
Punjabi (#761573).
- Remove desktop selection from syslinux; now available in
tasksel.
- Keep Linux modules.builtin file in the initrd.
- Fix lib location and search path for syslinux >= 5 (#756275).
* fontconfig: Add conf.avail directory to the udeb, fixing broken
Monospace font in graphical installer (#739011).
* hw-detect: Improve driver injection disk support.
* hw-detect: Move firmware installation code to pre-pkgsel.d
* hw-detect: Correct detection of Macs needing to blacklist snd-aoa
modules (#650588).
* iso-scan: Do not error out when searching in folders with
shell-special characters in their name (#640789).
* lowmem: Update lowmem limits for linux-x86.
* lowmem: Make the / ramfs fill the whole memory again (#759336).
* netcfg: Do not kill_dhcp_client after setting the hostname and
domain, otherwise Linux udhcpc will stop renewing its lease, and on
other platforms dhclient will de-configure the network interface
(#757711, #757988).
* netcfg: Don't copy /etc/network/interfaces to /target if
netcfg/target_network_config=ifupdown (#709017).
* netcfg: Fix support for entering an ESSID manually, it was
previously getting ignored (#757478).
* preseed: Update auto-install/defaultroot for jessie.
* preseed: Always disable locale & keyboard question when auto is
enabled, even if no preseed file was given on boot, in case the dhcp
server provides it (#759290).
* rootskel: Update lowmem limit for gtk on linux-x86.
* rootskel: Use a tmpfs for some directories to avoid running out of
space in the fixed-size initrd on kfreebsd-* (#757985).
* rootskel-gtk: Update gtk-set-font to learn a new mapping (Lohit
Punjabi).


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

* libdebian-installer: arm64: Detect UEFI based systems as "efi"
subarch.
* libdebian-installer: Add ppc64 and ppc64el support.
* linux:
- Include preliminary support for arm64 and ppc64el.
- udeb: Add ccm, ctr to crypto-modules (#761902).
- [armhf] udeb: Add ehci-platform, ohci-platform and phy-sun4i-usb
to usb-modules (#761591).
- udeb: Add rsi_usb to nic-wireless-modules
- udeb: Add ath6kl_sdio, libertas_cs, libertas_sdio, mwifiex_sdio,
r8192u_usb, r8723au, rtl8188eu, rtl818x_pci, rtl8723be,
rtl8821ae, spectrum_cs to nic-wireless-modules.
- [armel/orion5x] udeb: Include mvmdio in nic-modules udeb.
- udeb: Add new sound drivers to sound-modules (#756998).


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.
* CD-ROM modules are missing on ppc64el, but the netboot flavour is
working correctly. This will be fixed in the next release.


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

--
Cyril Brulebois
on behalf of the Debian Installer Team

  Debian Installer Jessie Beta 2 Release