Yesterday, the Debian team announced the first Alpha release of the Installer for Debian 11, codenamed “Bullseye.”
Debian originally announced their upcoming Debian 11 Bullseye, the next major Debian release, in July of this year at the 20th annual DebConf19 conference in Brazil. Development on Debian 11 began months ago.
Yesterday’s announcement of the Installer’s Alpha release is the first news we’ve had from the Debian Development team since DebConf19.
New in Debian 11 “Bullseye” Alpha 1
Freelance Debian Consultant Cyril Brulebois, on behalf of the Debian release team announced:
One of the significant changes in Debian 11’s first alpha release is the replacing of “CD/CD-ROM” with “installation media.”
“It’s high time we started doing this. Many components were updated, replacing ‘CD/CD-ROM’ with ‘installation media.’ Such changes are not documented individually below. That also explains why many languages are not fully translated in this alpha release.”
Other major changes in the Debian 11 Installer Alpha 1 include:
- DTB support for Rasberry Pi Compute Module 3
- Olimex A20-OLinuXino-Lime2-EMMC single-board computer support
- virtio-GPU support for VM instances graphical output
- Improved support for HiDPI display on EFI computers in netboot images
- A new GRUB2 probe module to signed UEFI images
- DocBook XML 4.5 received more documentation transition
- When virtualization is detected, the ability to install virtualization related packages is enabled
Tweaks and modifications to the Linux kernel image also continue during Debian 11, with several modules being affected. These include thermal_sys, pl330, physmap, ic2-rk3x, OLPC AP-SP keyboard, atmel_mxt_ts, and rockship-io-domain.
Removed in the alpha installer also are the images for HP Media Vault mv2120, QNAP TS011x/TS-21x/HS-21x, QNAP TS-41x/TS-42x devices mainly in response to size problems with the Linux kernel.
As one would expect, the Debian Development Team continues the removal of deprecated Python 2 packages for the final Debian 11 release.
There are, of course, various other changes in the Installer Alpha release not listed here. For a detailed list, please see the official mailing list announcement from the Debian Installer team.
The Debian Project continues the removal of the deprecated Python 2 packages for the final Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” operating system series
Conclusion
The release of the Alpha installer is but the first step in a long journey on which the Debian 11 Development Team is traversing. Debian 11 is not projected for official release until well into 2021.
Debian enthusiasts wishing to test the Bullseye Installer Alpha 1 may download it here.
1 comment
Hello Travis
First thanks for this review
Please could you explain the sentence I put below, I fear I may understand it correctly
My concern is that I have to work in a Live Medium Environment, I typically boot from a DVD iso (Emmabuntu DE4 Alpha X… Debian Edition) and cannot use USB to boot for security reasons (logs for instance). So will the below prevent me from booting from DVD/CD medium ??
Thank you
” One of the significant changes in Debian 11’s first alpha release is the replacing of “CD/CD-ROM” with “installation media.”
“It’s high time we started doing this. Many components were updated, replacing ‘CD/CD-ROM’ with ‘installation media.’ Such changes are not documented individually below. That also explains why many languages are not fully translated in this alpha release.””