The eighth Alpha build is now ready for public testing

Nov 13, 2016 22:20 GMT  ·  By

Debian developer Cyril Brulebois was pleased to announce this past weekend the release and immediate availability of the eighth Alpha development snapshot of the Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" installer.

It's been four long months since Alpha 7 of the Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" Installer hit the testing channels back in July, but the wait was worth it as the Alpha 8 release adds a huge number of changes, starting with initial support for the GNU Screen terminal multiplexer and lots of debootstrap fixes, which now defaults to merged-/usr.

"debootstrap now defaults to merged-/usr, that is with /bin, /sbin, /lib* being symlinks to their counterpart in /usr (more details on: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/09/msg00269.html)," wrote Cyril Brulebois in the mailing list announcement, where he states that default debootstrap mirror was switched to deb.debian.org.

However, debootstrap also received support for package indices compressed with the very popular XZ method, as well as support for downloading and validating InRelease files. It also looks like the installation guide was updated with support for the MIPS64el architecture, but the PowerPC (PPC) and GNU/kFreeBSD ones were removed.

HumanWare USB ID now supported in BRLTTY

Among other interesting changes that landed in the Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" installer, we can mention that the BRLTTY daemon received support for the HumanWare USB ID, there's support for ARMhf EFI systems, and the Linux 4.7 kernel series is now supported instead of Linux 4.6, but the branch reached end of life last month.

Support for the OrangePi Plus open-source single-board computer is also there, along with many improvements for ARM64 (AArch64), Armel, and ARMhf platforms. The u-boot targets for the BeagleBoard-X15 and Firefly-RK3288 platform were updated as well, and there's better boot support for the HP MV2120 Media Vault.

A list of all the changes implemented in the Alpha 8 release of the Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" installer is attached below for the tech-savvy reader. In the meantime, you can download the sources and take the new release for a test drive if you're brave enough or an early adopter. Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" could be released in early spring 2017.

Debian Stretch Alpha 8 Changes