14 DAY TRIAL // The Debian Project released today the first alpha development build of the installer for their upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 11 "Bullseye" operating system series.
Unveiled earlier this year during the DebConf19 conference, Debian GNU/Linux 11 "Bullseye" will be the next major release of the acclaimed Linux-based operating system used by millions of computer users around the globe. It's development kicked off a few months ago, so now it's time to test drive the very first alpha build of the Debian Bullseye Installer.
"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," said Cyril Brulebois on behalf of the Debian release team.
Here's what's new in Debian Bullseye Installer Alpha 1
The first alpha build of the Debian Installer for the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 11 "Bullseye" operating system comes with improvements and better hardware support, among which we can mention DTB support for Rasperry Pi Compute Module 3, virtio-gpu support for graphical output in VM instances, and support for the Olimex A20-OLinuXino-Lime2-eMMC single board computer.
The Debian Bullseye Installer also comes with cryptsetup-initramfs instead of cryptsetup, improved support for HiDPI displays in the netboot images on EFI computers, more documentation transition to DocBook XML 4.5, new GRUB2 probe module to signed UEFI images, and the ability to install virtualization related packages when virtualization is detected.
The kernel image also received several modules, including i2c-rk3x, rockchip-io-domain, atmel_mxt_ts, OLPC AP-SP keyboard, pl330, physmap, and thermal_sys for better hardware support. Last but not least, the Debian Bullseye Installer alpha 1 removes the images for QNAP TS-11x/TS-21x/HS-21x, QNAP TS-41x/TS-42x, and HP Media Vault mv2120 devices due to size problems with the Linux kernel.
Of course, there are also a bunch of various other smaller changes, which you can study in this mailing list announcement. The Debian Project continues the removal of the deprecated Python 2 packages for the final Debian GNU/Linux 11 "Bullseye" operating system series, which is expected to hit the streets sometime in 2021. Until then, you can test the Debian Bullseye Installer Alpha 1 here.