## page was renamed from DebianInstaller/ReleaseAnnounce
''This page is used to prepare the next release announcement to be sent to debian-boot and debian-devel-announce mailing lists.''

{{{#!wiki warning
'''Caution!'''

This announce has now been [[https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/05/msg00003.html|published]]. If something has to be updated, that's on the website (webwml repository).
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= Title: Debian Installer Wheezy Alpha1 release =
The Debian Installer [[http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team|team]] is pleased to announce the first alpha release of the installer for Debian Wheezy.

= Improvements in this release of the installer =

 * Network configuration:
   * Add WPA support to installer (DebianBug:327309).
   * Improvements in link detection and DHCP configuration, which should improve reliability for systems with flaky network cards. (DebianBug:496647, DebianBug:414117, DebianBug:606515)
   * Release DHCP lease at the end of the install, to work around problems with non-RFC compliant DHCP servers. (DebianBug:610553)
   * The  requirements for hostnames have been clarified, and the parser  tightened up to avoid letting through some really dodgy names. (DebianBug:399071)
   * Added Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) support.
 * Linux Specific:
   * Kernel version has been updated to 3.2.16.
   * Default filesystem changed to ext4.
   * Allow Btrfs /boot partition (GRUB 2 and LILO).
   * Add support for Network Block Devices (NBD).
 * kFreeBSD Specific:
   * Kernel updated to version 8.3.
   * Option to use new 9.0 kernel during install.
   * Detect LVM devices.
 * Operating system probing:
   * Add detection for Windows 8, support for BSD systems, MeeGo, Linux From Scratch and Haiku on BeFS partitions.
   * Improve Windows and MS-DOS detection.
   * Fix Gentoo detection on OS probing.
 * Win32-loader:
   * Add PXE functionality (DebianBug:607417)
 * USB stick installs
   * Add choice of ISO image to use when multiple images are found on the installation medium (DebianBug: 564441). This includes a full rewrite of the state machine in the iso-scan component. This work was contributed by Frans Pop and Frédéric Boiteux
 * Translations:
   * New language supported: Uyghur

= Behavioral changes in this release =

 * Make sure to put "hda" into the CoLo config file instead of "sda" since CoLo only knows about the former. (DebianBug:614839)
 * Remove 5 second sleeps when debootstrap finds additional required dependencies. d-i just got that much faster.
 * Use SHA checksums.
 * Re-enable ZFS on kfreebsd-i386.
 * Allow stripped ZFS for root filesystem.
 * Mirror and RAID-Z support on ZFS filesystems.
 * Redesign ZFS pool management, new features include:
   * Support for pools with multiple physical devices;
   * Support for multiple filesystems within a ZFS pool;
   * Support for legacy filesystems using ZFS volumes (ZVOL);
   * Arbitrary names for ZFS pools, filesystems and ZVOLs;
 * Switch espeakup language around language selection (DebianBug:630477).

= Hardware support changes =

 * Support AMD CPU family 20. (LP: #676838)
 * Add support for:
   * Buffalo Linkstation LiveV3 (LS-CHL). (DebianBug:612167)
   * Buffalo Linkstation Mini (LS-WSGL).
   * Toshiba AC100.
   * MX53 LOCO board.
   * OMAP4 Pandora.
   * armhf architecture;
   * Genesi Efika MX nettops and smarttops. (DebianBug:612376)

 * Blacklist snd-aoa to allow snd-powermac to work. (DebianBug:#606984)
 * Install mmc-modules if no disk is found, since some devices may not have hard drives, but SD slots instead. (DebianBug:593108)
 * Increase the number of attempts to detect new disk devices on some SCSI subsystems with long driver/disk initialization time. (DebianBug:611314)
 * Include ahci module for the QNAP TS-419P+. (DebianBug:613497)
 * Add niu network driver for sparc, needed by T2+ Sparc systems. (DebianBug:608516)
 * Recognize /dev/duart* as a serial console.

= Known issues in this release =

 * The prompt when installing GRUB mentions other operating systems (like Windows), but only Debian is actually offered after install (DebianBug:666750)
 * GRUB installation fails with RAID+LVM (DebianBug:662086)
 * Linux kernel installation fails on some x86 processors (686 without PAE) (DebianBug:672611)
 * mirror list might be slightly outdated; choose-mirror will be updated in a later release
 * missing fonts for Burmese, Tibetan, Dzongkha and Sinhala languages (DebianBug:672635)

See the [[http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata|errata]] for details and a full list of known issues will be updated soon.

= Not yet known issues in this release =

We do 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 [[http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer|web site]].

== Thanks ==

The Debian Installer team thanks everybody who has contributed to this release.

= Blockers for final release =

 * If you know any other please add it for review.

= 7.0.0 targeted bugs =

 * If you know any other please add it for review.

= Good to have fixed =

 * If you know any other please add it for review.