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The Debian Project released today the first alpha development version of the installer for the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” operating system series, due for release next year.
Work on Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” kicked off a few months ago, but now there’s also an official installer for early adopters and Linux/Debian enthusiasts who want a taste of the new features and improvements.
The Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” installer comes with support for the latest Linux 5.19 kernel series and introduces various hardware improvements, starting with the detection of the Windows 11 operating system if you plan on dual booting Debian GNU/Linux and Windows on the same machine.
Support for new ARM devices has been added as well, including the Banana Pi BPI M2 Ultra, ODROID-C4, ODROID-HC4, ODROID-N2, and ODROID-N2+ single-board computers, the Librem 5r4 (Evergreen) Linux smartphone from Purism, as well as the MNT Reform Version 2 modular laptop.
New RISC-V devices are supported as well, including the SiFive HiFive Unmatched and BeagleV Starlight Beta, as well as the Microchip PolarFire-SoC Icicle Kit, a low-cost development platform that enables evaluation of the 5-core Linux capable RISC-V microprocessor subsystem.
Among other noteworthy changes implemented in the installer for Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm,” there’s screen reader support enabled by default for the Cinnamon desktop environment, automatic launching of speech synthesis, easier detection of multipath devices, and support for multiple initrd paths.
The installer also adds support for the source-based Exherbo Linux distribution, detection of NTFS3 drivers for Linux kernels 5.15 or later (in addition to NTFS and NTFS-3G), and detection of Alpine Linux’s initramfs files. Another interesting change is that the installer no longer offers experimental dmraid support.
My tech-savvy readers can find extra details about the changes that landed in this first alpha version of the installer for Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” in the mailing list announcement published earlier today by Cyril Brulebois. The final release of Debian Bookworm is expected in summer 2023.
Image credits: Debian Project
Last updated 2 years ago
