XPost: linux.debian.maint.boot

The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the third
release candidate of the installer for Debian 11 "Bullseye".

Let's start with some news regarding firmware support (#989863):
- We don't want to leave users in the dark if the installed system
doesn't boot correctly (e.g. black screen, garbled display). We
mentioned that possibility in the installation guide[2], and listed
a few workarounds[3] that might help log in anyway.
- We also documented an isenkram-based procedure[3] which lets users
detect and fix missing firmware on their systems, in an automated
fashion. Of course, one has to weigh the pros and cons of using
that tool since it's very likely that it will need to install
non-free packages.

In addition to those documentation efforts, the non-free installer
images that include firmware packages[4] have been improved so that
they can anticipate the need for firmware in the installed system
(e.g. firmware for AMD or Nvidia graphics cards, or newer generations
of Intel audio hardware).


Improvements in this release
============================

* cdrom-detect:
- Tell hw-detect not to warn and prompt about missing firmware:
finding and mounting the ISO image happens so early that nothing
could be done about missing firmware at this stage anyway
(#991587).
* hw-detect:
- Add support for installing additional firmware packages if items
in the udev database match some modalias-based patterns, based
on DEP-11 metadata (#989863).
- Make sure to reload the appropriate kernel module after having
injected some firmware: there might be some discrepancy as can
be seen with rtw_8821ce vs. rtw88_8821ce (#973733).
- Improve firmware-related logging by removing obsolete code,
removing duplicates, adjusting format strings.
- Add support for ignoring some particular firmware files that
might be neither actually required, nor packaged; start with
iwl-debug-yoyo.bin, requested by iwlwifi (#969264, #966218).
- Make it possible for callers to disable warning and prompting
about missing firmware.
* debian-cd:
- Add brltty and espeakup to all images from netinst up (#678065).
- Generate firmware metadata from AppStream/DEP-11 metadata, and
use it when building a media tree (#989863).
* debian-installer:
- Bump Linux kernel ABI to 5.10.0-8.
* pcmciautils:
- Update /etc/pcmciautils/ dir to /etc/pcmcia/ in udeb (#980271).
* udpkg:
- Add locking for the status file, avoiding failures on the first
installation step when multiple consoles are involved (#987368).


Hardware support changes
========================

* linux:
- arm64: Add pwm-rockchip to fb-modules udeb.
- arm64: Add fusb302, tcpm and typec to usb-modules udeb.
- armhf: Fix network detection on various i.MX6 boards (#982270).
- armhf: Add mdio-aspeed to nic-modules (#991262).
- s390x: Fix console name to match device (#961056).


Localization status
===================

* 78 languages are supported in this release.
* Full translation for 36 of them.


Known bugs in this release
==========================

* No known major bugs yet.

See the errata[5] for details and a full list of known issues.


Feedback for this release
=========================

We need your help to find bugs and further improve the installer, so
please try it. Installation images, and everything else you will need
are available at our web site[6].


Thanks
======

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


1. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
2. https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/ch02s02
3. https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/ch06s04#completing-installed-system
4. https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/
5. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
6. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer


Cheers,
--
Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) <https://debamax.com/>
D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant

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