Debian 9844 Published by

Steve McIntyre from the Debian CD Images Team has published an update on the Debian Stretch images



It's been a while since I gave an update on what's been going on with
the official images we're publishing in Debian. Now that we're getting
close to the Stretch release, this seems like a good time!

Since we released Jessie, there have been quite a number of changes in
the images that we're making...

Installer images - CDs almost gone
==================================

We used to make large sets of CDs, containing as much of the Debian
archive as would fit. These sets were *huge*, and evidence over the
years suggested they were rarely (if ever) used. Just about all
current computers will use DVDs just as well as CDs, and they are much
more convenient. Accordingly, we have now stopped making CD sets. Full
disc sets are still produced in DVD-sized images (for all
architectures), and in Blu-Ray (BD) and dual-layer Blu-Ray (DLBD)
images for amd64 and i386.

We also used to make single CD images targeting specific desktop
environments (KDE, XFCE, LXDE, etc.) For a number of releases, these
have been becoming less and less useful: the single CD was just too
small to include a sensible set of packages for the common desktop
environments. There was another reason for these images - the lack of
a choice of desktop environment directly inside the installer
itself. That was fixed some time ago, thankfully. So, we've dropped
(almost) all of these image types too.

The only CD-sized installer images that are still made and published
are the "netinst" images and a single CD image configured to install
XFCE, chosen as the most popular of the lighter desktops that would
fit.

See

http://get.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/

for a current set of testing images; the same sets of images will be
released with Stretch.

Live images - now including UEFI support
========================================

After a hiatus, weekly builds of live images for testing are now
happening again. These cover amd64 and i386, and there is a separate
image for each of the common desktop environments. Thanks to great
work by Neil Williams, Iain Learmonth and Ana Custura on new tools
(vmdebootstrap and live-wraper), these also include support for UEFI
booting as a new feature. Please help test the images and give
feedback:

http://get.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-live-builds/

Cloud images - now with openstack on arm64
==========================================

Jessie was the first Debian release with official cloud images for
Openstack. We've continued to work on the tools to build those
images. Alongside the existing amd64 version, we've now also added
arm64 too. Check them out at:

http://get.debian.org/cdimage/openstack/

We're still working on building additional official Debian Cloud
images for other cloud platforms - watch this space for more
announcements on that front soon...

UNOFFICIAL images including non-free firmware
=============================================

Although we really don't like having to do so, we also build variants
of some our images that include non-free firmware. These images are
designed to help support our users stuck with awkward hardware that
won't work without such firmware - see

https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware

for more details in case you're in this unfortunate situation.

We're building:

* live images including non-free firmware
* netinst installer images including non-free firmware
* (new) single DVD-sized installer images including non-free firmware

These images can be found under:

http://get.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/

Finally - website work on image download pages
==============================================

I've been working on solving https://bugs.debian.org/819664 for a
while - I want to provide a much cleaner, clearer set of pages telling
users how to obtain and use the various images we're making. It's been
slow work, but I'm making progress and I'm hoping to have this ready
for Stretch too. More updates soon!
  Bits from the Debian CD Images Team