The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the first beta
release of the installer for Debian GNU/Linux Squeeze.

This release is dedicated to Frans Pop, who worked as Debian Installer
Release Manager for several years. Even after he stepped out from this
responsibility in 2007, Frans continued to be heavily involved in
several aspects of D-I until he passed away.

Frans played a key role in ensuring that D-I was constantly maintained
at the high quality level that had been set by its original
developers. In particular, Frans kept the Installation Guide in very
good shape throughout the period that he was involved in D-I.

Frans' name will remain associated with Debian Installer, and his loss
is deeply regretted by Debian Installer developers, contributors and
translators.

= Improvements in this release of the installer =

* Auto-selection of kernel for PlayStation 3;
* Recovery partitions for Microsoft Windows are properly detected;
* Linux kernel updated to 2.6.32;
* GNU Parted updated to 2.2;
* Support for new platforms has been added:
* Marvell GuruPlug
* Marvell OpenRD-Ultimate
* HP t5325 Thin Client (partial support)
* Support for isohybrid images when using cdrom-detect/try-usb.
* Installer now look for firmware .debs on the installation media, in a
firmware/ directory, allowing PXE images and CDs to be created with
firmware .debs included.
* Hardware specific debian packages are installed automatically using
discover-pkginstall from the discover package.
* Localization:
* added Kannada, Persian and Telugu languages (Asturian and Kazakh
were added in alpha1, and Estonian was reactivated in alpha1)
* added Thai in the console-based installer
* drop support for Wolof and Welsh, because of the lack of updates
for these languages since the release of lenny.
* The final count of supported languages for this release is 67
(including English).

= Behavioral changes in this release =

* Installer now uses udhcpc as DHCP client, except on kFreeBSD images.
* Support for the reiserfs file system is no longer included by
default. To use reiserfs for a new system, select 'partman-reiserfs'
in the selection dialog for optional installer components (at medium
or low priority) or boot the installer with
'modules?=partman-reiserfs'.
* No longer creates the /cdrom compatibility symlink to
/media/cdrom. /cdrom was deprecated in Etch.

= Known issues in this release =

See the errata[2] for details and a full list of known issues.

= 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 you else you
will need are available at our web site[3].

== Win32-Loader ==

The i386 and amd64 CDs include a Windows executable (setup.exe - hence
will get autorun'ed) which job is to get the user from a running
Windows(TM) to a d-i environment, without breaking the Windows boot. This
executable (in the Debian "win32-loader" package) installs the d-i
initrd and a grub bootloader on the "boot disk" of Windows(TM). After
reboot, the install goes on from that image and uses the material on the
CD for the install.

As this binary is not meant to be launched in a Debian environment (but
within Windows), it has not necessarily been well tested: it would
really benefit from being launched in all Windows versions for all
languages!

== Thanks ==

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

1. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
2. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
3. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer

- --
Otavio Salvador
on behalf of Debian Installer Team