The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the second 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 =

* Linux kernel updated to 2.6.32-27 on amd64, i386, powerpc, mipsel,
hppa, sparc, s390 and ia64;
* Partition detection improved: Windows Vista, Windows Recovery
Environment (#589676) and MINIX (#592924);
* Improved OS detection in grub-installer (#560027, #567980, #593460);
* ZFS support (#595152);
* Fixed hibernation with swap on LVM (#568877);
* Fixed, on os-prober, data corruption if filesystem is being used by
another host (#599203, #556739);
* Fixed overwite mbr of installation medium (#579519)
* Improved USB cd-rom devices scan (#597553);
* Updated minimal memory values for lowmem installations;
* Support added for:
* more USB keyboards (hid-monterey, hid-sunplus) (#588742, #603318);
* network on IBM QS20 Cell blade (spidernet) (#602326);
* input modules on sparc (#602740);
* sl82c105 support (ide cdrom) to PowerPC (#603533);
* Localization:
* 67 languages activated (included English)
* For 50 of these, translation is 100% complete

= Behavioral changes in this release =

* Bump minimum root partition size in the standard task and leave room
for and extra kernel package in later life of the machine (#528914);
* Expand the small gap we leave at the end of the disk to avoid MD
superblock ambiguity;
* enabled accessibility in potentially-installed gdm when speakup was
used during installation.

= 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].

== 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