The Debian Installer team has announced the availability of the second release candidate for Debian 13 "Trixie". The release features enhancements in apt-setup, busybox, choose-mirror, debian-cd, debian-installer, grub-installer, partman-crypto, rescue, rootskel-gtk, systemd-boot-installer, and hardware support. The latest release accommodates 78 languages, with complete translations available for 31 of them. This release is free of known major bugs; however, the Debian Installer team welcomes feedback to enhance and refine the installer. Installation images and other essential resources can be found on the Debian Installer website.

Debian Installer Trixie RC 2

The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the second release candidate of the installer for Debian 13 "Trixie".

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Improvements in this release

* apt-setup:
- Disable cdrom sources if installation medium is not a real CD (USB stick, SD card, ISO file), because APT cannot use it after the installation (#1102140, #1103650).
- Allow preseeding extra options for the local sources.list lines.
* busybox:
- Remove wget applet (#1107392).
* choose-mirror:
- Update Mirrors.masterlist.
* debian-cd:
- Record which firmware packages are embedded in the modified initrds
(#1106005).
- Make sure systemd-cryptsetup is available (#1092977).
* debian-installer:
- Bump Linux kernel ABI to 6.12.33+deb13.
- Fix Japanese rendering support, with many thanks to Kentaro HAYASHI:
add fonts-motoya-l-cedar-udeb to gtk-common (#1037256).
- Stop setting DPKG_UNPACK_OPTIONS = --force-overwrite (#1107392).
- Improve support for speech synthesis, embedding some i915-related modules on amd64, for graphical targets.
* grub-installer:
- Set force-efi-extra-removable to "true" by default in some cases, which should help in cases where EFI firmware does not manage EFI boot variables properly.
* partman-crypto:
- Install systemd-cryptsetup alongside cryptsetup-initramfs. While the latter is sufficient if one picks guided partitioning with an encrypted LVM layout, other use cases might require the former, originally bundled together within systemd (#1092977).
* rescue:
- Add suport for rescuing btrfs systems installed via the Calamares installer found on Debian Live images.
* rootskel-gtk:
- Adapt installer banner image to the most recent iteration of the Ceratopsian theme.
- Fix Japanese rendering support by switching from VL Gothic to MotoyaLCedar, also bumping font size (#1037256).
* systemd-boot-installer:
- Install shim-signed on amd64/arm64 to enable Secure Boot.

Hardware support changes

* console-setup:
- Add support for Apple MTP keyboard and Apple SPI Keyboard, as found on ARM-based Apple laptops like M1 MacBook Pro and M2 MacBook Air (#1108360).
* linux:
- [amd64] Add drivers/pinctrl/intel to kernel-image udeb (#1106658).

Localization status

* 78 languages are supported in this release.
* Full translation for 31 of them.

Known bugs in this release

* There seems to be no known major bug as of yet.

See the errata[2] 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[3].

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/devel/debian-installer/errata
3. 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