First beta for Debian 7.0's installation media

A first beta version of the installation media for Debian 7.0 (Wheezy) has been made available by the Debian Installer developers for download. Since the release of the alpha version, a number of bug fixes and minor improvements have been made to the installer and various features updated.

Debian calls x86-64 "AMD64" in its repositories. The AMD64 version of Debian 7.0 includes the beta installer as part of 11 DVD ISO images. For installation not all are needed and, as usual, ISO images for network installation are also available which are less than 200MB in size and only install the required components over the network.

The Debian Installer page refers to tar archives with firmware files that are not installed by default because of Debian's own policies; however, for some modern hardware, these files are essential. A list of known problems with the installation media is available on an errata page.

A week ago the Debian developers had given a status report for Wheezy which noted more that 600 "show stopper" category errors in the distribution. That number of errors suggests it is very unlikely that there will be a release of Debian 7.0 this year. As part of the status report, the developers also announced that Wheezy's successor, Debian 8.0, now has an official name, Jessie. In line with naming Debian releases after Toy Story characters, Jessie is the Yodeling Cowgirl in the second and third parts of the trilogy.

(djwm)