The Debian Project has announced today the availability for public testing of the second alpha version of the Debian Installer for the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” series, suggesting that the final version will ship with the long-term supported Linux 6.1 kernel.
With three to four months to go until Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” is released, the development team is preparing the Debian Installer with new features and improvements. The biggest changes so far are the inclusion of non-free firmware by default and the switch to the Linux 6.1 LTS kernel in the official ISO images.
This of course is very good news for fans of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system aiming to install the Bookworkm series this summer. The addition of the non-free firmware packages and the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel, which will receive updates until December 2026, will certainly make new installations very tempting.
We will include non-free firmware packages from the non-free-firmware section of the Debian archive in our official images (installer images and live images). Firmware binaries will be included as normal and enabled by default where the system deems them required, but where possible we will include ways for users to disable them at boot (boot menu option, kernel command line, etc.) ”, reports the Debian Project.
The upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” release also promises Windows 11 detection for dual-boot installations, support for all amd64 installation images to boot on amd64 machines using 32-bit UEFI firmware without the need for the multi-arch installer, netboot images for ChromeOS devices and EFI zboot support on AArch64 (ARM64).
