news 28 Posted April 28, 2017 Hey folks, It's been a while since I gave an update on what's been going on with the official images we're publishing in Debian. Now that we're getting close to the Stretch release, this seems like a good time! Since we released Jessie, there have been quite a number of changes in the images that we're making... Installer images - CDs almost gone ================================== We used to make large sets of CDs, containing as much of the Debian archive as would fit. These sets were *huge*, and evidence over the years suggested they were rarely (if ever) used. Just about all current computers will use DVDs just as well as CDs, and they are much more convenient. Accordingly, we have now stopped making CD sets. Full disc sets are still produced in DVD-sized images (for all architectures), and in Blu-Ray (BD) and dual-layer Blu-Ray (DLBD) images for amd64 and i386. We also used to make single CD images targeting specific desktop environments (KDE, XFCE, LXDE, etc.) For a number of releases, these have been becoming less and less useful: the single CD was just too small to include a sensible set of packages for the common desktop environments. There was another reason for these images - the lack of a choice of desktop environment directly inside the installer itself. That was fixed some time ago, thankfully. So, we've dropped (almost) all of these image types too. The only CD-sized installer images that are still made and published are the "netinst" images and a single CD image configured to install XFCE, chosen as the most popular of the lighter desktops that would fit. See http://get.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/ for a current set of testing images; the same sets of images will be released with Stretch. Live images - now including UEFI support ======================================== After a hiatus, weekly builds of live images for testing are now happening again. These cover amd64 and i386, and there is a separate image for each of the common desktop environments. Thanks to great work by Neil Williams, Iain Learmonth and Ana Custura on new tools (vmdebootstrap and live-wraper), these also include support for UEFI booting as a new feature. Please help test the images and give feedback: http://get.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-live-builds/ Cloud images - now with openstack on arm64 ========================================== Jessie was the first Debian release with official cloud images for Openstack. We've continued to work on the tools to build those images. Alongside the existing amd64 version, we've now also added arm64 too. Check them out at: http://get.debian.org/cdimage/openstack/ We're still working on building additional official Debian Cloud images for other cloud platforms - watch this space for more announcements on that front soon... UNOFFICIAL images including non-free firmware ============================================= Although we really don't like having to do so, we also build variants of some our images that include non-free firmware. These images are designed to help support our users stuck with awkward hardware that won't work without such firmware - see https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for more details in case you're in this unfortunate situation. We're building: * live images including non-free firmware * netinst installer images including non-free firmware * (new) single DVD-sized installer images including non-free firmware These images can be found under: http://get.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ Finally - website work on image download pages ============================================== I've been working on solving https://bugs.debian.org/819664 for a while - I want to provide a much cleaner, clearer set of pages telling users how to obtain and use the various images we're making. It's been slow work, but I'm making progress and I'm hoping to have this ready for Stretch too. More updates soon! -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve ( -at -) einval.com "I can't ever sleep on planes ... call it irrational if you like, but I'm afraid I'll miss my stop" -- Vivek Das Mohapatra Share this post Link to post
