http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
March 15th, 2006
The Debian Installer team is proud to announce the second beta release of the installer for Debian GNU/Linux Etch.
Improvements in this release of the installer include:
* base-config has been pensioned off: the installation is now done entirely before the reboot. Finally the entire Debian package installation process runs behind a user-friendly progress bar.
* This new version of the installer uses and installs the 2.6.15 kernel. As a consequence the installer now uses udev instead of discover for hardware detection for 2.6 based installs and supports the initramfs-tools and yaird initrd generators.
* Installations on S/390 are again supported.
* In addition to the architectures that had already made the switch, 2.6 is now the default kernel for alpha, ia64 and Netwinder/CATS (arm).
* The installer will set up /etc/apt/sources.list for the installed system using the codename (etch) rather than the suite (testing) of the release being installed.
* The installed system is set up to use UTF-8 encoding by default.
* For some architectures it is now possible to automatically partition a disk using logical volume management (LVM). Other architectures are expected to be added later.
* Automatically selects gpt disklabel instead of msdos disklabel for disks larger than 2 TB.
* Option to cancel some operations (e.g. DHCP configuration).
* Initial support for Broadcom BCM947XX and Linksys NSLU2 added.
* Improved rescue mode.
* Added the following languages: Icelandic and Kazakh.