The Debian Project has released the second Release Candidate (RC2) of the Debian Installer for the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 13 “Trixie,” which is set to roll out in late June or early/mid July 2025. This update introduces key enhancements, including the ability to rescue Btrfs systems that were installed using the Calamares installer.
In addition to this feature, the Trixie RC2 release also integrates systemd-cryptsetup alongside cryptsetup-initramfs, enabling installation on both AMD64 and ARM64 systems to facilitate Secure Boot. Notably, it incorporates support for Apple MTP and SPI keyboards, accommodating users of ARM-based devices such as the M1 MacBook Pro and M2 MacBook Air.
The installer has also seen improvements with the addition of the drivers/pinctrl/intel to kernel-image udeb, and a mechanism has been put in place to ensure that systemd-cryptsetup is accessible. Furthermore, it allows for the pre-setting of extra options within local sources.list lines.
Other changes include the automatic disabling of cdrom sources when the installation medium isn’t a physical CD (like a USB stick or ISO file), enhanced monitoring of firmware packages embedded in modified initrds, and improvements aimed at speech synthesis for graphical interfaces. The default setting for force-efi-extra-removable is now “true” in certain scenarios to address issues with EFI firmware management.
Moreover, the RC2 release updates Japanese rendering support by transitioning from VL Gothic to MotoyaLCedar, also bumping the Linux kernel ABI to 6.12.33+deb13. This version of the installer no longer uses the wget applet from BusyBox and has updated the installer banner to align with the latest iteration of the Ceratopsian theme.
For those keen to test this pre-release version, it’s crucial to remember that it’s not suitable for use in production environments. More details about the features and changes in Debian Installer Trixie RC2 can be found on the official website.