The Debian team has decided to upgrade the Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 2 and the project is now using Linux kernel 4.1, an upgrade from the previous 4.0 branch.

The Debian installer is the first piece of software that usually pops up when a new development cycle is started, and it's not something that regular users get. On the other hand, following its progression shows us what's happening on the bleeding edge of Debian and some of the features and major changes that we are going to see in the coming years.

Debian developers have been speeding up the process, and it's likely that Debian 9.0 will be here much sooner than we previously expected it to be, but we all know that Debian doesn't have any kind of launch date attached to it. They do have some goal, which they rarely meet, but it's also the thing that makes Debian great. The developers don't rush anything out the gate unless it's ready, and it's especially important since a lot of other OSes are based on this distro.

Debian 9.0 "Stretch" is slowly taking shape

It will be a while until we have Debian 9.0 in a usable shape, but until then we can see some of the new packages that are being introduced in the bleeding edge version of the OS.

"The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the second alpha release of the installer for Debian 9 'Stretch,' live from the DebConf Birthday Party in Heidelberg, Germany! The biggest change in this release is the update of the linux kernel, from the 4.0 series to the 4.1 one," said Cyril Brulebois from the Debian installer team.

According to the changelog, a missing "Rescue" menu in "Advanced options" for multi-arch image has been added, ttf-cjk-compact-udeb has been replaced with fonts-android-udeb, DHCP is now used by default on LaCie devices, support for Tegra Jetson TK-1 has been added, and a number of other improvements have been made.

As always, you can download the Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 2 from Softpedia.