soft freeze

Debian 11 (Bullseye) went into "Milestone 2 - Soft Freeze" status this month. The plan for Bullseye is a little bit different than for Buster.

The freeze timeline for Debian Buster:

* 2019-01-12 - Transition freeze
* 2019-02-12 - Soft-freeze
* 2019-03-12 - Full-freeze

(from: https://release.debian.org/buster/freeze_policy.html)

The freeze timeline for Debian Bullseye:

* 2021-01-12 - Milestone 1 - Transition and (build-)essential Freeze
* 2021-02-12 - Milestone 2 - Soft Freeze
* 2021-03-12 - Milestone 3 - Hard Freeze - for key packages and packages without autopkgtests
* TBA - Milestone 4 - Full Freeze

(from: https://release.debian.org/bullseye/freeze_policy.html)


I downloaded the Debian Bullseye GNOME live (w/ non-free firmware) image from https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/, put it on a flash drive, and booted into it. Things looked okay, so I decided to do an installation. From the Activities overview, there was an "Install Debian" icon, so I clicked on that. It started up the Calamares installer. The resulting system was quite loaded with apps and packages -- too "heavy" for my tastes, although the approach, with Calamares, would work out fine for many users, I'm sure.

I prefer a network installation for Debian, so I downloaded the firmware-testing-amd64-netinst.iso image from here and reinstalled using Debian's Graphical Installer. This gave me a lot more control over what went in.

It's best if users wait for the Debian Stable release rather than jumping in during "Testing" status, but there shouldn't be any major issues with Bullseye at this point. Things seem fine here, so far.