# Release 23.05 (“Stoat”, 2023.05/??) {#sec-release-23.05}

Support is planned until the end of December 2023, handing over to 23.11.

## Highlights {#sec-release-23.05-highlights}

In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights:

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## New Services {#sec-release-23.05-new-services}

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## Backward Incompatibilities {#sec-release-23.05-incompatibilities}

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- `carnix` and `cratesIO` has been removed due to being unmaintained, use alternatives such as [naersk](https://github.com/nix-community/naersk) and [crate2nix](https://github.com/kolloch/crate2nix) instead.

- The EC2 image module no longer fetches instance metadata in stage-1. This results in a significantly smaller initramfs, since network drivers no longer need to be included, and faster boots, since metadata fetching can happen in parallel with startup of other services.
  This breaks services which rely on metadata being present by the time stage-2 is entered. Anything which reads EC2 metadata from `/etc/ec2-metadata` should now have an `after` dependency on `fetch-ec2-metadata.service`

- The EC2 image module previously detected and automatically mounted ext3-formatted instance store devices and partitions in stage-1 (initramfs), storing `/tmp` on the first discovered device. This behaviour, which only catered to very specific use cases and could not be disabled, has been removed. Users relying on this should provide their own implementation, and probably use ext4 and perform the mount in stage-2.

- The EC2 image module previously detected and activated swap-formatted instance store devices and partitions in stage-1 (initramfs). This behaviour has been removed. Users relying on this should provide their own implementation.

## Other Notable Changes {#sec-release-23.05-notable-changes}

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