2010.0 Notes


Contents

Mandriva Linux 2010 Release Notes

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Introduction

This page contains important information the Mandriva Linux 2010 (2010.0) release.

The following topics are covered:

  • General information about new features and major changes
  • Changes to the Mandriva installer and upgrade instructions for users of previous releases
  • Changes to supported hardware and drivers
  • Changes regarding software packages
  • Other technical information for experienced users

Please also refer to Mandriva Linux 2010 Errata - the Errata for the 2010 release. The Errata page contains information on known bugs and problems in the release and instructions on fixing, avoiding or working around them.

For a more detailed and graphical introduction to the most obvious user-visible changes in this release, please see the Release Tour.

Editions

Mandriva Linux 2010 is available in several different editions:

  • the One edition is an installable live CD integrating the latest proprietary drivers, available free of charge. six different versions of the One edition are available: two for GNOME and four for KDE, each with a different set of supported languages.
  • the Powerpack edition includes support, services, a wider range of packages, third-party proprietary applications, a subset of the Fluendo multimedia codec pack, providing support for MP3, WMA and WMV files and Fluendo DVD player.
  • the Free edition is a pure free / open source software edition, without any of the non-free packages bundled with other editions, available as a free download.

For more information on the various editions, see Choosing the Mandriva Linux edition that's right for you.

Additional information is also available online:

Deprecation

KDE 3

KDE 3 is no longer included in Mandriva Linux 2010. KDE 3 was dropped completely from the distribution, including all its libraries, which could no longer be built with autoconf-2.64. This means some applications are no longer available anymore because there is no KDE 4 port yet, like KMyMoney2, Kbudget, etc.

splashy

As mentioned above, splashy is now deprecated by plymouth and has been removed from the distribution from this release onwards.

Installation

Partitioning tool

  • Partition tool in Free and One installers has been redesigned to make it more easily understandable by non advanced users. As partitioning step is always quite sensitive step, the new layout tries to give more information using graphical representation.
  • Ext4 is now being used as the default filesystem for newly created partitions

Password check

Users management, both in the installer and mcc's userdrake, now provide an easy way to check the strength of a password. Three different icons will show three different password strenght levels: trivial to guess / password should resist to basic attacks / password seems secure

Guest account

2010 comes also with Guest account enabled by default. You can use it to allow somebody to safely use your system. Guest account is a temporary account, it can be only used to log in via gdm or kdm. Home and temporary directories for this user are mounted on tmpfs : all data stored in those directories are wiped automatically when user logout. You can disable it in advanced configuration for users account. It's also available through userdrake. Guest account is provided by the xguest package.

Minimum installation size

Minimal installation size has been reviewed so that it's really minimal one

Upgrade

Upgrading from previous releases

Please note that if you use the Free or Powerpack editions to do an upgrade install from a previous Mandriva Linux release, KDE 3 – if installed - will be replaced by KDE 4. Old .kde will be backuped.

Upgrading between releases of Mandriva always has the potential to cause some problems. Upgrading is supported and we do test upgrades, but due to the huge range of packages and hardware configurations possible, it is always the case that in your particular situation, the upgrade may cause a problem we did not anticipate. Therefore we recommend that you always back up your system prior to upgrading.

Live upgrade

As upgrade usually needs to update hundreds of packages, upgrade is now possible in « live » mode. If you get free space enough, all necessary packages can be first downloaded then installed. It should help upgrade if your network bandwidth is not big enough, your network connection is unstable or mirrors become unavailable during upgrade.

End of life distributions

When your distribution is no more officially supported (aka « end of life »), a notification will be displayed through mdkonline applet. It will allow you also to upgrade to next supported version.

X configuration

Xfdrake will be launched at the end of upgrade through mdkonline or auto-update cli whenever it's needed. Some graphical chipsets, no longer supported by supported by proprietary drivers, will then be reconfigured to use open source driver.

Base system

Plymouth

Bootsplash is now managed by Plymouth:

  • it supports Kernel Mode Settings but can also wokr via the VESA framebuffer so chipsets not yet supporting KMS can still have graphical boot, without feature regression.
  • Plymouth is much more customizable than Splashy, allowing nice graphical effects during system boot.
  • It has a nice and simple script language which allows to write quite new themes easily.

Many thanks to Plymouth team (Charles Brej and Ray Strode) who helped a lot while integration and theme building.

Change in device permission handling

Devices ownership is no longer changed to console privileged users. Instead, ACL are set and removed by udev on the fly. If you find any regression in device access, please fill bug reports against udev package. Pam_console and Hal won’t take care anymore of setting the right permissions on hardware devices for console users. Instead, udev and consolekit will deal with this.

Kernel 2.6.31

  • 2010 comes with kernel 2.6.31. There is a useful series of articles in the Heise Online series Kernel Log which detail the many new features of kernel 2.6.30; the link is to Part 6, you can find links to the previous five parts at the end of the article. Of course, the most notable changes are improvements in hardware support, including ongoing improvements to support more LAN, Wi-Fi, audio and video hardware. There is changes to the Ext3 and Ext4 file systems, Faster encryption and booting, Tomoyo security framework.
  • Kernel Mode-Setting, which reduces screen flickering, permits smooth transitions between boot phase and X startup.
  • Tomoyo security framework is now the default one, replacing AppArmor

X server

X.org 7.5 with xorg-server 1.6.5. New driver version for Intel graphic chipset should improve performance and stability, thanks to DRI2 and UXA architecture.

Poulsbo drivers support

Poulsbo drivers are now fully supported out of the box when you use One isos. Hardware will be automatically detected and configured using XFdrake. As it needs non-free firmware, this is not included in Free isos.

Virtualization

Virtualbox

Virtualbox 3: now supports SMP virtual machines, improved 3D support and better performance.,

Xen

Xen kernel 2.6.27: Mandriva now includes a kernel for running on a Xen Dom0 based on the 2.6.27 kernel instead of the outdated 2.6.18 kernel.

qemu-kvm

qemu-kvm: the KVM virtualization tool is now available in kvm pakage.

Others

  • Bash 4.0: includes many improvements for shell programmers, such as support of associative arrays
  • GCC 4.4.1: better code generation and many improvements for developers, such as OpenMP 3 support and support for the upcoming C++0x ISO standard. This new version also improves code optimization thanks to the Graphite framework. Glibc was also updated to the latest version 2.10.
  • Glibc 2.10.1

Mandriva tools

Drakxtools

XFdrake

XFdrake allows you to enable or disable Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (in Options).

Tomoyo-gui

A new tool has been added: tomoyo-gui. This is a completely new frontend for Tomoyo. Tomoyo is the new security framework used by default instead of AppArmor.

Netprofiles

Network profiles management tool has been completely rewritten. Using it you can easily create and use several network profile depending where you are (at home, with friends, at work...).

To use profiles, go to network section in MCC. Choose network profile management. Click on new profile button. You can now configure your network, urpmi media and proxy for this new profile using Mandriva tools. It's done! You can switch back to default profile using net_applet icon or draknetprofile.

net_monitor

Network monitoring tool is available in Mandriva Linux, which is replacing net_monitor application from drakx-net package. You can reach it from net_applet.

rpmdrake

Starting from the 2010.0 release you can now search in full package names, to do that open Options and tick "Search in full package names", you can then search for package Version, e.g. searching for 4.3.2 will list all kde4.3.2 packages, you can also search for package Release. This wasn't possible in previous versions of rpmdrake.

To search using regular expressions, open Options and tick "Use regular expressions in searches", this was the default behaviour in previous versions, (but now you have to enable it from the Options menu).

mdkonline

  • You can now configure frequence for updates. Right click on icon or use mcc in "software" section.
  • Kernel updates management: when updates come for kernel, you will be asked to remove old kernel. Only current and the last one before will be kept.

Urpmi

urpmi and URPM come with many improvements to help resolving complex dependencies. Example: upgrade from an old version of the distribution to a newer one.

Users environments

KDE

  • KDE 4.3.2 is an upgrade in stability and functionality over KDE 4.2. This release will add many new features to KDE 4, including some that were notably present in KDE 3 but lacking in KDE 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2, along with some brand new features. It should also provide a more stable desktop experience than KDE 4.2. A list of features planned for KDE 4.3, along with their current status, can be found here.
  • Data migration from KDE 3: When opening session on KDE 4, data will be backuped and migrated to KDE 4 (user preferences, mails, ...)
  • Nepomuk integration: Nepomuk technolofy has been integrated. You will be able to organize your desktop depending on your projects, annotate documents, ... Complete information
  • Amarok 2.2 final release: many bug fixes and at last ability back to read Cds.
  • Kmymoney2: it has been removed as it's much too unstable for now. It has been replaced by skrooge. You can safely export your data from kmymoney et import it in skrooge.
  • KMess MSN Live instant messenger 2.0.0.
  • KOffice 2.0.1
  • Digikam 1.0

GNOME

  • GNOME 2.28.1 is available. A notable planned change will be improvements in GNOME Media with : Webcam support and Live streaming recording in sound-recorder or podcaster. As a preview of GNOME 3.0, you can have a look on gnome-shell whose main goal is to redefine users interactions with his desktop.
  • Tomboy now can sync your notes with the Snowy web service
  • Pitivi video editor has been updated to version 0.13.1 which includes a complete core rewrite. Lots of interesting improvements for end users are in the pipeline for next versions.
  • Empathy is now installed by default instead of Pidgin

Moblin

A new environment is now included in Mandriva Linux and all integrated for 2010 release. Mandriva Linux is the first distribution to include full packaged Moblin environment.This environment has been designed for mobile desktop platforms. Netbooks are a given target but you can also use it when you want an ergonomic and simple environment for daily tasks. Install task-moblin package. Go back to connection manager and choose Moblin in sessions list.

Applications

Among Office, Internet, Multimedia main applications:

  • Last version of open source browser, 3.5
  • OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 (based on the Go-OO branch) with plugins: presentation-minimizer, presenter-screen, wiki-publisher, pdfimport
  • Elisa has now been renamed to Moovida. It includes a brand new graphical user interface.
  • Sage Math 4.1, a mathematic software system and several of its dependencies, including softwares like gap, singular, polymake, linbox, and many other scientific applications.
  • The LiVES video editor has reached version 1.0.0.

Server and development

Cups

Cups 1.4 is now available.

apache

apache-2.2.12 now has native upstream SNI support (server name indication extension (RFC 4366)) previousely added as a third party patch added since 2008.1.

php

php has been upgraded to 5.3.0. More info at the php site at http://www.php.net/ as there are simply too many changes to list here.

Python

Python 3 is now available in contrib repository but for compatibility reasons Python 2.6 will remain the default version for now.