Contents
* 1 Mandriva Linux 2010 Release Notes
+ 1.1 Introduction
* 2 Editions
* 3 Deprecation
+ 3.1 KDE 3
+ 3.2 splashy
* 4 Installation
+ 4.1 Partitioning tool
+ 4.2 Password check
+ 4.3 Guest account
+ 4.4 Minimum installation size
* 5 Upgrade
+ 5.1 Upgrading from previous releases
+ 5.2 Live upgrade
+ 5.3 End of life distributions
+ 5.4 X configuration
* 6 Base system
+ 6.1 Plymouth
+ 6.2 Change in device permission handling
+ 6.3 Kernel 2.6.31
+ 6.4 X server
+ 6.5 Poulsbo drivers support
+ 6.6 Virtualization
o 6.6.1 Virtualbox
o 6.6.2 Xen
o 6.6.3 qemu-kvm
+ 6.7 Others
* 7 Mandriva tools
+ 7.1 Drakxtools
o 7.1.1 XFdrake
o 7.1.2 Tomoyo-gui
o 7.1.3 Netprofiles
o 7.1.4 net_monitor
o 7.1.5 rpmdrake
o 7.1.6 mdkonline
+ 7.2 Urpmi
* 8 Users environments
+ 8.1 KDE
+ 8.2 GNOME
+ 8.3 Moblin
* 9 Applications
* 10 Server and development
+ 10.1 Cups
+ 10.2 apache
+ 10.3 php
+ 10.4 Python
Mandriva Linux 2010 Release Notes
**** In progress ****
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:
* List of Compatible/Certified Computers and The detailed Mandriva
Hardware Database
* The Mandriva User Forums
* The Mandriva Wiki
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.