2010.1 Alpha 2

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The second alpha for Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring (2010.1) is now available. There is information about the new release in various places:

Contents

Special note

This is noted elsewhere, but as a special important notice, please do not use this Alpha version to upgrade an existing Mandriva Linux installation. There are unresolved issues with KDE, GNOME and maybe other windows managers which are likely to result in any system upgraded from any stable release to this alpha being unable to start a desktop, rendering it useless for most people. Please only use this alpha as a clean installation, and, as always, do not expect to be able to use it as a day-to-day workstation; keep an installation of a stable Mandriva release (or other operating system or distribution, of course) for this purpose.

Special thanks to Frederik HIMPE for his very useful articles about Cooker weekly progress (see Frederik's blog).

Installation media

Available media

This Alpha 2 release is available:

  • as a Free edition for the x86-32 and x86-64 architectures, on one DVD, with a traditional installer.

Major new features

As this is an early pre-release, the major changes are mostly in the area of included third-party software. The planned changes to Mandriva's own tools and systems are not ready for inclusion in a public pre-release. But you find all the planned changes in the PDF file: "2010 Spring specifications" available here.

Mandriva tools

Guest account

Many improvements in guest account management: use of restricted shell, restricted access to other user's files, prevent access for most of Mandriva administration tools...

Desktop environments

GNOME

GNOME 2.29.6:

  • many Epiphany improvements : Webkit page cache enabled, Youtube movie extension available (no flash required), infobar for saving username/password in GNOME keyring, support for GZIP compressed pages.
  • Gnome Activity Journal, a tool which uses Zeitgeist to let you browse through the documents you recently worked on, is now available in Mandriva.
  • Evolution opens attachments read-only to prevent accidentally loosing modification you might make.
  • Vinagre now supports tunneling VNC connections over SSH.
  • GNOME Color Manager, a utility to set up colour profiles for your monitor, is now packaged in Mandriva Cooker.
  • many changes have been implemented in Nautilus before GNOME 3.0 release. Nautilus will then become a file manager only and will not manage desktop anymore. So files management functionalities have been improved and an optional split view has been added fore more convenience.
  • You can now configure a background per monitor on a multi-monitor setup.
  • Tracker is proposed for tests for document search engine. You should find it much more efficient than Beagle.
  • Packagekit service is now available for applications

Various news:

  • There were further performance improvements in the GLib library.
  • a new game called LightsOff;
  • improved IRC support for Empathy;
  • PDF file attachment annotations support for Evince;
  • Seed supported by more and more applications;
  • GtkBuilder is one of the new APIs used for applications.
  • Cheese webcam application has been split into different libraries, making it easier for other applications to integrate webcam functionality (like avatar choosers in instant messaging applications).

KDE

KDE 4.4 RC 3 (development version is 4.3.98): interface for adding widgets has been greatly improved. Ozone and Nitrogen themes have now been merged in Oxygen. See also lots of improvements in KGet. KMix volume mixer supports now Pulseaudio.

Around KDE:

  • QT has reached stable version, 4.6.1.
  • Nepomuk is now using Virtuoso as its back-end to store data, which should give faster tagging and indexing.
  • Amarok 2.2.2 : many improvements like podcast support or custom track labels.
  • KTorrent 4.0 beta 1: redesigned GUI for better ergonomy.
  • Digikam and kipi-plugins 1.1.1.

Dynamic background (changing based on time of the day) are now supported.

  • QBittorrent BitTorrent client is now available in Mandriva cooker.

Desktop applications

  • Firefox 3.6. This brand new version comes with lots of improvements in performance. You will find also some new functionalities to improve global ergonomy:
    • Tab previews: to activate this new feature, open about:config in your browser and look for browser.CtrlTab.previews parameter.
    • Support for Persona themes.
    • More feedback information like report when an installed plug-in is out of date.
    • for an overview of Firefox 3.6 features, you can check Ars Technica article
    • KDE Integration, now under KDE4 Firefox uses the KDE file chooser, and uses KDE filetype association settings
  • OpenOffice.org 3.2 beta 3: startup speed has been improved a lot. Some improvements also in OpenXML files import and basic docx file export.
  • Chromium (Google's browser) is available on mirrors. It's for now available only for both i586 and x86_64 in the contrib repositories.
  • Gnash 0.9.7 snapshot
  • xine-lib 1.2 with support for VDPAU for hardware accelerated rendering of high definition video is now available.
  • Deluge 1.2.0 (final) is now available in Cooker. It has a rewritten web UI and improves performance of the application.
  • Songbird, an advanced music player, has been updated to version 1.4.3, which includes a new default look.
  • The popular media centre software xbmc is now available in Mandriva Cooker. Ideally for setting up a Home Theatre PC (HTPC) with Mandriva!
  • Transmission 1.83 is now available in Mandriva Cooker. It adds support for magnet links and trackerless torrents and has many other improvements.

X server

  • Nouveau driver: it's now used as free driver for NVidia graphics cards instead of nv. Nouveau will bring Kernel Mode Setting support, 2D acceleration, and RandR 1.2 support (for easy multi-monitor setup).
  • Mesa 7.7: 3D support has been enabled for the ATI R600 and R700 chipets (ATI Radeon HD 2000 and later), you can now enjoy 3D acceleration with the free ATI drivers.
  • Intel X11 driver version 2.10.0 is now included. Together with kernel 2.6.33 it brings video overlay support for more CPU efficient video playback.
  • X.org related packages have been updated to X.org release 7.5. Also included xserver version 1.7.4.

Base system

  • Linux kernel 2.6.33 rc6 release: the anticipatory I/O scheduler has been removed, and there were again various performance improvements to the CFQ I/O scheduler, which is the default already for a long time. There were also different performance improvements to KVM virtualization (such as improved kernel context switching speed and IRQ scaling). There are power saving improvements in the Intel i915 driver (render standby and LVDS downclock, the latter being disabled by default for now), a new driver supporting VMware’s paravirtualized SCSI device, better support for ALPS DualPoint touchpad/trackpoint on some Dell laptops, and many other improvements to hardware support..
  • ntfs-3g driver 2010.01.16: Fix for accessing some specific volumes for Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7.
  • Glibc 2.11: many performance improvements. For example, binutils package is now coming with STT_GNU_IFUNC support.
  • The GDB debugger was updated to version 7.0.1. Developers are excited about the process record and replay and reverse debugging features.
  • General build options: all packages are now linked with the -Wl,-O1 linker options. This can improve start-up performance of applications linked with many different libraries.
  • dracut, a replacement for mkinitrd, has been improved to better integrate with Mandriva (but it is still experimental and does not replace mkinitrd) You can create a new initrd with dracut by hand if you want, or start using it by default the next time you install a new kernel by running update-alternatives --config mkinitrd
  • Ruby 1.9.1 is now available in Contrib. This new version is much more faster than the previous Ruby 1.8 series
  • USB/IP, a tool for using USB devices over the network, is now packaged in Cooker.

System administration

  • The Sysklogd system log daemon has been replaced by rsyslog. rsyslog is a very modern system logger with very active development. It includes advanced features such as storing logs in SQL databases, e-mail warnings on some log messages, support for sending syslog messages over TCP and many more.
  • Munin 1.4: better scalability, many new plug-ins for monitoring MySQL, PostgreSQL, Asterisk and others.
  • Spamassassin has been updated to version 3.3.0. There are new plug-ins and adaptations of the default scores for better spam detection. The rules now are in a separate spamassassin-rules package and by default sa-update is run on a daily basis to update them.

Installation

For instructions on writing the ISO files to CD or DVD discs, see Writing CD and DVD images. For installation instructions, see Installing Mandriva Linux.

Known issues

Known issues are collected on the 2010 Spring Errata page. There are several known issues in this release, so please do read this page.

Testing wanted

You are encouraged to test and comment on this pre-release. Feedback should be posted in the form of bug reports to Bugzilla, or if it is not a type of feedback that can be expressed as a bug report, to the Cooker mailing list or to the Mandriva Forums.

  • Report any problems you find in the KDE and GNOME desktops; despite its beta status, we expect it to provide a relatively usable and stable experience, so please report any significant stability or usability issues.
  • Report any problems, especially regressions, relating to input devices.
  • Check that all your hardware is supported. Note that this alpha only includes free software. Proprietary drivers for components which require or can use them - especially for ATI and NVIDIA video cards, Intel Centrino wireless adapters, and HSF modems - are available from the Cooker non-free repository. Follow the instructions here to configure this and other repositories. It should be noted that if you continue to use these repositories after the release of Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring, you will then be following the development of the next release of Mandriva Linux. If you wish to follow development of 2010 Spring and then remain with a 2010 Spring system, you must change your repositories at the time 2010 Spring is released.
  • You can find here useful informations to do a day-to-day Mandriva's applications testing. You can use them for testing and participate to improve Mandriva Linux distribution.
  • Report any missing or unwanted software. Please take care to see if these issues have already been filed.

For help on reporting bugs, consult our general guidelines on Bugzilla.

Availability

Worldwide Mandriva Official Mirrors

The whole list of Worldwide Mandriva Official Mirrors is available at this URL: Worldwide Mandriva Mirrors

The images are available from the following mirrors:

Africa

North America

South America

Asia

Europe

Retrieved from "http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2010.1_Alpha_2"
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