2012.0 specs proposal
From Mandriva Community Wiki
To complete ideas proposals for 2012 specifications, you can add your proposal below.
Contents
|
Distribution Core
kernel, hardware support
- Better support for SSDs: Detect if a storage device is a harddisk or an SSD, and set mount optiones etc. accordingly (probably an SSD should be mounted with noatime (writes to SSD are more harmful than to HDD), discard (issue TRIM commands - should make future writes faster), ... 'noop' scheduler should be used for boxes that have only SSDs and no traditional harddisks
- See if the performance benefit of -march=corei7 -mtune=corei7 and/or -march=bdver2 -mtune=bdver2 is big enough to warrant compiling some key packages in different modes
boot
Revive Aurora
Revive Aurora bootloader, or at least some of it's feature to integrate into plymouth as plymouth in current shape is nothing but useless eye candy..
Proposed by: Per Øyvind Karlsen
Status: Not now, maybe for later release
Implement a easy-to-use recovery tool
Create an easy to use recovery tool for total boot failures (e.g. inability to mount a vital file system) - a newbie will be terribly scared of the root shell recovery. Probably the best thing to do would be to pop up a dialog allowing to enter the recovery root shell, or to try recovering things automatically (that would basically scan /etc/fstab and run fsck -a on every filesystem, then hope for the best)
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
See Installer - partition recovery Proposed by: An00bii
Status: In progress - Per Øyvind Karlsen
Add recovery environment to initramfs
Implement support for a minimal recovery environment linked against uClibc, using almost only busybox.
Proposed by: Per Øyvind Karlsen
Status: In progress (as part of previous item) - Per Øyvind Karlsen
Integrate GRUB2
On 28 June 2012 the GRUB team have released their 2.0 stable version.
Proposed by: Maik (tapwag) Wagner
Status: ~50% - ROSA has done major work required for integration with existing tools, major outstanding work expected to be remaining is on bootloader gfx, with support for the same gfxboot stuff used with grub legacy missing. Lua support for possible new replacement has been added to grub2, but no lua code has been writting or much time researching the topi has been don yet..
X.Org
Integration of Bumblebee into Distribution, or inclusion of other hybrid support system, in order to address multi-graphics capable Laptops. [Currently show-stopper for many users with such systems]
Proposed by: David Keenleyside
(Bumblebee is already available even for 2011.0, the version in Cooker need only to be updated at the version available in 2011 https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=65475 (Moreno) )
Add a recovery tool that helps people who don't know the ins and outs of their OS to get back to a GUI if X.Org fails to start (could be written using Qt for Embedded Linux -> requires only framebuffer device)
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
( This feature was introduced years ago, may be now stop working (Moreno) )
FHS 2.3 compliance
Adopt /srv
While most other distros has adopted /srv for service data of httpd, mysql etc. since a long time ago, we're still using /var and should really make sure to get with the times.
See FHS 2.3.
Proposed by: Per Øyvind Karlsen
Status: 0% - Bernhard Rosenkränzer(?) Running late, yet to be started
Merge /usr/{*bin,lib*} with /{*bin,lib*} or opposite?
We should make a decission on whether we should keep follow FHS or follow Fedora on merging /usr/*bin with /*sbin. If not merging, we should start making sure to enforce that things under /*bin & /lib* doesn't require anything under /usr..
(I favor the latter)
Proposed by: Per Øyvind Karlsen
Status: >90% - Per Øyvind Karlsen We won't follow Fedora, and stick to compliance with current FHS standard,, but there's several binaries and libraries in /lib{,64} & /{,s}bin that is linking against stuff under /uusr etc. that really should be fixed..
others (gcc, glibc, udev...)
Adopt prelink by default
Consider adoption of prelink by default for improved startup times of C++ apps.
Proposed by: Per Øyvind Karlsen.
Status: 50% - prelink has been shpped and used by default for quite a while already, some necessary patching of rpm to properly keep track of prelinked binaries with 'rpm -V' etc. remains to be done..
Switch to gold as standard linker
More info can be found on the Fedora wiki: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GoldLinking
Proposed by: Per Øyvind Karlsen.
Status: >90% - Per Øyvind Karlsen Pretty much all done, some various software that's still not possible to build with gold that needs to explicitly use bfd linker at next rebuild though, gcc is now patched with a -fuse-ld={bfd,gold} option to more easily switch between the two.
Do a build based on the x32 ABI
x32 ABI is an attempt to get the best of both worlds out of x86_64 vs. x86_32.
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Status: 0% - Most likely to be skipped untill next release
Update gcc
Switch to gcc 4.7.x
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Status: 100% - Bernhard Rosenkränzer Completed
Switch to Linaro's branch of gcc
Use Linaro's branch of gcc, it has many optimizations especially as ARM becomes a more interesting platform, and there's great contacts w/ the maintainers to get things fixed more quickly
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Status: 100% - Bernhard Rosenkränzer Completed
Switch to eglibc
Eglibc is a closely-tracking fork of glibc - the only 2 major differences are that eglibc has better support for embedded platforms, and that it's easier to rip unneeded/obsolete features out of it. As an extra plus, Drepper isn't involved. Eglibc is also used by Debian.
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Status: 0% - Bernhard Rosenkränzer Final decission still remains to be done, bero needs to discuss it with pcpa which is now back again from sick leave.
Switch from ntp to chrony
Switch to preferring chronyd over ntpd by default.
Proposed by: Per Øyvind Karlsen
Status: 0% - Not started yet, major part of work remaining is on drakx wizard to support it.
RPM
Security
Include msec / msec-gui in the installation
Proposed by: Wolfgang Bornath
Add tools that allow an admin user to automatically run graphical admin tools (and only those, so tricking the user into a "rm -rf /" or "sudo rm -rf /" ... script doesn't do any extra damage) as root without needing to enter a password. (esp. useful in single user environments, to discourage people from just running their desktop as root if they get annoyed by prompts) Can be done e.g. through a PAM module combined w/ consolehelper, done before in Ark
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Overall
Clean out some obsolete packages. Packages that don't even install because of dependencies on obsolete libraries that have been removed should definitely either be updated (to work in a current environment) or removed altogether. (Affects mostly contrib) In particular, get rid of harmful stuff (e.g. spampd actually breaks mail delivery because it doesn't speak current lmtp revisions. amavisd-new should obsolete it)
Suggestions by bedi:
- Drop systemd
- Drop Pulseaudio
Status: Rejected - (Per Øyvind Karlsen) Ability to easily disable pulseaudio without any resulting regressions needs to be made sure of though..
Servers
Revamp mail server support
- Update dovecot to 2.x (?? Already done dovecot-2.1.6 arrived on 10/05/2012 (Moreno))
- Make postfix+dovecot+pigeonhole the default handlers
- Add a proper groupware+webmail solution w/ mobile syncing support, such as SOGo (Death to M$ Exchange!)
- Improve spam and virus filtering to make sure rules on mail servers are always up to date (sa-update, freshclam and friends in crontab)
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
switch to ngnix as default web server
--Csaba Böröczky_0 16:53, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Status: Rejected - Per Øyvind Karlsen
Mandriva Tools
General
Start rebasing them on Qt. The GTK tools look and feel somewhat out of place in a KDE centric environment, and the decision be KDE centric has been made (and is correct). Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Disagree; this looks like work for nothing. Proposed by: Lewis Smith & An00bii
Restyle and reorganize old options, remove obsolete ones.
Proposed by: An00bii
Make DE-agnostic
I would far rather see a basic set of DE-agnostic tools, with a choice of GTK, QT, and CLI frontends. As a GTK-using lightweight remaster, TinyMe would be killed by pulling in QT.
Proposed by: KDulcimer
mdkonline, rpmdrake
A new interface for the "rpmdrake". Or an appstore similar to the "Ubuntu Software Center" to install programs on Mandriva with more intuitive and organized interface.
Proposed by: Guilherme M. S.
Status: In progress~50%(?) See urpmi item below
Note from tapwag: As far as I understand it ROSAlab has been working on a new package manager. There are also some translations for this application. The one for German is complete. See also: http://blog.mandriva.com/en/2011/05/21/mandriva-application-manager-new-look-feel/
urpmi
Support of both urpmi and smart package manager
Status: ~50%(?) - Guilherme M. S. (+Per Øyvind Karlsen) Most of the worst job already done on smart, but work on further integration and migration to remains to be done for a seamless switch to be made possible.
Stability for rpm
--Csaba Böröczky_0 16:47, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
drakxtools(mcc)
Easy user, ldap, radius, ngnix, php, postgresql, mysql administration with web interface. For web ISPCONFIG3 with enched Mandriva script.
--Csaba Böröczky_0 16:53, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Installer
Improved RAID support
Ensure all RAID arrays are valid during and after installation, and boot to a working system. [Extra RAID features were included in 2011, but resulted in non-functional installation.]
Proposed by: David Keenleyside
Status: 100%(?) - Per Øyvind Karlsen Current status unknown, assumed to already have been fixed.
Support more filesystems
Support more filesystems (at least btrfs, jfs and xfs)ex
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
About the filesystems, can you keep the support to ReiserFS?
Status: 90% - Per Øyvind Karlsen Already in place, with any outstanding issues fixed. ReiserFS v3 support will be kept, ReiserFS v4 is currently not being maintained for recent kernels, with support most likely to be omitted from the next release. PS: grub2 supports booting from btrfs, booting from btrfs partitions with grub2 needs to be permitted in drakx.
GUI-free install
Return the option to install the S.O. without GUI. (Like Mandriva 2010)
Make a clean install with no Window managers.
Proposed by: Adriano De Lima
Status: 100% - Per Øyvind Karlsen This will again be permitted with the reintroduction of the classic installer.
Rescue partition
Allow a creation of an hidden rescue partition containing a basic installation of MDV (basic software, LXDE...) that will be used for hard system recovering (something like hidden windows partition on laptops) Proposed by: An00bii
Status: In progress - Per Øyvind See "Implement a easy-to-use recovery tool" feature (rescue environment embedded in initramfs should be a better alternative than requiring a dedicated boot partition to be made) "
Improved recovery mode
Reduce size of recovery environment by exclusively linking everything in it against uClibc and add additional tools & functionality.
Proposed by: Per Øyvind Karlsen
Revamp the idea of kickstart files
In the business world machines need to be set up quickly using kickstart files to set up a specific configuration. I have the impression that this idea goes back to the old Mandrake times with floppy disks. As most modern computers no longer use floppy disks saving a configuration on an USB-thumbdrive during the installation would be good.
Proposed by: Maik Wagner
drakx-net
Improve connecting to wireless networks (example bug: https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=63418)
Proposed by: Maik Wagner
one / draklive-install
One small release, using the traditional installer(not live), x64 and i586. - (have a look at unity linux)
Proposed by bedi
Status: 100% - Per Øyvind Karlsen Completed
gparted
In the live CD Release, it's a good thing to keep some programs to fix system problems, like GParted.
Proposed by: Adriano De Lima
Status: 100%(?) - Per Øyvind Karlsen Should be in place in both installer and rescue mode already.
inxi system info
Integrate a system info tool. inxi is a script that needs to be placed in /usr/bin and is extremly useful for supporting purposes.
It has endless combination possibilities but a simple inxi -F would give sufficient info in most cases. It is better than lshw.
The important thing would be to make it a default during installation of Mandriva - thus making the support prosess easier for Newbies.
http://forum.mandriva.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=137666 https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=65597
Proposed by: viking60
Status: 0% - Per Øyvind Karlsen If not suffering heavily from bashism, but possible to run under more non-bash shell, likely to be integrated into stage1 initramfs disk & rescue/install disk.
MandrivaSync
Adding support for various mobile phones.
It would be great if we had something like Apple's iSync for synchronising mobile phones connected through Bluetooth or USB-cable. Apple recently dropped support for iSync in their latest OSX version which used to be useful for third-party phones. I am having a hard time finding a good solution to synchronise my mobile phone with my PC. I know this sounds like a massive job but I think this might be a good opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Further info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISync
Proposed by: Maik Wagner
Desktop Environments
GENERAL
LightDM as a default DM Proposed by: Raphaël J 09:59, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Use a Light Desktop Environment, KDE has become to big, suggestions: GNOME3/Cinnamon
Proposed by: bedi
Give the possibility to change desktop in the default kdm theme Proposed by: katnatek-bdk & Andrey Bondrov
Keep KDE4 as the default DE because Mandriva has been always known as one of the best KDE distributions Proposed by Andrey Bondrov & An00bii
Focus only on mainly used DE such as Gnome(3), XFCE, LXDE (openbox) as secondary officially supported DE. Proposed by: An00bii
GNOME
Gnome 3
Thanks to UnityLinx works
Mate?
Cinnamon
Unity Shell?
KDE
Add a welcome application that allows a new user to make a simple choice to make migration easier:
Do you want your OS to behave mostly like:
- Mandriva (default, of course)
- Windows (Redmond KDE style, double-clicks for most things)
- OS X (Menu bar on top of screen enabled)
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Eliminate all dependencies on GNOME libraries in a KDE-only install
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
There could be an optionnal "Rosa" look'n Feel including Rosa's software
Proposed by: Raphaël J 10:07, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Only KDE3 and KDE4. The KDE 3 environment for large enterprises would be useful, but must be to Qt4 environment.
Proposed by:--Csaba Böröczky_0 16:44, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Razor-Qt
Razor-Qt is a rather new lightweight Qt based desktop. Currently there's no distribution that really supports it well, so that's another fringe space to occupy.
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
There is now a distribution supporting it (I don't know if it's well supported however) : Mageia 2 --AshLeDombos 22:19, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Status: ? - Bernhard Rosenkränzer In progress(?)
Enlightenment e17
Thanks to Unity Linux works
proposed by: Raphaël J 09:57, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
LXDE
proposed by: Raphaël J 09:57, 17 May 2012 (UTC) as secondary Proposed by: An00bii
Status: 100% - Per Øyvind Karlsen LXDE is now shipped as the default environment included with the minimal dual arch CD iso since Alpha (Tenacious Underdog).
Android
A somewhat crazy idea, but should be doable: Package bionic, dalvik and friends, add a couple of patches to the kernel, and offer Android as one of the desktop choices. Probably one of the most difficult issues is integrating it with a regular init system. Bonus points if there's a way to run Android apps on top of a regular desktop and vice versa - that should attract a lot of press attention.
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Status: 0% - Bernhard Rosenkränzer Not started, unlikely to be given any priority in time for the next release.
MeeGo
Printing
Multimedia apps
Office apps
No LibreOffice only Calligra office suite. Seamonkey for Office user but change the GTK to QT4
Internet apps
Add Snowshoe - Qt5's WebKit is so much better than Qt4's that we should start benefiting from it
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Professional and Enterprise users create Quanta Plus 4 Web Page Editor with Joomla skin editor.
--Csaba Böröczky_0 16:55, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Internationalization
Create the 2012 project in Transifex https://transifex.mandriva.com/projects/p/mandriva_desktop/ Proposed by: Moreno Italian translator
German translation
Integrate German language translations from Transifex. Most of the German translation is now complete and just needs to be imported to SVN. It would be good if this could be done in an early stage such as the technology preview version so possible errors can be caught early.
Proposed by: Maik Wagner (tapwag) German translator
Input method
Integrate kimpanel, drop scim gtk dependency Make sure you can use CJK input systems etc. even if the locale is set to a European language (for those of us who just need to type a Chinese product name or something correctly)
Proposed by: Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Infrastructure
Adopt mirrorbrain
Adopt mirrorbrain for managing mirrors etc. Also make sure to integrate it with urpmi.
Proposed by: Per Øyvind Karlsen
Status: 0% - Per Øyvidn Karlsen Still planned, but yet to be started..
Build Infrastructure
It would be good if we had something like a project management tool as well with i18n deadlines, gantt chars etc. and if dates were published in an .ics-format.
Proposed by: Maik Wagner (tapwag)
We're also thinking (inside Mandriva) about having a full platform that could host Free/OpenSource projects not only related to Mandriva Destkop. It's still a draft :)
Raphaël J 10:28, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Proposal
* All draks Should be rewritten , maybe in qt4, all draks need badly corrections and updates.( f.e. drakdvb) * Persistence on USB pendrive * ARM support ( mabe a dedicated ISO ) * BFS kernel ( mabe dedicated ISO ) * SMART * The good old installer ( see rosa 2012.0-lts installer or mdv 2010)
SymbianFlo
