#2008.1 Notes Mandriva Community Wiki (English) Creative Commons copyright 2008.1 Notes From Mandriva Community Wiki Jump to: navigation, search Main Page < 2008.1 Errata < 2008.1 Notes Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring Release Notes Contents * 1 Introduction * 2 General information about new features and major changes * 3 Deprecation + 3.1 kernel-multimedia removed * 4 Changes to supported hardware and drivers + 4.1 NTFS partitions writeable by default + 4.2 Support status for common hardware o 4.2.1 NVIDIA graphics cards o 4.2.2 ATI graphics cards o 4.2.3 HDA-based sound devices o 4.2.4 Wireless networking hardware + 4.3 Nouveau open source driver for NVIDIA cards + 4.4 Multimedia keyboard support + 4.5 Easy synchronization support * 5 Changes regarding installation + 5.1 UUID-based partition mounting * 6 Changes regarding software packages + 6.1 KDE integration of time-based background image + 6.2 PulseAudio sound server used by default + 6.3 Testing KDE 4 + 6.4 AppArmor + 6.5 Codeina multimedia codec installation system * 7 Changes regarding Mandriva tools + 7.1 Enhancements to Mandriva software management tools + 7.2 New package information system for RPMdrake and urpmi + 7.3 Mandriva Online + 7.4 New LAMP metapackage + 7.5 Windows Vista support in migration wizard Introduction This page contains important information the Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring (2008.1) release. The following topics are covered: * General information about new features and major changes * Changes to the Mandriva installer and upgrade instructions for Mandriva Linux 2008 users * Changes to supported hardware and drivers * Changes regarding software packages * Other technical information for experienced users Please also refer to Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring Errata - the Errata for the 2008 Spring release. The Errata page contains information on known bugs and problems in the release and instructions on fixing, avoiding or working around them. Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is not yet released. These release notes currently cover the pre-releases of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. The current pre-release is Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring RC 2. General information about new features and major changes Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring includes (or will include) the following versions of the major distribution components: kernel 2.6.24, X.org 7.3, KDE 3.5.9 and 4.0, GNOME 2.22, Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12, OpenOffice.org 2.4. Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring will be available in several different editions: * the One edition will be an installable live CD integrating the latest proprietary drivers, available free of charge * the Powerpack edition will include support, services, a wider range of packages, and many third-party proprietary applications like LinDVD, Scilab and 03 Spaces * the Free edition will be 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 editions in which the latest Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring pre-release is available, see the specific page. 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 Club * The Mandriva User Forums * The Mandriva Wiki Deprecation kernel-multimedia removed The kernel-multimedia alternative kernel is no longer available with Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. It was previously an alternative kernel along the same lines as kernel-tmb, incorporating experimental or bleeding-edge changes that were not appropriate for the official kernel. Despite its name, it has not been specifically targeted towards multimedia use for some time. Its maintainer is now unable to commit the necessary amount of time to maintaining it, so it has been removed. kernel-tmb will continue in its role as the main alternative kernel for Mandriva, the venue for experimental changes that are too dangerous to include directly in the official kernel. It contains most of the features kernel-multimedia had, including support for the reiser4 filesystem. The major exception is realtime support, which kernel-tmb does not have. A realtime kernel is available - kernel-rt - but please note that it is a completely unchanged build of the upstream kernel-rt branch, with no Mandriva patches or customization, so it does lack considerable functionality compared to the official Mandriva kernel. Changes to supported hardware and drivers NTFS partitions writeable by default Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring uses the NTFS-3G system for mounting NTFS partitions by default. This allows full write access to these partitions, rather than the read-only support through the ntfs driver that was provided by default in past releases. Support status for common hardware This section provides information on the status of support for particularly common hardware in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. NVIDIA graphics cards All NVIDIA graphics cards available at the time of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring's release are supported. The NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT is not currently supported by the NVIDIA proprietary driver, and thus there is no support for 3D acceleration on this card. All other NVIDIA cards have 3D acceleration support via the nvidia proprietary driver which is available in the One and Powerpack editions, and in the public non-free repository. Free software support is provided by the nv driver, which offers full support for basic 2D operations for all NVIDIA cards. ATI graphics cards All ATI graphics cards available at the time of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring's release are supported. Support for pre-Radeon X1xxx series cards (r400 and lower cores) has not changed since the release of Mandriva Linux 2008. 3D acceleration support for Radeon X1xxx, X2xxx and X3xxx series cards (and equivalent Mobility and motherboard-integrated chips; r500 and r600 cores) is provided via the fglrx proprietary driver which is available in the One and Powerpack editions, and in the public non-free repository. Free software support for these cards is now provided by the radeonhd driver, which offers full support for basic 2D operations for these cards. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 card is not supported by the proprietary fglrx driver, so no 3D acceleration is available on this card. This card will use the radeonhd driver for basic 2D support on all editions of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. The Radeon HD 3200 onboard chipset is not supported by any of the native proprietary or open source drivers in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. It will use the vesa generic driver for basic (unaccelerated) 2D support on all editions of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. Please note that Mandriva's graphics card detection system considers all cards which use the same set of drivers and driver options as a single group, and your card will be detected as a member of one of these large groups: the graphics configuration tool will not display the exact name of your card, but a wider and more generic group name. This does not indicate that sub-optimal support is being provided for your card, but simply that your card uses the same driver and options as all the other cards in that group. An effort has been made to make these group names as accurate as possible, but due to ATI's usage of different numbering schemes for its three different product lines - desktop, mobile, and integrated chips - it is not always possible to make the category name exactly fit all the hardware that belongs in it. If you have a mobile or integrated ATI chipset it is possible that it may appear to be detected in the 'wrong' group (for instance, the integrated Radeon 1100 and Radeon 1200 chipsets are detected in the Radeon 9500 to Radeon X1050 group). The group detected is usually in fact correct for your hardware, and if your hardware appears to be working correctly, you should not attempt to change the group. HDA-based sound devices Many recently built systems include integrated sound based on the HDA codec, supported in Linux by the snd-intel-hda driver, a part of the ALSA project. Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring includes the latest available version of ALSA along with several dozen patches to provide or improve support for specific implementations of the HDA codec. We hope this will make the 2008 Spring release compatible with the widest possible range of these integrated sound chipsets. Wireless networking hardware Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring includes the latest version of a wide range of wireless drivers, to provide native support for as many devices as possible. In addition, a bug from the last few releases which prevented the Mandriva graphical network configuration tool from properly configuring the ndiswrapper driver has been corrected. If your wireless device does not work with the native drivers available in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring and you must use ndiswrapper for it to work, you can now configure this entirely through the Mandriva graphical network configuration tools. Nouveau open source driver for NVIDIA cards Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring includes the experimental nouveau open source driver for NVIDIA cards. This driver provides advances in functionality and hardware support over the nv open source driver, but is not yet considered stable and does not provide 3D acceleration. If you wish to experiment with this driver, please follow these instructions. * Configure the official Mandriva software repositories: see here for instructions. * Install the kernel-devel package appropriate to the kernel you are running. The Mandriva kernel is available in various 'flavors': desktop, desktop586, laptop and server. You can find out which one you are running with the uname -r command. You should install the package kernel-flavor-devel-latest, where flavor is the kernel flavor you are using. * Install the x11-driver-video-nouveau and dkms-drm-experimental packages. * Edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the Driver line in the Device section to read: Driver "nouveau" * Optionally, add this line to the same section to enable experimental RandR 1.2 support: Option "Randr12" "true" * Run this commands as root: update-alternatives --set gl_conf /etc/ld.so.conf.d/GL/standard.conf ldconfig * Restart your system, or just X (log out of your desktop and then, at the login screen, hit ctrl-alt-backspace). Multimedia keyboard support Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring should support basic multimedia keyboard functions without any configuration. If you have a multimedia keyboard but the extended keys do not appear to do anything, please follow this procedure to discover where the problem lies and file a bug report so it can be fixed. Use the Mandriva keyboard configuration tool (available in the Mandriva Control Center, or directly as drakkeyboard and set the layout to "105-key (Intl) PC" (in the Generic category), and see if the keys work now. If they do, you do not need to do anything further. If not, open a console, and run the command xev. A window will open up. Whenever you move the mouse, click a mouse button, or press a key while this window has focus, lots of information will be printed on the console. Press some 'normal' keys first, to get a feel for the output. You will see that, along with lots of other information, a keycode and keysym will be printed for each key you press. The keysym includes both a code (e.g. 0x77) and the actual key - so if you press the 'h' key, the keysym will be shown as: (keysym 0x68, h) Now try pressing the multimedia keys on your keyboard, and see what keysym they return. If the keysym is incorrect - the second part does not seem like a proper description of what the key should do - this is the problem. File a bug at Bugzilla, setting the RPM package as xkeyboard-config. Include the model name of your keyboard (or laptop, if you are using a laptop), and for each incorrect key, include the keycode, the keysym, and what the key ought to do. Easy synchronization support Mandriva Linux 2008.1 introduces easy support for synchronizing many mobile devices with the KDE and GNOME desktops, particularly Windows Mobile 5, 6 and 6.1 PDAs and smartphones, Blackberry smartphones, and many Nokia phones. Changes to implement this support include the introduction of several new packages, including the KitchenSync synchronization application, bug fixes, and the addition of metapackages (task packages) for each class of device. For full documentation on this new feature, see this page. Changes regarding installation UUID-based partition mounting The Mandriva installers now default to configuring mount points based on the UUID of a partition, rather than its device node (hda1, sdc3 etc). As a device's or partition's UUID should never change, this will avoid problems seen in the past when device nodes could change if another disk was added to or removed from the system or if a change in the kernel led to the naming scheme for device nodes provided by a particular piece of hardware being changed. If you prefer the older system, you can disable the use of UUID mounts by the installer by using the use_uuid=0 kernel parameter at the installer's boot menu. For unattended installs, add this line: uuid_by_default => 0, to auto_install.cfg.pl. Changes regarding software packages KDE integration of time-based background image A new feature has been developped for KDE where the background changes gradually depending on the time of day. To activate this feature, you need an XML file describing which background image has to be displayed at which time of the day. The format is the same than for the corresponding Gnome feature. This feature is enabled by default in Mandriva Linux 2008.1 and it uses the new 2008 Spring theme. PulseAudio sound server used by default The release comes with the PulseAudio sound server installed and enabled by default in all new installations and upgrades performed via the official installer. PulseAudio's benefits include much improved handling of multiple sound cards, the ability to control the audio outputs of different applications separately, and advanced network capabilities. We have worked hard to ensure that the widest possible range of applications works correctly with PulseAudio. However, it is possible that some users may wish to disable it. Some of the known drawbacks of using PulseAudio are: * PulseAudio uses a higher quality but more CPU-intensive resampling algorithm than ALSA. If your sound hardware is incapable of playing certain sampling rates natively, PulseAudio will resample the audio before sending it to the card. Resampling is also necessary when you are playing two audio streams with different sampling rates at once (for instance, playing a CD - 44.1KHz - and a DVD - usually 48KHz). When resampling is needed, PulseAudio will use around two to three times as much CPU power as ALSA would in the same situation. On most reasonably modern systems this will not be noticeable, but on older systems in can represent a significant percentage of available CPU power. * PulseAudio is not really compatible with the JACK server used for professional audio applications. If you need to use JACK, you should disable PulseAudio first. * There may still be some applications that do not work correctly with PulseAudio, despite out efforts to minimize the likelihood of this. The final release of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring will make it easy to disable PulseAudio via Mandriva's sound hardware configuration tool, draksound. This is not available in the current Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring pre-release. To disable PulseAudio in the current pre-release, remove the following packages from your system: * libalsa-plugins-pulseaudio * pulseaudio-module-x11 Testing KDE 4 To test the current state of KDE 4 in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, first set up the official Mandriva package repositories following these instructions. Then install the task-kde4 or task-kde4-minimal package. The next time you go to the graphical login screen, KDE 4 will be available as one of the choices of desktop to enter. AppArmor AppArmor is no longer a kernel module: instead, it is built in to the kernel. To enable it, you can pass the apparmor=1 parameter to the kernel command line. Kernel parameters can be added with the drakboot utility, Mandriva's boot configuration tool, available from the Mandriva Control Center; by editing the bootloader configuration file - /boot/grub/menu.lst for GRUB or /etc/lilo.conf for LILO - manually; or by entering the kernel parameter after selecting the desired kernel on the boot menu screen. Codeina multimedia codec installation system Codeina framework has been introduced to provide and install codecs for playing multimedia files in formats for which a codec is not already available on the system. This will make it much easier to play back a range of formats in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. Changes regarding Mandriva tools Enhancements to Mandriva software management tools Improvements have been made to the interface of the RPMdrake graphical software management tool. The search interface has been reorganized to provide more capabilities while being easier to understand and use. Packages can once more be sorted by size, and the flat list view has been re-introduced. The tool is now more friendly to low-resolution devices (such as the Eee): the package pane can be resized, and the large grey banner at the top of the tool is not displayed at lower resolutions. New package information system for RPMdrake and urpmi A completely new package meta-information system has been introduced. This is the system by which urpmi and RPMdrake can provide, and perform queries based on, extended information about packages: their descriptions, file lists, changelogs and more. In previous Mandriva Linux releases, two hdlist files were provided for each repository. One - the synthesis hdlist file - provided only the minimum information needed about each package for urpmi and RPMdrake to be able to list and install packages correctly. It did not contain package descriptions, file lists or changelogs. The other - the full hdlist file - provided all this information in a single file, which was very large for the larger official repositories. When initially adding a repository, it was possible to use either the synthesis or full hdlist file. Using the synthesis file would provide only minimal information on packages, but it was fast. Using the full hdlist file would provide all information about packages, but it was slow. Additionally, adding repositories via the Mandriva graphical tools automatically used the synthesis hdlist file, resulting in only minimal information being available on the packages in these repositories. The system also made it quite difficult to switch between the two options. The new system in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring remedies all these defects. The full hdlist files have been removed from the official repositories, and only the synthesis hdlist files remain. The synthesis hdlist file will always be used when initially adding a repository, making the operation fast. The extended information for each repository has been split up into several separate files in the XML format. urpmi and RPMdrake are able to automatically retrieve these files on demand: when you attempt to display, or query, the changelog for a package, the extended information file containing changelogs for the repository in which that package resides will be automatically downloaded, if it is not already available. These extended information files are stored, once downloaded, on the local system, and will only be re-downloaded if they change. It is possible to change the downloading behavior for these information files in Mandriva's graphical repository configuration tool. You can change it so that the extended information files are never downloaded, or are only downloaded when you choose to update the package lists. This will be useful if you have a very slow connection or a connection where you are charged per unit of data transferred (for example, a mobile phone data connection). Mandriva Online Mandriva Online, the applet which notifies you of available updates, will now show no icon if the system is up-to-date. This saves space in the tray. An icon will be displayed if updates are available or the applet is checking for updates, or requires user input of any kind. The applet also now waits several minutes after you log in to begin the first check for updates so that the system is not stressed with additional processes when the session starts. It also uses the new libnotify infrastructure to draw its notifications, making them more attractive and in line with notifications from other applications. New LAMP metapackage A metapackage (task package) has been added to this release to allow easy installation of a complete set of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP / Perl / Python) packages, making it simpler than ever to set up a typical web server on a Mandriva Linux system. This package and all its dependencies are present on the Free edition of this pre-release. Windows Vista support in migration wizard The transfugdrake tool and its migration-assistant backend now support migration of Windows Vista documents and settings.