Difference between revisions of "Release notes ROSA Desktop.Fresh R3"

Latest revision as of 18:17, 5 May 2014

ROSA Desktop Fresh R3 is a regular update of the ROSA Fresh platform. The R series of distributions is targeted to those users who looks for fresh and full-functional software. This series is developed by ROSA with significant help of community. The release includes all updates, fixes and improvements implemented since the time the previous R3 version was released.

Users who already work in ROSA Desktop Fresh R3 are able to update their systems to ROSA Desktop Fresh R3 from official repositories.

Changes in technical part in comparison with previous release

Installer Improvements

• The initial system setup stage (previously launched after the first reboot) was included into the installation process so the users get a ready-to-run system right after the first reboot.
• Swap file support added; if the custom partitioning was configured without a swap partition, user will be prompted for the swap file in the root partition.
• Сreated partitions are aligned to megabytes instead of cylinders (optimal for SSD drives and modern HDD; no more unallocated areas between partitions).
• Some bugfixes for encrypted partitions creation and use.
• Maximum size of the automatically created root partition is now 20Gb.
• Time zones list can now be localized (at the moment, only Russian translation is present); the list was cleaned from the «garbage» items, and some rarely needed items were moved to the «Other» category.
• Keyboard layout is now set before the Time zone to ease the location search process by entering first letters of its translated name in the user’s native language.
• Default hardware clock setting (UTC or local time) is now automatically determined by comparing the BIOS clock value with rosalab.ru clock.

Desktop Environment

• The main Desktop Environment — KDE — has been updated to version 4.12.4.
• Improved integration of KDE with Firefox — now you can change KDE wallpaper by image context menu in Firefox.
• Improved work with devices supporting PTP protocol (e.g., cameras).
• Improved work with devices supporting MTP protocol (including Android 4.x smartphones).
• By default KNetworkManager is used to configure network connections, but a new tool named Plasma NM is available in repositories.

User-level software updates

Popular user applications were updated to their latest versions:

• Firefox 28.0
• Chromium 34
• Mozilla Thunderbird 24.4.0
• Clementime 1.2.2 (built with integration with Russian social networking service «VKontakte»)
• VLC 2.1.3

System Components

• Added urpmi-recover tool for RPM rollbacks management and GUI frontend for it.
• NetworkManager version 0.9.8.9
• ModemManager version 1.2.0 with MBIM support
• PulseAudio version 5.0
• OpenSSH version 6.6p1
• PHP version 5.5.11
• Now we use PostgreSQL version 9.3.3, though we still have PostgreSQL 9.0 as a separate package for compatibility with some software

Kernel and Drivers

• Kernel has been updated to version 3.10.34 with support for BFQ v.7.

In addition, we have backported several patches to improve the acpi backlight driver functionality for some laptop models (see хhttps://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60682 kernel bug 60682]).

• Ndiswrapper has beenm updated to version 1.59.
• Proprietary driver for Broadcom WiFi adapters has been updated to version 6.30. We have also fixed several critical errors in this driver that could lead to system crash.

Systemd

• Systemd has been updated to version 208
• Most of packages in distribution repositories heve been switched from old SysVInit to systemd.

ROSA Software Center

The first beta version of the new ROSA Software Center is now available for using and testing (urpmi rosa-software-center). We are planning to use it as a default GUI pakcage manager in our future releases.