Difference between revisions of "Release notes ROSA Desktop.Fresh R1"

Revision as of 10:02, 5 June 2013

About ROSA Desktop Fresh R1

ROSA Desktop.Fresh 2012 differs from its predecessors a lot. This platform was developed by ROSA company as an area for experiments with the freshest software components. The distribution is considered to be an experimental one and primarily contains freshest versions of user software and system tools. In addition, there will be no strict rules on package uptaes during the distribution life cycle.

You can find some information about known issues and workarounds of the release at the Errata page.

Distribution

ROSA Desktop.Fresh 2012 is available in the following editions:

1. ROSA Desktop.Fresh 2012 LiveDVD KDE4 Extended edition for i586 and x86_64 architectures with preinstalled codecs and proprietary components. Main, Non-free and Restricted repositories are enabled by default.

Additional editions:

2. ROSA Desktop.Fresh 2012 LXDE for i586 and x86_64 architectures.

3. ROSA Desktop.Fresh 2012 GNOME Edition (GNOME 3.3.6).

System requirements

• 780 MB RAM (recommends 2Gb - for the Live mode, as well)
• 10 GB free HDD space
• VGA display with resolution 1024x768 and PnP and EDID support
• Keyboard, mouse
• DVD/flash for installation
• Graphic cards: NVIDIA 8xxx and higher, ATI/AMD 5xxx and higher, Intel 965 and higher (HD series). Support for older cards is performed only by means of free drivers or can be absent at all.

Release Details

Desktop Environment

General

Thanks to new rasterizer from Adobe and Google, font smoothing has been improved significantly.

ROSA graphical theme has got a lot of modifications:

- Completely new slide show in the installer.

- New decoration for window titles (with "shadow" support).

- Renewed the set of widgets included to RocketBar by default.

- Implemented our brand ROSA Elementary theme for Chromuim/Google Chrome.

- Fixed issues discovered in the QgtkStyleAlt theme engine.

KDE 4.10.3

Besides migration from 4.9 to 4.10 by itself, one should highlight the following:

- fixes of several regressions in upstream 4.10 (in particular, fixed losing focus in lock screen password window when pressing the Alt key, including the case when one uses Alt+Shift for keyboard layout switching - KDE bug #319935)

- fixes for several bugs that have been present in upstream KDE for years (for example, partial reset of user settings concerning appearance after launch of KCM KDM - KDE bug #254430)

- fixes of different cosmetic issues

- improved quality of localization

ROSA brand-name tools:

- TimeFrame is now able to show video directly in the preview window.

- TimeFrame is now integrated with KLook.

- A new widget "All desktops" (Expo) has been added to RocketBar which displays all user desktops in a single grid. Number of virtual desktops available for user right after installation is increased from one to four.

The core ROSA features remain in place in the new KDE:

- a set of brand-name widgets (Simple Welcome, Stack Folder and others) used by default

- integration of Dolphin file manager with KLook tool used to preview files of different types

- extended KDE CC settings of font smoothing (possibility to enable/disable byte-code interpreter)

Later we will present updated Gnome 3.8.2 and LXDE desktops and ISO images based on them

User-level Software

• Libreoffice 3.6.6
• Firefox 21
• Thunderbird 17.0.5
• Chromium 27
• ROSA Media Player 1.6

ROSA Desktop Fresh R1 includes the new version of ROSA Media Player - 1.6 - with the following new features:

- complete integration with YouTube, including video search, possibility to choose stream quality, etc.

- possibility to record presentation from display and add audio from microphone or line-in.

- improved IPTV support;

- DVD menu support;

- significantly renewed module responsible for Internet browsing.

Cloud Support

Windows Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure, created by Microsoft for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.

Support for creation of Linux-based virtual machines is provided by RedHat, Novell, Canonical and some other vendors. And from now on, ROSA repositories also provide all necessary packages, tools and patches required for deploying guests with ROSA Fresh in Windows Azure.

Below you can find instructions on how to prepare virtual appliances:

• https://corpwiki.rosalinux.ru/index.php/Azure

New packages

• Steam - now you can connect this service and get access to a large variety of Linux games out of the box (requires proprietary NVIDIA or AMD video drivers). Note that Steam is targeted to 32-bit systems only, but you can try to use it in 64-bit system at your own risk.

System part

• All repositories are now connected and enabled out of the box, so user can get system updates just after installation
• In 64-bit systems, main and non-free repositories for 32-bit platform are enabled by default to make it possible to install such programs as skype, wine, teamviewer, steam and others that are absent in 64-bit repositories.

• Kernel 3.8.12

BFQ and zswap are disabled by default due to stability reasons

• Dracut 27

The latest version for kernel 3.8.x series

• Systemd
• usermod changes

The code has been merged with upstream (Fedora). Currently two modes are available for consolehelper: root with password request (link to config-util) and root without password (config-util-user). Now consolehelper-based programs should be organized in the following way: primary file (xyz) should be placed to /usr/sbin/ or other folder not accessible by user, /usr/bin/ should contain a link to consolehelper, there should be a rule named /etc/pam.d/xyz with content like the following:

#%PAM-1.0
auth		include		config-util
account		include		config-util
session		include		config-util

(or config-util-user)

and description in /etc/security/console.apps/

Draksec has been rewritten to use new rules. All other programs that use consolehelper have been updated, too.

• Modifications in sysvinit subsystem

As a part of migration to systemd, old init scripts have been completely dropped from the following subsystems:

• • DM subsystem. Dropped prefdm and lookupdm scripts. Added systemd services for the main DMs - KDM, GDM, SLiM, LightDM. Now to choose a DM one should run systemctl enable xyzdm.service; to disable it, run systemctl disable xyzdm.service. Note that configuration line in /etc/sysconfig/desktop related to DM selection is ignored from now on. DM can be also switched using drakedm.

• • Network subsystem. drakx-net has been completely dropped, we have also dropped network-up and network-auth parts from init scripts. Now we only have CLI (network) and NM subsystems.

• Added patches for X-Server 1.13.3 to improve monitor detection
• Intel video driver updated to 2.21.6
• NVIDIA 319.17 and NVIDIA304 (for cards prior to 8xxx) 304.88
• AMD Catalyst (fglrx) 13.4
• NetworkManager 0.98
• Complete migration to NM. drakx-net subsystem has been completely dropped.
• urpmi and rpmdrake now don't calculate orphaned packages by default; this significantly speeds up package installation and removal.
• urpmi and rpmdrake now install updates more aggressively - when updating a single package, by default all its dependencies will be updated automatically.
• '--download-all' option for urpmi is now set by default to avoid problems with large updates.
• pm-utils is replaced with systemd.

Power management is now performed using systemd. For compatibility with KDE, a hybrid solution based on modified upower is used.

• Consolekit и PolicyKit are completely dropped from the system

These components are obsolete and now they are replaced with systemd analogues. Session management is now performed by means of logind.