Difference between revisions of "ROSA Desktop Fresh R9 Release Notes"

Latest revision as of 12:13, 30 November 2017

ROSA Desktop R9 is the first release based on new packages platform 2016.1. The distributive is targeted mainly to the Linux advocates eager to try the new software versions. According to the updates policy the R9 version of the ROSA distribution will have 4 years of technical support.

Technical part changes in comparison with previous R8 release:

• Most of the system libraries, compilers and system/user software were updated to their new/latest versions (glibc, boost, gcc, clang etc)
• A new additions to the repos were made such as ldc (the D language compiler), meson (an open source powerful build system) and many others.
• Added the glibc patch drastically boosting the loading speed of the dynamic shared objects (DSO)
• The Provides QML-generator was added into RPM
• Some installation issues and Live mode booting issues were fixed (for some systems)
• Kernel version is 4.9.20 LTS which permits the R9 installation on the latest Intel Skylake machines
• Some serious issues affecting the hibernation mode for kernel 4.9 on 32-bit systems were fixed
• Mesa version 17.0.3 with OpenGL support up to version 4.5 and improved performance for video games running on the free video drivers. The support for the new API Vulkan is also included.
• The proprietary NVidia drivers now use external GLVND libraries which helps the debug process and to avoid some graphical software issues.
• The proprietary AMD driver AMDGPU PRO was added into ROSA 64-bit repositories (experimental feature)
• The support for the proprietary driver fglrx was dropped.
• The input devices in X11 now use libinput
• The Firefox 32-bit version crash issue on YouTube and some other sites was fixed.
• The RPM repositories were reorganized, some popular packages were added to the Main repo (darktable, rawtherapee, krita, synfigstudio, LMMS, ardour, librecad, geany, boomaga, sigil, qbittorrent, deluge, smplayer, remmina etc) which means the improved QA quality for those packages from now on during the versions upgrade.
• Added OpenCL for FFmpeg

Desktop environments

The R9 was released with two officially supported graphical desktop environments, KDE 4 and Plasma 5. The release notes for those environments see at the relevant wiki pages together with downloading links. The community releases of GNOME 3, LXQt and MATE are also planned.