ROSA DESKTOP 2012 Release Candidate

System components

Software updates

• Kernel 3.6.7 with nrj patches to improve work at Desktops. Vanilla, PAE and RT kernels are available in repositories, as well.
• Kernels with CK1 +BFS +BFQ +TOI support are prepared, as well
• XServer 13 with the latest drivers. When migrating to a new version, we have tried to preserve support for old video cards as much as possible.
• Mesa 9
• Systemd 194
• Dracut 024
• Grub 2
• Qt4 4.8.4
• Plasma Desktop 4.9.4
• Firefox 17
• Thunderbird 17
• LibreOffice 3.6.2
• Chromium 23.0.1271.95
• ffmpeg 1.0.1
• RPM 5.4.10
• gcc 4.7
• glibc 2.15

The latest versions of firmware and proprietary drivers are available in repositories, as well.

Boot

• EFI/UEFI support is integrated in the main ISO images (a signed loader to work with SecureBoot is expected to appear in the release).
• After installation, GRUB2 automatically detects and sets up the best screen resolution for the system
• Install in basic mode boot item is added to be able to launch installer on as many hardware as possible. Use this mode if you are experiencing problems with normal mode.
• Live and Install modes use text-mode plymouth theme to speed up booting.
• Bot services are optimized to speed up overall system boot time
• Added items to enable hibernating

Hardware

A set of issues with hardware detection was solved:

• Improved support for modern devices and graphic cards
• Fixed problem with OSS functionality. Use cuse and ossp to work with OSS.
• Fixed issues with Synaptic touchpads.
• Fixed a set of issues with printer detection.
• Reworked firmaware handling and loading. In particular, now proper wi-fi modules are always loaded correctly and wi-fi work is much more stable.
• Improved work with modems. Implemented request for PIN code.
• Improved stability of network connections managed by NetworkManager. Fixed issues with DNS record handling.

KDE4 and ROSA Tools

• Plasma Desktop load time is decreased significantly (the gain varies from 30% to 40% depending on hardware configuration).

• Totally renewed graphic theme:
  • new GRUB2 them. ROSA patches for GRUB2 developed to make it possible to apply such a theme are pushed to Upstream;

• • New Plymouth theme.

• • KSplash, KDM and desktop now use unified themes.
  • More then 30 new items are added to ROSA brand-name set of icons. In addition, icons were improved for better integration not only with KDE, but with GNOME 3, to.

• • QgtkStyleAlt theme engined developed by ROSA is enhanced with possibilities to drag windows of KDE applications by menu and toolbar without a need to press any additional acceleration keys.
  • ROSA brand-name desktop theme is reworked significantly: the appearance became more contemporary, the areas that can be used to drag a window are now highlighted explicitly, and so on;

• Lots of improvements in the major component of semantic desktop - TimeFrame 2.0:
  • Added possibility to send messages to social networking services (these features are not included in the ISO image at the moment but available in repositories);
  • fixed issue which allowed to post empty comments for messages;
  • renewed graphical theme;
  • overall refactoring was performed which allowed to improve speed and response time.

• A lot of optimizations and new features have been implemented in SimpleWelcome 2.0:
  • optimized work with groups - now it's much more easier to add end remove icons from groups;
  • added possibility to fasten recently launched applications at the "Welcome" tab;
  • added possibility to clean the list of recently used documents;
  • implemented pop-up windows with hints for icons;
  • now if you have screen resolution of 1920x1080 or higher, the group preview includes 9 icons;
  • implemented work with system DnD (Drag and Drop);
  • fixed lots of issues, improved design, performed overall code refactoring, improved speed and response time. .

• KLook is updated to 2.0, the new features include:
  • Possibility to work with remote file systems using SMB, WebDav, FTP and other popular protocols. If the file being opened with KLook is an image or multimedia file then it is automatically downloaded to a temporary place and displayed, otherwise general information about the file is displayed.
  • Lots of optimizations were performed in the rendering process that allowed to significantly increase quality of the image shown.

• Many issues and errors are fixed in the RocketBar panel:
  • thanks to different optimizations, RocketBar now consumes less resources;
  • implemented correct integration of LibreOffice and Mozilla Thunderbird applications.

• In the StackFolder tool, several issues were fixed and memory leaks were detected and eliminated when working with images of large size.

• ROSA Media Player has got a renewed graphical theme and several bug fixes:
  • Fixed issues with rendering of background of a video playback window;
  • fixed issue with streaming mms-video playback (both in the player itself and in the Internet browser integration plugin);
  • dropped ISO files support in ROMP for Windows;
  • for DVD devices the /dev/cdrom device file is used by default if /dev/dvd is absent in the system.

Tools and Configuration

• Drakx Tools
  • improved detection of graphic cards and monitors. Proprietary drivers are now correctly configured automatically, including necessary options for Grub2;
  • improved detection of keyboard possibilities;
  • when adding repositories, all available sources are activated by default- Main, Contrib, Non-free and Restricted;
  • fixed bug with switching keyboard layouts in virtual consoles;
  • ROSA Control Center (drackonf) is replaced with a set of corresponding tools in the KDE4 Control Center;
  • the work has been started on refactoring of drakx tools aimed to their actualization and improvement;

• Fixed issues with Samba in KDE4;
• The KDE4 Font Settings modules now has possibility to disable bytecode interpreter. This allows to improve appearance of some fonts in cases when sub-pixel rendering is not used.

User Software

• Fixed issue with Inkscape crashing in some situations when displaying "Open File" and similar dialogue windows.
• A new YouMagic application - a SIP-client developed by МТТ mobile operator - is added to the default ISO image. More details here: http://www.youmagic.com.
• Default ISO image now contains popular games - KMines, KLines and KPatience.