Release notes ROSA Desktop.Fresh R2

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ROSA Desktop Fresh R2 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 R1 version was released.

Users who already work in ROSA Desktop Fresh R1 are able to update their systems to ROSA Desktop Fresh R2 from official repositories.

The R2 release is the latest update release planned by ROSA for the ROSA Fresh platform. In the second quarter of 2014, we are planning to present a new platform - ROSA Fresh 2.

Changes in technical part in comparison with previous release

Improvements in installer

  • If network is accessible during installation, then keyboard layout, language and time zone settings are chosen automatically using GeoIP.
  • Improved btrfs support
  • Improved Russian localization

Desktop Environment

The main Desktop Environment - KDE - has been updated to version 4.11.3. Besides updates, a set of issues and regressions were fixed (including several upstream problems). In addition, we have updated Phonon to version 4.7.0 and fixed a set of localization issues.

In the nearest future we will present ROSA Desktop Fresh R2 editions with GNOME and LXDE desktop environments.

User-level software updates

Popular user applications were updated to their latest versions:

  • LibreOffice 4.1.3 with improved KDE4 integration issue and Python 3 support
  • Clementine 1.2 with VKontakte support
  • Firefox 25.0.1
  • Thunderbird 24.1.1
  • Chromium 30
  • ROSA Media Player 1.6.9 with improved DVD support and enhanced set of codecs
  • KLook 2.0-12
  • Blender 2.69

System part

  • Kernel has been updated to version 3.10.19 with patches for MEI support in Intel processors and improved monitor detection
  • X-Server 1.14.4
  • Video drivers updates: Intel 2.99.905, NVIDIA 325.15, NVIDIA304 (for cards older than 8xxx) 304.88, AMD Catalyst (fglrx) 13.8
  • Mesa 9.2
  • FFmpeg 2.1 with Atrac3+ codec support
  • GCC 4.7 with Linaro improvements (4.8 is available in separate repository)
  • NetworkManager 0.9.8.2
  • Cups 1.7.0
  • All repositories are now connected and enabled out of the box, so user can get system updates just after installation
  • To simplify testing of updates by volunteers, we have created testing repositories which are easily accessible from Media Management tools (and disabled by default)
  • 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.
  • Draksec (a tool to configure access permissions for administrative functions) now supports printer and scanner setup
  • We now use sha512 for password encryption
  • A basic EFI support has been added to installer. Grub2 and efibootmanager allow to install ROSA on EFI machines in semi-automated way.
  • Grub2 in EFI mode is now able to detect Windows partitions and add them to boot menu

Systemd

Systemd has been updated to version 204. The following subsystems have been migrated to systemd:

  • Locale and keyboard layout management. Now they can be managed by both localectl and old-way drakkeyboard and draklocale tools
  • Time zones can be managed by both drakclock and new timedatectl
  • We have implemented our own mounting tool for EFI partitions which doesn't require efivars
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