Contents * 1 Introduction * 2 General information about new features and major changes + 2.1 Editions * 3 Deprecation + 3.1 kernel-laptop removed * 4 Changes to supported hardware and drivers + 4.1 High memory support (up to 4GB) in kernel-desktop586 (Mandriva Linux One) + 4.2 gspca-supported webcams working out of the box * 5 Changes regarding installation + 5.1 New installer + 5.2 Post-install streamlining in One installer * 6 Changes regarding Mandriva tools + 6.1 New default authentication scheme + 6.2 Orphan package detection in urpmi + 6.3 Repository update type changes in repository configuration tool restricted + 6.4 Font size and physical DPI * 7 Other Changes + 7.1 LEGACY_PTY_COUNT is now 0 Introduction This page contains important information the Mandriva Linux 2009 release. The following topics are covered: * General information about new features and major changes * Changes to the Mandriva installer and upgrade instructions for Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring users * Changes to supported hardware and drivers * Changes regarding software packages * Other technical information for experienced users Please also refer to Mandriva Linux 2009 Errata - the Errata for the 2009 release. The Errata page contains information on known bugs and problems in the release and instructions on fixing, avoiding or working around them. For a more detailed and graphical introduction to the most obvious user-visible changes in this release, please see the Release Tour. Mandriva Linux 2009 is not yet released. These release notes currently cover the pre-releases of Mandriva Linux 2009. The current pre-release is Mandriva Linux 2009 RC 2. General information about new features and major changes Mandriva Linux 2009 includes (or will include) the following versions of the major distribution components: kernel 2.6.27, X.org 7.3, KDE 4.1.2 (and 3.5.10 in /contrib), GNOME 2.24, Mozilla Firefox 3, OpenOffice.org 3. Editions Mandriva Linux 2009 will be available in several different editions: * the One edition will be an installable live CD integrating the latest proprietary drivers, available free of charge * the Powerpack edition will include support, services, a wider range of packages, and many third-party proprietary applications such as (but not necessarily including) LinDVD, Scilab and 03 Spaces. The list of commercial applications in 2009 Powerpack has not yet been finalized; a definitive list will be provided closer to the time of release. * the Free edition will be a pure free / open source software edition, without any of the non-free packages bundled with other editions, available as a free download For more information on the editions in which the latest Mandriva Linux 2009 pre-release is available, see the specific page. For more information on the various editions, see Choosing the Mandriva Linux edition that's right for you. Additional information is also available online: * List of Compatible/Certified Computers and The detailed Mandriva Hardware Database * The Mandriva User Forums * The Mandriva Wiki Deprecation kernel-laptop removed The kernel-laptop flavor of the official kernel no longer exists in Mandriva Linux 2009. It had few remaining customizations as compared to the kernel-desktop flavor. Some of these were now irrelevant and have been removed; the others were now safe to add to the kernel-desktop flavor (and will benefit desktop users in terms of increased power efficiency). So the kernel-desktop flavor is now as efficient for laptops as kernel-laptop previously was, and will be used on all desktop and laptop systems. Changes to supported hardware and drivers High memory support (up to 4GB) in kernel-desktop586 (Mandriva Linux One) In previous releases, the kernel-desktop586 kernel flavor - which is mainly intended for supporting legacy systems with true i586 (Intel Pentium or compatible) processors, as the most common kernel-desktop flavor supports only i686 (Pentium II or compatible) and newer processors - supported only up to 1GB of RAM. This was decided on the basis that a system with an i586 processor was very unlikely ever to have more than 1GB of RAM. However, since the introduction of the One edition of Mandriva Linux, it has used this kernel in order to ensure that One can be used on the widest possible range of hardware, with the consequence that One would by default never support more than 1GB of RAM. With systems with more than 1GB of RAM becoming commonplace, with this release we have adjusted kernel-desktop586 to support up to 4GB of RAM, as the kernel-desktop flavor does. Our testing indicates that any performance compromise resulting from this on true i586 systems will be very small, so this should not unduly inconvenience the small proportion of users actually running Mandriva Linux on i586 processors. gspca-supported webcams working out of the box With Mandriva Linux 2009, the dozens of webcams supported by the gspca driver will work out of the box, with no configuration or package installation necessary. In earlier Mandriva Linux releases support for these webcams was available only upon manual installation of a driver package. Changes regarding installation New installer With Mandriva Linux 2009, the traditional installer (DrakX) has been completely overhauled, with a substantial rewrite and a completely new interface. These changes make the installer more attractive, powerful and easy to use. Post-install streamlining in One installer The One installer (different from the traditional DrakX installer) now has improved post-install streamlining abilities. After it has completed installation, it will automatically remove drivers for hardware that is not present on your system and localization packages for languages you do not use. This will reduce the future boot time and disk space usage of the installed system. Changes regarding Mandriva tools New default authentication scheme Mandriva Linux 2009 introduces a new authentication scheme called tcb - the alternative to shadow. The tcb suite is designed to better protect user passwords when fully switched to the tcb scheme (each user has access only to their own shadow password via /etc/tcb/(username)/shadow instead of a global /etc/shadow file). It also works with the old shadow scheme, which is the default usage in Mandriva Linux. A tool called set_tcb is included to automate switching back and forth between shadow and tcb passwords. The pam_tcb module is fully backwards-compatible with pam_unix and as a result most, if not all, PAM configuration files that use pam_unix will continue to work, provided the system still uses /etc/shadow (pam_unix compatibility will not work if the system is using tcb passwords). Another advantage to using pam_tcb is the ability to use stronger blowfish, sha256c, or sha512c passwords instead of md5 passwords. By default, new installations will use blowfish for passwords. Upgrading to Mandriva Linux 2009.0 from previous versions of Mandriva Linux will not automatically migrate PAM configuration files and will rely on pam_unix compatibility, which will also continue to use md5 passwords. To take full advantage of the new password hashes, PAM configurations (notably the /etc/pam.d/system-auth file) will need to be updated to call pam_tcb directly. This can also be managed with the set_tcb tool. Existing MD5-based passwords will continue to work, and new or changed passwords will use the chosen hash. There should be no changes when using LDAP or NIS for authentication. Orphan package detection in urpmi The Mandriva package manager, urpmi, has been given the capability to detect and remove 'orphan' packages - packages which were installed as dependencies of other packages that have since been removed. Whenever you complete an urpmi operation, you will be notified of currently installed 'orphan' packages. You can remove them with the command: urpme --auto-orphans Note that this system is not capable of detecting pre-existing orphans, if you update from an earlier version of Mandriva Linux to Mandriva Linux 2009. Only packages that are both installed and subsequently become orphans following the installation of Mandriva Linux 2009 will be picked up by this system. Repository update type changes in repository configuration tool restricted In Mandriva Linux 2009, by default, you can no longer change whether a repository is considered an update repository or not. There is very little need for anyone to change this status, and we found that in previous releases, some users would mistakenly set repositories that should not be update repositories as update repositories - for instance, backports repositories - and end up installing packages they did not need, with negative consequences. This is why we have changed the application so this status cannot be changed. If for some reason you really must change this status - for instance, you really want to update all packages from backports repositories, and you accept that this can cause applications to break - you must run the application from a console, in expert mode: drakrpm-edit-media --expert However, we reiterate that it is usually a bad idea to change this status for any repository. Font size and physical DPI Previous releases of Mandriva Linux have attempted to set the correct DPI (dots per inch) value for your system's monitor. This DPI value is subsequently used by the desktop when rendering fonts. This system is intended to ensure that a '10 point' sized character is rendered with the exact same physical size on any monitor. While a laudable goal, this system has never worked without problems. Aside from bizarre results when the DPI detection system fails, no desktop environment's interface is yet fully resolution independent, which means that on a high DPI screen (usually a small monitor with a high native resolution, such as many modern laptop displays), characters could be much larger than the interface elements they are supposed to match (which are designed to be a certain number of pixels in size and will consequently vary in physical size on different monitors). Similar problems often occur on websites, which are often designed with specific sizes in pixels in mind and do not consider the issues associated with the goal of resolution independence. Briefly, the computing world as most people experience it is not designed to accommodate the ideal of resolution independence. With Mandriva Linux 2009 we have therefore decided to succumb to the convention of most other operating systems and distributions and set the same DPI value for all monitors, regardless of what the correct value should be. The value that will be set is 96 dpi, which is the value used in most operating systems. This will result in characters of the same point size appearing physically larger or smaller depending on the actual physical size and resolution of your monitor, as many users are accustomed to in Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X, and as many applications and web sites are designed to expect. Users whose eyes are not equal to the task of reading a tiny '10 point' font on a high-resolution laptop screen can still adjust the DPI value in the KDE or GNOME Control Center, or simply increase the default font sizes. More information can be found here. Other Changes LEGACY_PTY_COUNT is now 0 Legacy pty (/dev/ttyxx) are still enabled in our kernel but we now create none by default, to save several seconds of boot time. If you need some for an obsolete application, you can add the boot parameter pty.legacy_count=32 (or another number depending on your needs).