JOM! MARI KITA KENALI LINUX MANDRIVA 2011

Mandriva Linux 2011 Release Notes

Introduction

This page contains important information for the Mandriva Linux (2011.0) release, code name Hydrogen.

The following topics are covered:

• General information about new features and major changes.
• Changes to the Mandriva installer and upgrade instructions for users of previous releases.
• Changes to supported hardware and drivers.
• Changes regarding software packages.
• Other technical information for experienced users.

Please also refer to Mandriva Linux 2011 Errata - the Errata for the 2011 release. The Errata page contains information on known bugs and problems in this 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.

Editions

Mandriva Desktop Linux 2011 is available in several different editions, listed below.

One Edition

The One edition is an installable live CD integrating some proprietary packages and is available free of charge.

Additional information is also available online:

• The Mandriva User Forums
• The Mandriva Wiki

System requirements

• 640 MB RAM (recommends 1Gb)
• 8 GB free HDD space
• VGA display with resolution 1024x768
• Keyboard, mouse
• DVD/flash for installation

Unsupported packages

GNOME, Xfce and other Desktop Environments (DE) and Window Managers (WM) are no longer included in the official Mandriva packages. Contribution packages from the Mandriva community are available for these desktop environments however. Starting from Mandriva Desktop 2011 only KDE Plasma Desktop is officially supported. If you need Mandriva with another DE or WM you can use unofficial packages or distributions prepared by community members (which are described below).

Available media

This release is available:

• As Free live-DVD for the x86-32 and x86-64 architectures, on one DVD each.
• As One live-DVD for the x86-32 and x86-64 architectures, on one DVD each.

Upgrading

Upgrading from previous releases

Upgrading between releases always has the potential to cause some problems. Upgrading is supported and we do test upgrades, but due to the huge range of possible packages and hardware configurations ,it is always the case that in your particular situation, the upgrade may cause a problem we did not anticipate. Therefore we recommend that you always back up your system prior to upgrading.

If you tested one of the Mandriva Desktop 2011 pre-releases (beta or RC), we advise you to remove all package sources and add them back using the Mandriva Control Center > Software Management > Configure media sources for install and update to be sure you have stable release media sources.

General Upgrade Steps

After taking the necessary precautions pointed out above, you can upgrade using the Free or Powerpack editions respective DVD's, and it should work well. You can also upgrade on-line. What that means is that the Mandriva update notification applet, Mandriva Online, will notify you that a new Mandriva Linux release (2011) is available, and ask if you wish to upgrade. If you agree, the upgrade will be carried out from within your running system, just like a regular system update. You should then be able to reboot into a working 2011 system. If you have disabled the applet or it is not automatically running for some reason, you can upgrade manually either using the GUI or the CLI. Both methods are outlined below.

Upgrade using the command line: urpmi

You can upgrade using urpmi in a terminal. Below are the steps you need to follow:

• First ensure your system is entirely up-to-date with the latest updates (when upgrading it's assumed that you have the latest updates available for your installed release, so for a smoother upgrade always make sure you have the latest updates) using this command as root in terminal:

su -

urpmi --auto-update -v

• Remove your existing repositories, either using:
  • The Mandriva Control Center > Software Management > Configure media sources for install and update OR
  • Using this command as root:

su -

urpmi.removemedia -av

• Add 2011.0 repositories.

• To start the upgrade process, run the following command, as root:

su -

urpmi --auto --auto-update --replacefiles 2>&1 | tee upgrade.log

This will save the output of the process to the file upgrade.log in the current directory, in case you need to check it later, or you have any problems. Once the process completes (without errors), you should reboot, and you should find the system has been fully updated to 2011.

Caution !
If you get any errors you should try and fix them before you reboot so as not to end up with a broken system e.g. without a graphical desktop (text console, aka tty, always works and can be used to fix most problems but is not as easy to use as a graphical desktop).

Advanced upgrade options

• You can add --download-all to the above command when upgrading, this is a brand new option in urpmi and will make it download all the packages first before trying to install them, this is useful in the case of internet connection failure during the upgrade process, since you can just relaunch the command and continue the process. Be aware though that this will requires quite some free space on the root / partition. Notice that urpmi displays info about the total size of the packages it's going to download, 10GB would usually be enough, but that depends on how many packages you have installed. You can also specify a location to download the rpms, in case the / partition is full and you have more free space say in your /home, you can do this using:

urpmi -v --auto-update --download-all /path/to/download/folder

• Another option, --noclean, will make urpmi not delete the rpms it downloads, you can then copy the rpms from /var/cache/urpmi/rpms to another machine and use them when upgrading. To use the cached rpms in a different installation, first remove the old sources and add the new ones as was explained above, then use one of the following methods:
  • Copy the rpms to /var/cache/urpmi/rpms/ on the machine you want to upgrade so that urpmi detects that they're already present and doesn't re-download them

OR

• • Add the directory containing the rpms as a urpmi source, you can do so using something like this:

su -

urpmi.addmedia -v local-repo /path/to/directory/containing/the/cached/rpms

• • replace /path/to/directory/containing/the/cached/rpms with the actual path to the cached rpms directory.

Please note!
Due to the compatibility reasons, some new packages will not be installed. In this list: systemd, knetworkmanager. If you need a full functionality of Mandriva 2011 you need to install these packages manually.

End of life distributions

When your distribution is no more officially supported (aka reached its end of life), a notification will be displayed through the mdkonline applet. It will offer to upgrade to a supported release. Currently 2009.0 will no longer receive desktop updates but will continue to receive base and security updates. 2008.1 and older releases have reached their End of Life and will no longer receive updates.

Mandriva tools

Mandriva installer

Version 2011 of Mandriva uses a hybrid iso-image. It allows to you to use it in various ways:

• as live-DVD (with possibility to install from live mode)
• as install-DVD
• as image for flash where you can boot to the live and/or install modes

To create live/install-DVD, you can use your favorite CD/DVD writer ( for more information, see the section called Writing CD and DVD images). To create bootable flash drive, you can use several methods:

Create a bootable flash drive via dd

For creation of a bootable flash drive using 'dd' command, open console and type the next commands:

su -

dd if=/path/to/iso/image of=/path/to/flash/drive bs=1M

where is /path/to/flash/drive is path to the your flash drive (usually it /dev/sdb).

Remove unused locales and hardware

Features for remove unused language locales and hardware packages was deleted from installer. And after that you may confused huge volume of update (for example kde4-l10n and similar) non needed in you system. You may remove that packets after install on hard disk, running this command

[user@mycomputer ~]$ /usr/sbin/remove-unused-packages

SimpleWelcome

SimpleWelcome is the completely new kickoff menu which is used in Mandriva 2011 instead of Kickoff. Compare to Kickoff, SimpleWelcome has many benefits:

• Simplicity
• Clearness
• Good look
• Tolerance for the newbies

While it has many features, you do not need to learn how to work with the SimpleWelcome. SimpleWelcome is a very simple application - like its name.

TimeFrame

TimeFrame is a new utility for Nepomuk. It allows you not to think in which folder you saved your photography, video or documents. You need only a date. If you know the date you will find everything. Information in TimeFrame is represented in "cloud" form, thus you can easily find what you need.

RocketBar

RocketBar is a next step in the KDE panel development. It has many new superb features:

• A 'program oriented' interface. RocketBar is divided in 3 zones. If you add an icon to the left zone it will not appear on the central zone while the application is running. If you run an application, using an icon that you don't have in the left zone, it will appear in the central zone.
• Possibility to increase panel height as you wish. No more limitation in panel size.
• Complete compositing effects support.

StackFolder

StackFolder is the next step in development of plasma-applet-folderview. It allows the user to obtain quick access to the frequently used directories. To use StaskFolder just drag-and-drop a folder from Dolphin file manager to the panel.

Sphere

Mandriva Sphere is the client for technical support. It allows the user to address directly to the technical support on several languages. For now it's available in two languages:

• English
• Russian.

Language is chosen automatically based on system locale settings. It is planned to add main European languages support in future releases.

Users may use client in two modes:

• anonymous (ticket tracking is based on provided email address)
• authorized with dedicated support account.

MandrivaSync

MandrivaSync is the cloud service from Mandriva. Like Ubuntu One, Apple iCloud and Dropbox it allows the user to store its data on the Mandriva's servers. Then, the user can get access to its data from any device that have MandrivaSync Client or access to the internet. Main features:

• 2 Gb of free space for the any MandrivaSync user.
• Possibility to get access to the data from the any device with MandrivaSync Client (currently only in Mandriva Desktop 2011) or through web-browser.
• Personal room.
• Possibility to specify an object for the synchronization and set auto-synchronization time.

Please note!
Currently service is in beta version only. We still not recommend to use it for the everyday work. Follow the news!

Mandriva Package Manager

Mandriva Package Manager (MPM) is a new package manager for Mandriva. Currently it is under heavy development and is not included in the distribution by default, but you can install it from repository. Please, help us to test MPM. After some period of testing we will include it into Mandriva by default (approximately into Mandriva 2011 LTS).

Desktop environments

KDE

KDE 4.6.5 is an upgrade in stability and functionality over KDE 4.4.5. This release will add many new features to KDE 4 with some brand new features. It should also provide a more stable desktop experience than KDE 4.4.5.

Nepomuk integration: Nepomuk technology has been further integrated. You will be able to organize your desktop depending on your projects, annotate documents, watch your documents, photos and videos through TimeFrame, search files in the Dolphin file manager and more.

Desktop applications

LibreOffice

Mandriva 2011 comes with LibreOffice 3.4.2. Compared to LibreOffice 3.2 in Mandriva 2010.2 it has many new features and improvements, which can made your work easier. LibreOffice 3.4.2 offers several new features for Calc, with faster performances and an improved compatibility with Excel spreadsheets, and Pivot Table – the new name of DataPilot – with support for unlimited numbers of fields and named range as data source. The user interface of Writer, Impress and Draw has been improved with many new features, and several cosmetic changes have been applied, with a better text rendering engine and an improved GTK+ theme integration.

Mozilla Firefox

As default internet browser Mandriva uses Mozilla Firefox 5.0.1. It was greatly improved since version 3.5 that is used in Mandriva 2010.2. New look, new features and, of course, it has great speed and security.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Instead of KMail, Mozilla Thunderbird is used as default mail client in Mandriva 2011. It has a many features which can be even improved without end due thanks to the powerful plugin system.

Clementine

Amarok was changed by Clementine. Clementine is inspired by Amarok version 1.4. Its much lighter and stable than Amarok. In spite of ease, it has many functions:

• Search and play your local music library.
• Listen to internet radio from Last.fm, SomaFM, Magnatune, Jamendo и Icecast.
• Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists.
• Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX.
• CUE sheet support.
• Lyrics and artist biographies and photos.
• Transcode music into MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, FLAC or AAC.
• Edit tags on MP3 and OGG files, organize your music.
• Copy your files directly to your pendrive/mobile...
• Queue manager.

And many more.

PiTiVi video editor

PiTiVi is a simple video editor. It has efficient and intuitive user interface and is carefully designed to suit both the newcomer and the professional. While it has a simple interface PiTiVi has enough features for your creativity:

• Unlimited video/audio track layers
• Full undo/redo history
• General clip manipulation
• Trimming, splitting/cutting
• Snapping
• Scrubbing
• Linking/grouping of clips
• Video effects
• Audio effects

• And many many more.

Shotwell

DigiKam was changed by Shotwell in Mandriva 2011. Shotwell is a new standard for the photo management in free software. Being one of such products like iPhoto it gives to user the most powerful experience. It lets you import photos from disk or camera, organize them in various ways, view them in full-window or fullscreen mode, and export them to share with others and much more.

KNetworkmanager

For managing the network connections in Mandriva 2011 uses NetworkManager+Knetworkmanager applet. It has several advantages over net_applet by Mandriva and better consistency with the system in a whole.

Choqok

Everyone has a microbloging account, so, starting this release, we ship choqok, a microbloging client. It is well integrated in KDE, runs quietly in the systemtray. You don't need to open a web-browser to share your thinks, do it directly from your desktop.

Base system

X server

X.Org 7.6 with X.Org X Server 1.10.3 is used in Mandriva Linux 2011.0 along with new drivers version for Intel,Nvidia and AMD/ATI graphic chipsets that should improve performance and stability.

Kernel 2.6.38.7

Mandriva 2011 comes with kernel 2.6.38. It has many improvements comparing to 2.6.33 which is used in Mandriva 2010.2. Of course, the most notable changes are improvements in hardware support, including ongoing improvements to support more LAN, Wi-Fi, audio, video hardware and many improvements with Brtfs,XFS,EXT3, EX4 file systems support.

Systemd

The service manager Sysvinit is replaced by systemd in Mandriva 2011. Systemd is a system and service manager for Linux, compatible with SysV and LSB init scripts. It provides aggressive parallelization capabilities, uses socket and D-Bus activation for starting services, offers on-demand starting of daemons, keeps track of processes using Linux cgroups, supports snapshotting and restoring of the system state, maintains mount and automount points and implements an elaborate transactional dependency-based service control logic.

RPM5

Starting from platform 2011 Mandriva uses RPM5 as default package manager. It has several advantages over RPM4 and gives to developers a more flexible environment to work.