Mandriva 1271 Published by

OpenMandriva Lx 2014 Alpha 2 has been released. Here the announcement:



Today is a good day in many senses: winter ended and OpenMandriva Lx 2014 Alpha2 is here!

To keep up to high standards we decided to move Beta to RC1 date, and have Alpha2 today, to deliver you new fun according to the promise. This change does not affect the final release date.

You can download it (Codename for this release is Phosphorus) here:

(32-bit)

https://abf.io/platforms/openmandriva2014.0/products/71/product_build_lists/2827

(64)bit

https://abf.io/platforms/openmandriva2014.0/products/70/product_build_lists/2828

Have fun with bug hunting and please report them here:

https://issues.openmandriva.org/

So what’s in?

Kernel and hardware support

OpenMandriva Lx 2014.0 has been improving with every iteration – we’ve tried to make sure that your system works in a stable yet powerful manner.

The kernel has been upgraded to 3.12.13 nrjQL – a powerful variant of the 3.12.13 kernel. The CPU and RCU have been configured with full preemption and boost mode, while we’ve also added the CK1 and BFQ patchsets to provide optimisations (including a better CPU load scheduler, better disk I/O scheduler, a better memory manager via UKSM, and TuxOnIce for better suspension and hibernation), designed with desktop system performance and responsiveness in mind.

Added support for SQUASHFS_MULTI_DECOMPRESSOR to allow make use of all CPU while booting from ISO which greatly speed up booting Live CD.

ARM

armv7hl (hardfloat) port of OpenMandriva available with RazorQt Desktop Environment. Port is ready for wandboard and qemu. With some skill it’s easy to run on any popular hardware like pogoplug, arndale, i.mx6, etc.

aarch64 (ARM64) image available in basesystem-minimal package, include: rpm5, coreutils, busybox, vim, ruby, perl, python, openssl, krb5 and lot’s of others.Ability to produce ARM64 rpms added to Automated Build Farm, and now finished two mass rebuilds of aarch64 platform.

Port to armv6 (Raspberry Pi) postponed to solve technical issues.

Boot process

Latest stable systemd 208 with all kind of “safe” updates from upstream and our specific patches makes boot faster than ever as based on experience of 4 years of supporting systemd.

A stable and working out-of-box dracut 036 version with our specific patches to support uvesafb and graphics driver blacklisting for dual graphics cards(nVIDIA Optimus) laptops.

X.org

Updated x11-server to 1.15.0 version and and Mesa to 10.0.2. to provide best graphics experience with free drivers.

Networking

Support for realmd for easy and out-of-box user authentication in network environment

We feature firewalld as a feature-rich replacement for drakfirewall and shorewall

Fresh artwork

We know you are hungry for it! – 2014 theme for desktop, Grub2, Plymouth, KSplash and KDE environment, new screensaver and user avatars.

Java

The java stack has been remade in cooker to be 100% compatible with Fedora 20, and the work backported to 2014.0.

Spotlight is a fully functional eclipse 4.3.1.

KDE

We’ve included the latest release of KDE 4.12.2 with our distribution, bringing with it the latest KDE stable, secure, and reliable KDE release:

We use Homerun as a new launcher and brand new OpenMandriva panel for best look and feel.

There are also some changes:

We feature plasma-mediacenter!

KMail is our default email client, which has improved greatly since our last release.

VLC is our default video player.

For more information about KDE 4.12.2, check out the KDE’s website.

Multimedia

We support IOS7 with latest ifuse and libimobiledevice also whole set of devices based on MTP protocol thanks to KDE’s kio-mtp application.

Office

Updated to LibreOffice 4.1.3 version

Web Browser

Firefox has been updated to version 27, with bugfixes and new features.

For more information, see Mozilla’s website

Drakx tools

A refreshed drakxtools with many bugfixes with important fix to ldetect and XFdrake to finally support graphic cards recognition.

Installer

Currently we are still working on EFI support.

End user orientation

Added Join and Donate desktop activators to ease our users to help community.

Server

We finally finished a switch from MySQL to MariaDB keeping best packaging practices based on our policy and experience.

For those who want SimpleWelcome:

1. Install rosa-launcher package as a superuser

urpmi rosa-launcher

2. After installation un-lock the desktop by clicking right mouse button on desktop or panel and choose un-lock widgets.

3. Click one more time with your right mouse button on desktop and choose add widgets.

4. From list of available new widgets on bottom of your screen choose SimpleWelcome and simply drag’n’ drop this widget on panel or desktop – wherever you want.

5. You can remove homerunlaucher from default place on left bottom of OpenMandriva panel

For more information please follow 2014.0 release notes .
  OpenMandriva Lx 2014 Alpha 2 released