   Mandriva Linux 2008.0 Release Notes

   The latest version of these release notes can be read on
   http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/2008.0/Notes. After
   Mandriva Linux is released, Mandriva continues to update the release
   notes with the latest content, changes, and errata.

   Contents

        * 1 Introduction
        * 2 General information about new features and major changes
        * 3 Deprecation
             + 3.1 Support for loopback-based encrypted filesystems
             + 3.2 PHP 4.x deprecated
             + 3.3 IIIMF input methods deprecated
        * 4 Changes to the Mandriva installer
             + 4.1 Modular IDE drivers and new libata stack
             + 4.2 Package selection
             + 4.3 UUID support
             + 4.4 Faster operations on partitions
        * 5 Package management
             + 5.1 Chroot environments
             + 5.2 Suggested packages
             + 5.3 New menu layout
        * 6 Changes to supported hardware and drivers
             + 6.1 Supported hardware
             + 6.2 Required firmware for Broadcom wireless adapters
             + 6.3 Alternative open source drivers for ATI graphics cards
             + 6.4 RandR 1.2 support in X.org
             + 6.5 Default NTFS write support
             + 6.6 Support for the Belgian eID card
             + 6.7 Changes to TV card support
        * 7 Kernel changes
             + 7.1 Naming
             + 7.2 Source and headers
             + 7.3 CFQ scheduler
             + 7.4 AppArmor
             + 7.5 Modular IDE drivers
             + 7.6 New devicescape wireless stack
        * 8 Changes regarding software packages
             + 8.1 KDE 4 preview
             + 8.2 XFS no longer used
             + 8.3 Liberation fonts included
             + 8.4 Changes to the NVIDIA and ATI proprietary driver packages
                  o 8.4.1 NVIDIA
                  o 8.4.2 ATI
             + 8.5 Man pages now compressed with LZMA
             + 8.6 New development package naming policy
             + 8.7 Compiz Fusion replaces Beryl
             + 8.8 Services no longer restarted when updating glibc
        * 9 GCC 4.2 not advised for Java development
        * 10 PHP
             + 10.1 PHP and Suhosin
             + 10.2 PHP 4.x is deprecated

 Introduction

   This page contains important information the Mandriva Linux 2008
   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 2007 Spring users
     * Changes to supported hardware and drivers
     * Changes regarding software packages
     * Other technical information for experienced users

   Please also refer to Mandriva Linux 2008 Errata - the Errata for the
   2008 release. The Errata page contains information on known bugs and
   problems in the release and instructions on fixing, avoiding or working
   around them.

 General information about new features and major changes

   Mandriva Linux 2008 includes the following versions of the major
   distribution components: kernel 2.6.22, X.org 7.2, KDE 3.5.7, GNOME
   2.20.0, Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6, OpenOffice.org 2.2.1. Other major new
   features are the merging of the Beryl and Compiz 3D desktop
   technologies into Compiz Fusion, a new network management tool, and a
   Windows documents and settings migration tool. You can find a detailed
   introduction to the most interesting new features, with screenshots, in
   the Mandriva Linux 2008 Release Tour.

   Mandriva Linux 2008 is available in several different editions:
     * One is a single CD edition which includes the latest proprietary
       drivers, available for download free of charge. It can be run as a
       live CD as well as installed to the hard disk.
     * Powerpack is a DVD edition which includes support, services, and
       important third-party proprietary software like LinDVD, Cedega, the
       Fluendo multimedia codecs, Flash Player, Scilab and 03 Spaces. It
       is available from the Mandriva Store.
     * Free is a 3-CD / 1-DVD edition made up entirely of free / open
       source software, without any of the non-free software bundled with
       other editions. It is available for download free of charge.

   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
     * The Mandriva Club

 Deprecation

 Support for loopback-based encrypted filesystems

   Mandriva Linux has for some time included a tool named drakloop which
   can create and mount encrypted filesystems using the loopback technique
   via the losetup utility. This method of creating encryption is
   vulnerable to certain types of attack and is deprecated by the upstream
   kernel in favor of systems based on the new devicemapper framework.
   LUKS is the most prominent example of such a system.

   As of Mandriva Linux 2008, loopback-based encryption is deprecated in
   Mandriva Linux. Support will still be available for these filesystems,
   but we recommend all users begin the process of migrating to newer
   encryption systems. Support for loopback-based encryption may well be
   removed in future Mandriva Linux releases.

 PHP 4.x deprecated

   PHP 4.x is deprecated and removed from Mandriva Linux 2008. See the PHP
   section for details.

 IIIMF input methods deprecated

   The IIIMF input methods (which were never installed by default) have
   now been officially deprecated and removed from Mandriva Linux. The
   default input methods set is still SCIM. Scim-bridge is now installed
   by default for the benefit of applications installed from third-party
   packages which are not compiled with SCIM support (such as Mozilla
   Firefox or OpenOffice.org if installed using the packages found on the
   respective websites).

 Changes to the Mandriva installer

 Modular IDE drivers and new libata stack

   The old PATA drivers are now compiled as modules (see #Modular IDE
   drivers under #Kernel changes below). Due to this, the installer can
   now use either these old drivers or the new group of drivers based on
   the libata stack.

   The installer defaults to using the old drivers for consistency and
   reliability reasons: using the new drivers by default was tested but
   found to be troublesome.

   When a controller is supported only by the new drivers, installation to
   partitions beyond the 15th on PATA disks is no longer supported by
   default.

   To install to a partition beyond the 15th, the installation kernel must
   be started with the parameter noauto, which will allow manual selection
   of an appropriate legacy PATA driver, which in turn will support up to
   63 partitions per PATA disk, as in previous Mandriva releases.

   People needing complex disk layouts can also use LVM, which offers a
   more flexible system to create volumes.

 Package selection

   The package selection stage of installation has been split into three
   levels of granularity. At the highest level, the installer simply
   allows you to select a KDE, GNOME or IceWM desktop. There is also an
   option for more detailed selection, which if chosen brings you to the
   familiar stage where different package groups can be selected. At this
   stage you can still also select individual package selection for
   complete package-by-package control over what will be installed.

 UUID support

   The installer now supports using UUIDs to identify partitions for
   mounting, rather than the traditional system of using the /dev/hd* and
   /dev/sd* nodes. This can be useful in situations where the hd* and sd*
   nodes could become confused or inconsistent due to the introduction of
   new controllers, USB storage devices and so on. However, this system is
   not used by default. To enable it, pass the kernel parameter use_uuid
   to the installer.

 Faster operations on partitions

   By default, the installer configures file systems to use the relatime
   option. This option greatly reduce the amount of I/O spent by the
   system in updating access date when a file is read or when a directory
   is browsed. Thus the load of both desktop and server machines is
   greatly reduced and lot of I/O tasks complete faster.

   For laptops, the installer still default to noatime in order to ease
   power management.

   Similarly, the sync option is no more used for FAT file systems such as
   on floppies. It has been replaced by the flush option which make
   operations way faster on such FAT formated devices.

 Package management

   See also Improvements to rpmdrake and Improvements to urpmi in the
   Mandriva Linux 2008 Release Tour.

 Chroot environments

   rpm, gurpmi, rpmdrake and urpmi now support chroot environments through
   the --rpm and --urpmi-root options. See the respective manpages for
   full details.

 Suggested packages

   Rpm, urpmi, rpmdrake and the installer now support Suggests tags in RPM
   packages. When Package A suggests Package B, B will be automatically
   installed when you install A, but it can subsequently be removed
   without causing the removal of A. You can also use the --no-suggests
   command line parameter to prevent urpmi from installing suggested
   packages. This allows us to provide full featured packages while still
   enabling users to optimize their system by removing packages they do
   not need.

 New menu layout

   A new menu layout has been introduced. This menu is a merger between
   the old simplified and Mandriva menu layouts. It is flatter than the
   old Mandriva layout, with no more than two levels below the top level
   used at any point.

   Applications that are native to the current desktop (KDE / Qt
   applications in KDE, GNOME / GTK+ applications in GNOME) will be
   displayed at the first level below the top level, and non-native
   applications will be at the second level. Exceptions are used to make
   applications that are commonly used outside their native desktop appear
   at the top level in all cases.

 Changes to supported hardware and drivers

 Supported hardware

   In addition to the improved graphics card support discussed above,
   support for other devices has been added or improved. Notable changes
   include support for:
     * NVIDIA Geforce 8400, 8500 and 8600 series graphics cards
     * Intel 4965AGN wireless chipsets
     * Intel Santa Rosa drive controllers
     * ATI SB700 chipset motherboards
     * Many newer onboard sound devices using the High Definition Audio
       codec, particularly on motherboards using Intel chipsets
     * Wacom Graphire and Intuos tablet input devices
     * Realtek 8187 USB and ZyDAS ZD1211/ZD1211B USB wireless controllers

 Required firmware for Broadcom wireless adapters

   Mandriva Linux 2008 includes a native driver for Broadcom wireless
   adapters. This driver requires firmware from the Windows driver to be
   useful. We cannot ship the firmware itself or an appropriate copy of
   the Windows driver along with Mandriva Linux 2008 for legal reasons.

   When you try to configure such an adapter, Mandriva will prompt you for
   a Windows driver, and offer to try and find it from your Windows
   partition. This will often work. If you cannot find an appropriate
   driver on your Windows partition, or you do not have one, you should
   download the Windows driver linked from this page. Make sure to
   download the driver marked Version 3 firmware. Then simply select that
   file when the Mandriva network configuration tool prompts you for the
   driver, and you will be able to enable and use your wireless card.

 Alternative open source drivers for ATI graphics cards

   There are several different drivers available for various ATI graphics
   cards in Mandriva Linux 2008 that may be of interest in certain
   situations. This entry concerns the free software set of drivers. Some
   notes on the proprietary drivers may be found further down this
   document.

   By default, all ATI graphics cards up to but not including the Radeon
   X1xxx generation (r500 chipset) are supported by the driver in the
   x11-driver-video-ati package, which is version 6.6 of the X.org ati
   driver. This version has been determined to work reliably on the most
   cards. However, if you have trouble with this driver, the alternative
   x11-driver-video-ati_6.7 package contains version 6.7 of the same
   driver. The package is available in the contrib repository. Following
   the instructions on the Installing and removing software page to add
   remote repositories and install packages, you should be able to install
   this package with the Mandriva software management tools. Installing
   this package will automatically cause the x11-driver-video-ati package
   to be removed, and the 6.7 version driver will replace the 6.6 version.
   No further action is required except to restart the computer: the new
   version of the driver will then be used immediately. You can revert to
   the 6.6 version of the driver by reversing the procedure.

   By default, X1xxx and HD 2xxx series cards (r500 and r600) chips will
   almost all use the X.org vesa driver, which is a generic driver that
   works on any graphics card by using an industry standard interface that
   all cards implement. This, however, makes it very slow (as native
   acceleration provided by the card is not used). Two native drivers are
   available for these cards, but both are in a very early stage of
   development, so we chose not to use them by default in Mandriva Linux
   2008 for most cards.

   Three particular cards that have been tested by users and reported to
   work well will use the avivo driver by default. This driver is
   contained in the x11-driver-video-avivo package. The avivo driver was
   the first free software driver to be developed for the r500 and r600
   chips - it actually supports only r500 cards. Development on the avivo
   driver was recently stopped in favour of a new driver, radeonhd.

   The radeonhd driver is based on specifications provided to its authors
   by ATI / AMD. It is also available in Mandriva Linux 2008 in the
   x11-driver-video-radeonhd package. As it was initiated very late in
   Mandriva Linux 2008 development, there was no time to test it to see if
   it could be used by default on any cards.

   If you have an r500 or r600 chipset-based card and would like to
   experiment with the avivo or radeonhd drivers, you may install the
   packages if necessary (they will likely be installed already on a
   default installation) and use the drakx11 graphics card configuration
   tool to select the driver, which you will find in the Xorg category at
   the bottom of the list.

 RandR 1.2 support in X.org

   The X.org shipped in Mandriva Linux 2008 contains support for version
   1.2 of the RandR protocol, which handles dynamic changes in the
   configuration of attached monitors. This version is a major improvement
   from the previous 1.1 version, with new features including dynamic
   detection of attached monitors (so X.org knows when you plug in or
   unplug a monitor, when RandR 1.2 is in use). Only a few drivers support
   the RandR 1.2 protocol: the intel driver for Intel 810 and later
   graphics adapters, the ati_6.7 version of the ati driver for ATI
   graphics cards (see above for details on the two versions of this
   driver included in Mandriva Linux 2008), and the nv open source driver
   for NVIDIA graphics cards (which includes RandR 1.2 support only for
   GeForce 8xxx series cards).

   Mandriva has written and included an improved version of the krandr KDE
   panel applet, which supports the RandR 1.2 protocol. If you are using
   one of the drivers which supports the RandR 1.2 protocol, you should
   find that you can use this applet to control the layout of dual-screen
   setups, and to configure newly plugged in monitors without restarting
   X. If your driver only supports the older RandR 1.1 protocol, the more
   restricted features you are used to will still be available.

 Default NTFS write support

   In Mandriva Linux 2008, drives and partitions formatted with the NTFS
   file system will be writable by default (via the use of the ntfs-3g
   driver). This applies to both conventional internal disks and to
   external disks, USB storage devices and so on.

 Support for the Belgian eID card

   Support has been added for the Belgian national electronic identity
   card system. The acr38u package contains a driver for the most commonly
   used card reader (the one distributed by the government), and the beid
   package provides the tools that allow the card to be used. The acr38u
   package will be automatically installed if the card reader is connected
   to the computer during installation.

 Changes to TV card support

   TV cards are now automatically configured by the kernel, and the more
   commonly used TV viewing applications now come with their own channel
   scanners. In view of this, the Mandriva drakxtv TV card configuration
   tool is no longer used by the installer or the Mandriva Control Center.

 Kernel changes

   Mandriva Linux 2008 uses Linux kernel 2.6.22, updated from 2.6.17 in
   Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring. This involves many significant changes.

 Naming

   The kernel package has now adopted the kernel-tmb spec file, which
   means that the kernel packages have been renamed. kernel-desktop is the
   new name of kernel, kernel-server is the new name of kernel-enterprise,
   and kernel-desktop586 is the new name of kernel-legacy. A kernel-laptop
   package is also introduced, which contains several customizations
   useful to laptops in terms of reducing power usage.

 Source and headers

   The official kernel packages have now adopted the kernel-tmb style for
   source and headers. Each kernel package now has its own -devel package
   - e.g. kernel-desktop586-devel - which contains the source and headers
   necessary for building external kernel modules. This is the package you
   should install if you need to compile external kernel modules. The
   single kernel-source package is of interest only to those who need to
   build an application against a complete copy of the kernel source, or
   those interested in building their own kernels.

 CFQ scheduler

   The kernel in Mandriva 2008.0 now uses the CFQ (Complete Fair Queuing)
   I/O scheduler by default, rather than the AS (Anticipatory Scheduler)
   used in previous releases. On most systems, the CFQ scheduler will
   perform better. It tries to prevent disk intensive applications from
   slowing down other applications too much. It also takes into account
   the nice levels to determine the read priority. With the ionice
   command, I/O scheduling priorities can be tuned in yet more detail. If
   CFQ would cause performance regressions for you (possible with certain
   workloads, especially on laptops with slower hard drives), you can
   change the I/O scheduler back to AS by adding elevator=as as a kernel
   parameter.

 AppArmor

   Apparmor has replaced RSBAC as the in-kernel application security tool.

 Modular IDE drivers

   Drivers for IDE controllers are now compiled as modules rather than
   built into the kernel itself. This change should not have any
   consequences visible to the user: it will be handled by the
   installation / upgrade process.

 New devicescape wireless stack

   The new wireless stack known as devicescape or mac80211 has been added
   to the kernel. Following testing during the beta process, it has been
   determined that the majority of these drivers are not yet stable enough
   for everyday use. Only the iwl4965 driver will be used by default, for
   Intel 4965 wireless chipsets (commonly used on very new laptops). This
   driver has no equivalent using the old softmac wireless stack. In cases
   where both old and new stack drivers are available - notably for Intel
   3945 chipsets and Broadcom BCM43xx chipsets - the old stack driver will
   be preferred by default.

 Changes regarding software packages

 KDE 4 preview

   A recent development snapshot of KDE 4 is available as a preview in
   Mandriva Linux 2008. To install it, make sure Internet repositories are
   configured and enabled - see Making more applications available - and
   install the task-kde4 package. This will retrieve and install the
   entire KDE 4 environment. Once this process is complete, log out of
   your desktop, and in the list of environments available in the login
   manager, you should see KDE4 is an option. Select it and log in.

   Note that KDE 4 is not yet complete, and you will observe many missing
   and broken features, and probably some instability. It is emphasized
   that KDE 4 is included only as a preview, and should not be used for
   production work.

   A wrapper script has also been included that will allow you to launch
   KDE 4 applications within KDE 3 (and even, sometimes, within GNOME). If
   you have KDE 4 installed, you can run, for instance:
k4 amarok

   to launch the KDE 4 version of amarok.

 XFS no longer used

   XFS, the X Font Server, is no longer used by default in Mandriva Linux
   2008. It is still available and will function normally if manually
   enabled. This reduces the weight of the system with no regression in
   functionality in almost all cases.

   A new convention for defining font paths has been introduced with this
   change: font paths are added as symlinks in /etc/X11/fontpath.d/, which
   allows fonts to be installed and removed with the changes being
   reflected immediately with no need for XFS. More information on this
   change is available in this mail from the Cooker mailing list archives.

   Note that these changes are irrelevant to applications using
   fontconfig, which is almost all modern applications. Only fairly old
   applications will be at all affected by these changes.

 Liberation fonts included

   The Liberation fonts made available by Red Hat have been included in
   Mandriva Linux 2008. These fonts match the metrics used by the most
   common Microsoft Windows (tm) fonts - Arial, Times New Roman, and
   Courier New - almost exactly, making them useful in cases where it is
   important that the font metrics match those intended by the author of a
   document (for instance, a web page or office document). The default
   Mandriva font configuration has been modified so that when a document
   or application requests one of these Windows fonts by name, the
   appropriate Liberation font will be used.

 Changes to the NVIDIA and ATI proprietary driver packages

   The NVIDIA and ATI proprietary driver packages have a new maintainer,
   Anssi Hannula. He has made the following changes to the packages:

 NVIDIA

   The naming scheme has been updated. The new packages are:

   dkms-nvidia-current
   dkms-nvidia96xx
   dkms-nvidia71xx
   x11-driver-video-nvidia-current
   x11-driver-video-nvidia96xx
   x11-driver-video-nvidia71xx
   nvidia-current-devel
   nvidia96xx-devel
   nvidia71xx-devel

   Please note that users who upgrade from Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring or
   earlier to Mandriva Linux 2008 using urpmi will need to run drakx11 to
   re-configure their graphics card following these name changes. The name
   change should be handled automatically for users upgrading via the
   official installer.

   The NVIDIA configuration tools are now included in the package.

 ATI

   The naming scheme for the main proprietary driver has been updated. The
   new packages are:

   dkms-fglrx
   x11-driver-video-fglrx
   fglrx-devel

   A new package, fglrx-control-center, has also been introduced. This
   contains the ATI configuration tool.

   We have also introduced an alternative version of the ATI proprietary
   driver. The main driver package is version 8.40.4. Version 8.41.7 is
   also available under the name fglrx-hd2000. This version of the driver
   is included specifically for the purpose of supporting ATI Radeon HD
   2400, 2600 and 2900 cards. ATI does not recommend its use for any other
   cards: although it supports older cards to some extent, it is known to
   contain bugs and be unreliable on these cards. Mandriva's automatic
   hardware detection code should correctly detect your graphics card and
   select the appropriate proprietary driver for it when you start
   Mandriva Linux One or install Mandriva Linux Powerpack. Please do not
   attempt to switch to a different driver unless you are entirely sure
   you know what you are doing.

 Man pages now compressed with LZMA

   During the development of Mandriva Linux 2008, the compression format
   used for man pages has been changed from bzip2 to LZMA. All packages
   built after this change have their man pages in LZMA format. Note that
   some packages have not been rebuilt since this change, and their man
   pages are still compressed in bzip2 format. This change should be
   transparent in typical usage.

 New development package naming policy

   In prior releases, the names of development packages contained the
   library major version number, matching the non-development library
   package (so the development package for libfoo1 would be named
   libfoo1-devel). During the development of Mandriva Linux 2008, this
   policy was changed. In future, development packages will normally not
   include this version number (so the development package for libfoo1
   will be named libfoo-devel). This resolves several problems with
   upgrading development packages when the library major version is
   changed, and reduces the complexity required in building these
   packages. In the rare cases where it is necessary to include
   development packages for two or more different library major versions,
   the most commonly used will be unversioned, and the others will be
   versioned.

   This change requires no special action on the part of users. This
   change has been applied to all packages built since the new policy was
   introduced. Packages that have not been rebuilt since the new policy
   was introduced will still include the version number in the package
   name. This does not cause any problems.

 Compiz Fusion replaces Beryl

   The Beryl 3D desktop technology has been merged back into Compiz (it
   began as a Compiz fork). Mandriva Linux 2008 no longer contains Beryl.
   On upgrading from a previous release, Beryl will be replaced by Compiz
   Fusion. Most plugins that were previously available for Beryl are now
   available as Compiz Fusion plugins (one notable exception is the 3D
   plugin).

   Please note that if you are upgrading from Beryl you will probably be
   used to the Emerald window decorator. When you use Compiz Fusion, you
   will now, by default, be using either the GTK or KDE window decorator
   depending on your session. If you would like to use Emerald, simply use
   CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm) and enter "emerald" under the
   Window Decoration plugin's Command option.

 Services no longer restarted when updating glibc

   In previous releases, if the glibc package was updated, all services in
   the current runlevel would be automatically restarted. From this
   release onwards, this will no longer occur. We advise that all
   processes should be restarted by the system administrator as soon as
   possible after an upgrade of the glibc package. If continued
   availability of the system is not critical, the simplest way to achieve
   this is to restart the system. Processes that are not restarted will
   still be using the old glibc and will be vulnerable to whatever
   problems or security issues are resolved by the updated glibc.

 GCC 4.2 not advised for Java development

   Due to issues described in Bug #21249, we do not
   advise the use of GCC 4.2 for Java development purposes. GCC 4.3 is
   available in the package gcc4.3, in the main repository. We advise that
   this version of GCC be used for the purposes of Java development.

 PHP

 PHP and Suhosin

   Suhosin protection is enabled by default, if you don't want this please
   disable the php-suhosin extension by commenting this line:
extension = suhosin.so

   in the /etc/php.d/Z98_suhosin.ini configuration file. It is highly
   recommended to not disable the protection in critical production
   environments. Learn more about Suhosin here.

 PHP 4.x is deprecated

   On July 13th, 2007 the PHP development team announced that PHP 4 will
   reach end of life on December 31st, 2007. To ease the maintenance of
   PHP in Mandriva we have decided to drop all PHP 4 packages from
   Mandriva Linux 2008. If you wish to continue using PHP 4 until it
   reaches end of life, we would advise the use of Mandriva Linux 2007
   Spring, which remains in maintenance until (and beyond) that date.
