[Cooker] 2009.0 Release Notes and Visual Guide content

[Fabrice FACORAT]

I look at the 2009.0 Releases Notes, and IMHO many things are missing.
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Tour

I will just give some ideas for discussions. I won't touch the
releases notes pages, but eventually i will modify the visual guide if
there are consensus about some of the following points. Mosts of the
following are about the Releases Notes page.

1. Even if this is in the visual Guide, we should talk more about new
version of KDE ( 4.1.2 ), Gnome ( 2.24 ) and eventually
OpenOffice.org. We have only 2 phrases about them in releases Notes !
BTW, are 3D effects enabled by default in KDE4 ? What's the status of
bug #42398 ? do we have kde3 -> kde4 settings migration support ? If
yes, this should be add in the releases notes too, and if there's a
GUI, it should be add in the Visual Tour.

2. we should talk about Windows Mobile 2003 support for
synchronizations. A link in missing in the releases notes ( and
eventually the visual guide ) to
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Synchronization. This page is hard
to find.

3. We should told also about the ability to do live upgrade with
mdkapplet ( + screenshots in Visual Tour )

4. What's the status of PDF import support in OO3 ? Last time I
checked, it was "working". We don't talk about that.

5. we should talk about boot time and application reduction start
efforts ( readahead, preload, udev, dkms, ... ). A link to the very
informtive blog by Fred could be add, or a dedicated page on the wiki
about boot time/perf improvements works in Mandriva Linux could be
created.

6. migration from bootsplash to splashy. It should be streesed that
this is a first try, and there may have some shortocomings.

7. Better portable support in kernel notably with : Intel G41 support,
improved backlight support for Intel chipsets, improved Acer Aspire
One and Intel Atom support, fixes support for quite a lot of Windows
Mobile devices in rndis_host, support WM6 devices to be used as
modems, disabling of CONFIG_USB_MOUSE and CONFIG_USB_KBD to fix some
USB mouse and keyboards issues.
I found this by  quickly looking at kernel packages changelog.

We can also add some the features coming from the 2.6.27 usage ( above
stuff could be considered as Mandriva specific improvements ) like :
new filesystem (UBIFS) optimized for "pure" flash-based storage
devices, the page-cache is now lockless, much improved Direct I/O
scalability and performance, delayed allocation for ext4, multiqueue
networking, an alternative hibernation implementation based on
kexec/kdump, data integrity support in the block layer for devices
that support it, better tracing and profiling ( a simple tracer called
ftrace, a mmio tracer, sysprof support ),  XEN support for
saving/restorig VMs, improved video camera support, support for the
Intel wireless 5000 series and RTL8187B network cards, a new ath9k
driver for the Atheros AR5008 and AR9001 family of chipsets, more new
drivers, improved support for others and many other improvements and
fixes.
cf http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_27. A link to this page could be add too.
some bits from 2.6.26 ( http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_26 ) could
be add too ( as we ar'e jumping from 2.6.24 to 2.6.27 ) : read-only
bind mounts, x86 PAT (Page Attribute Tables), PCI Express ASPM (Active
State Power Management), KVM improvements including basic
paravirtualization support, preliminary support of the future 802.11s
wireless mesh standard, much improved webcam support thanks to a
driver for UVC devices, a built-in memory tester, a kernel debugger,
BDI statistics and parameters exposure in /sys/class/bdi, a new
/proc/PID/mountinfo file for more accurate information about mounts,
per-process securebits, device white-list for containers users,
support for the OLPC.
There are some interesting new features from 2.6.25 too (
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_25 ) : new interface for more
accurate measurement of process memory usage, a 'memory resource
controller' for controlling the memory usage of groups of processes,
realtime group scheduling, a tool for measuring high latencies called
latencytop, ACPI thermal regulation, timer event notifications through
file descriptors, BRK and PIE-executable address space randomization,
RCU preemption support, FIFO spinlocks in x86,  ATI r500 DRI/DRM
support, the beginning of the end for tasks stuck in D state.

We should expose to our users the improvements from one version to
another one, and we should not expect them to follow kernel.org
changelog. Even if theses features are not Mandriva specifics, we
should told them that we have them.

8. We are missing informations concerning Nepomuk : applications
supporting Nepomuk, CLI/GUI frontends to strigi and/or Nepomuk, a tuto
about nepomuk usage ( adding tags, query tags, browsing tags, ... ).
As Mandriva is leading the Nepomuk dev, we should talk loudly about
it.

9. Nobody is talking about system-config-printer. This should be add,
with a note about the fact that printerdrake is still available in
contrib. BTW it should be add in the Errata that users having
difficulties to detect some network printers ( or HP all-in-one ones )
may want to use printerdrake as it allows network printers detection
based on nmap as the SNMP method may fail sometimes.

10. Beginning of PackageKit support with the developpement by Mandirva
of an urpmi backend. In the future, PackageKit may be used in some of
the Mandirva tools, like notably ... system-config-printer. cf
http://linux-wizard.net/index.php?id_blog=222

11. Firefox and others gecko applications are now built on top of XulRunner.

12. Vodafone Mobile Connect Card Driver support.
cf http://linux-wizard.net/index.php?id_blog=221

Please note that i'm busy until Tuesday as I have to write many
articles for some magazines. Starting from Friday, I will have time to
provide screenshots and write some stuff.



--
Close the World, Open the Net
http://www.linux-wizard.net

[Fabrice FACORAT]

2008/10/7 Fabrice Facorat <fabrice.facorat@...>:

> I look at the 2009.0 Releases Notes, and IMHO many things are missing.
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Tour
>
> I will just give some ideas for discussions. I won't touch the
> releases notes pages, but eventually i will modify the visual guide if
> there are consensus about some of the following points. Mosts of the
> following are about the Releases Notes page.
>
> 1. Even if this is in the visual Guide, we should talk more about new
> version of KDE ( 4.1.2 ), Gnome ( 2.24 ) and eventually
> OpenOffice.org. We have only 2 phrases about them in releases Notes !
> BTW, are 3D effects enabled by default in KDE4 ? What's the status of
> bug #42398 ? do we have kde3 -> kde4 settings migration support ? If
> yes, this should be add in the releases notes too, and if there's a
> GUI, it should be add in the Visual Tour.

Concerning KDE4, dont forget about Digikam 10.0 beta3 with DNG, NEF,
and PEF raw files support ( reading and writing ), multiple roots
album paths, XMP metadata support, Video and Audio files using KDE4
Phonon interface and improved UI ( Thumbbar with Preview mode, New
advanced Search tool, Marbe support to locate photos with GPS
coordinate ).
Beta 3 : http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/376
Interested people can look at Beta 4 too ( too late for inclusion, but
maybe as an update ) : http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/371
Video Tour : http://www.digikam.org/drupal/tour
screenshots : http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/323

> 2. we should talk about Windows Mobile 2003 support for
> synchronizations. A link in missing in the releases notes ( and
> eventually the visual guide ) to
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Synchronization. This page is hard
> to find.
>
> 3. We should told also about the ability to do live upgrade with
> mdkapplet ( + screenshots in Visual Tour )
>
> 4. What's the status of PDF import support in OO3 ? Last time I
> checked, it was "working". We don't talk about that.
>
> 5. we should talk about boot time and application reduction start
> efforts ( readahead, preload, udev, dkms, ... ). A link to the very
> informtive blog by Fred could be add, or a dedicated page on the wiki
> about boot time/perf improvements works in Mandriva Linux could be
> created.
>
> 6. migration from bootsplash to splashy. It should be streesed that
> this is a first try, and there may have some shortocomings.
>
> 7. Better portable support in kernel notably with : Intel G41 support,
> improved backlight support for Intel chipsets, improved Acer Aspire
> One and Intel Atom support, fixes support for quite a lot of Windows
> Mobile devices in rndis_host, support WM6 devices to be used as
> modems, disabling of CONFIG_USB_MOUSE and CONFIG_USB_KBD to fix some
> USB mouse and keyboards issues.
> I found this by  quickly looking at kernel packages changelog.
>
> We can also add some the features coming from the 2.6.27 usage ( above
> stuff could be considered as Mandriva specific improvements ) like :
> new filesystem (UBIFS) optimized for "pure" flash-based storage
> devices, the page-cache is now lockless, much improved Direct I/O
> scalability and performance, delayed allocation for ext4, multiqueue
> networking, an alternative hibernation implementation based on
> kexec/kdump, data integrity support in the block layer for devices
> that support it, better tracing and profiling ( a simple tracer called
> ftrace, a mmio tracer, sysprof support ),  XEN support for
> saving/restorig VMs, improved video camera support, support for the
> Intel wireless 5000 series and RTL8187B network cards, a new ath9k
> driver for the Atheros AR5008 and AR9001 family of chipsets, more new
> drivers, improved support for others and many other improvements and
> fixes.
> cf http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_27. A link to this page could be add too.
> some bits from 2.6.26 ( http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_26 ) could
> be add too ( as we ar'e jumping from 2.6.24 to 2.6.27 ) : read-only
> bind mounts, x86 PAT (Page Attribute Tables), PCI Express ASPM (Active
> State Power Management), KVM improvements including basic
> paravirtualization support, preliminary support of the future 802.11s
> wireless mesh standard, much improved webcam support thanks to a
> driver for UVC devices, a built-in memory tester, a kernel debugger,
> BDI statistics and parameters exposure in /sys/class/bdi, a new
> /proc/PID/mountinfo file for more accurate information about mounts,
> per-process securebits, device white-list for containers users,
> support for the OLPC.
> There are some interesting new features from 2.6.25 too (
> http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_25 ) : new interface for more
> accurate measurement of process memory usage, a 'memory resource
> controller' for controlling the memory usage of groups of processes,
> realtime group scheduling, a tool for measuring high latencies called
> latencytop, ACPI thermal regulation, timer event notifications through
> file descriptors, BRK and PIE-executable address space randomization,
> RCU preemption support, FIFO spinlocks in x86,  ATI r500 DRI/DRM
> support, the beginning of the end for tasks stuck in D state.
>
> We should expose to our users the improvements from one version to
> another one, and we should not expect them to follow kernel.org
> changelog. Even if theses features are not Mandriva specifics, we
> should told them that we have them.
>
> 8. We are missing informations concerning Nepomuk : applications
> supporting Nepomuk, CLI/GUI frontends to strigi and/or Nepomuk, a tuto
> about nepomuk usage ( adding tags, query tags, browsing tags, ... ).
> As Mandriva is leading the Nepomuk dev, we should talk loudly about
> it.
>
> 9. Nobody is talking about system-config-printer. This should be add,
> with a note about the fact that printerdrake is still available in
> contrib. BTW it should be add in the Errata that users having
> difficulties to detect some network printers ( or HP all-in-one ones )
> may want to use printerdrake as it allows network printers detection
> based on nmap as the SNMP method may fail sometimes.
>
> 10. Beginning of PackageKit support with the developpement by Mandirva
> of an urpmi backend. In the future, PackageKit may be used in some of
> the Mandirva tools, like notably ... system-config-printer. cf
> http://linux-wizard.net/index.php?id_blog=222
>
> 11. Firefox and others gecko applications are now built on top of XulRunner.
>
> 12. Vodafone Mobile Connect Card Driver support.
> cf http://linux-wizard.net/index.php?id_blog=221
>
> Please note that i'm busy until Tuesday as I have to write many
> articles for some magazines. Starting from Friday, I will have time to
> provide screenshots and write some stuff.

--
Close the World, Open the Net
http://www.linux-wizard.net

[Vincent Panel-3]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 5:32 PM, Fabrice Facorat
<fabrice.facorat@...> wrote:

> 2008/10/7 Fabrice Facorat <fabrice.facorat@...>:
>> I look at the 2009.0 Releases Notes, and IMHO many things are missing.
>> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes
>> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Tour
>>
>> I will just give some ideas for discussions. I won't touch the
>> releases notes pages, but eventually i will modify the visual guide if
>> there are consensus about some of the following points. Mosts of the
>> following are about the Releases Notes page.
>>
>> 1. Even if this is in the visual Guide, we should talk more about new
>> version of KDE ( 4.1.2 ), Gnome ( 2.24 ) and eventually
>> OpenOffice.org. We have only 2 phrases about them in releases Notes !
>> BTW, are 3D effects enabled by default in KDE4 ?

No they aren't. I've just discovered you can enable most of them in
virtualbox :) some screenshots could be interesting.

>> What's the status of
>> bug #42398 ? do we have kde3 -> kde4 settings migration support ? If
>> yes, this should be add in the releases notes too

I've seen a config_updater in the KDE splashscreen of a recent cooker
install. Maybe that's the thingy.

>, and if there's a
>> GUI, it should be add in the Visual Tour.

I hope not.

>> 3. We should told also about the ability to do live upgrade with
>> mdkapplet ( + screenshots in Visual Tour )

Well yes, but how can you expect people from making screenshots if
this feature doesn't exist yet ?

>> 5. we should talk about boot time and application reduction start
>> efforts ( readahead, preload, udev, dkms, ... ). A link to the very
>> informtive blog by Fred could be add, or a dedicated page on the wiki
>> about boot time/perf improvements works in Mandriva Linux could be
>> created.

There is one : http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/How_to_Profile_your_Boot_Time
and http://wiki.mandriva.com/fr/Bootchart (in french)

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2008-10-07 at 16:50 +0200, Fabrice Facorat wrote:
> I look at the 2009.0 Releases Notes, and IMHO many things are missing.
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Tour
>
> I will just give some ideas for discussions. I won't touch the
> releases notes pages, but eventually i will modify the visual guide if
> there are consensus about some of the following points. Mosts of the
> following are about the Releases Notes page.

I didn't finish writing them yet. Actually, I didn't start updating the
notes page yet. I'm busy.

In general, I will note that neither page is meant to be a laundry list
of 'new shit'. Tour is for big shiny stuff. Notes is for things that
have changed that people will need to know about to keep working
effectively.

If we were trying to write a page that just listed every new feature in
some_random_app since the last release, we'd be here all year.

But yes, I have a list of stuff to add to the release notes, and I'll
add the useful points from your list to it. Thanks.

I don't want to talk about system-config-printer really as it's not much
of an improvement on printerdrake. And printerdrake is not available in
contrib any more. It was entirely replaced.

[adamw@lenovo ~]$ urpmq -r printerdrake
No package named printerdrake

--
adamw

[Vincent Panel-3]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 5:57 PM, Adam Williamson
<awilliamson@...> wrote:
> Notes is for things that
> have changed that people will need to know about to keep working
> effectively.

It's in contradiction with :

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 5:57 PM, Adam Williamson
<awilliamson@...> wrote:
> I don't want to talk about system-config-printer really as it's not much
> of an improvement on printerdrake. And printerdrake is not available in
> contrib any more. It was entirely replaced.

Just at least mention what you've just said : "system-config-printer
now replaces printerdrake".

[Thierry Vignaud]

"Vincent Panel" <yohonet@...> writes:

> Well yes, but how can you expect people from making screenshots if
> this feature doesn't exist yet ?

It does exists.

Once the tree has been synced on all mirrors (may take up to 3-4 days):
- api.mandriva.com will list right mirrors
- mdkapplet from 2008.1's main/testing will be pushed to main/updates
- improved gurpmi & perl-URPM will be pushed in 2009.0's main/updates

[Tiago Salem Herrmann]

Fabrice Facorat escreveu:
> 9. Nobody is talking about system-config-printer. This should be add,
> with a note about the fact that printerdrake is still available in
> contrib. BTW it should be add in the Errata that users having
> difficulties to detect some network printers ( or HP all-in-one ones )
> may want to use printerdrake as it allows network printers detection
> based on nmap as the SNMP method may fail sometimes.
>  
I added a cups backend that does exactly what printerdrake used to do
(with nmap).
see: https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=43488

[Fabrice FACORAT]

2008/10/7 Tiago Salem Herrmann <salem@...>:

> Fabrice Facorat escreveu:
>> 9. Nobody is talking about system-config-printer. This should be add,
>> with a note about the fact that printerdrake is still available in
>> contrib. BTW it should be add in the Errata that users having
>> difficulties to detect some network printers ( or HP all-in-one ones )
>> may want to use printerdrake as it allows network printers detection
>> based on nmap as the SNMP method may fail sometimes.
>>
> I added a cups backend that does exactly what printerdrake used to do
> (with nmap).
> see: https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=43488

ok, didn't knew. Thanks for the info.
Maybe we should talk about the Mandirva specific improvements done by
Mandriva in system-cofnig-printer.


--
Close the World, Open the Net
http://www.linux-wizard.net

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2008-10-07 at 18:39 +0200, Fabrice Facorat wrote:

> ok, didn't knew. Thanks for the info.
> Maybe we should talk about the Mandirva specific improvements done by
> Mandriva in system-cofnig-printer.

None of them are Mandriva-specific. We're being good boys and
contributing them to upstream.
--
adamw

[Tiago Salem Herrmann]

Adam Williamson escreveu:

> On Tue, 2008-10-07 at 18:39 +0200, Fabrice Facorat wrote:
>
>  
>> ok, didn't knew. Thanks for the info.
>> Maybe we should talk about the Mandirva specific improvements done by
>> Mandriva in system-cofnig-printer.
>>    
>
> None of them are Mandriva-specific. We're being good boys and
> contributing them to upstream.
>  

Yes, we have specific patches, for installing packages and to do
mandriva-only things. (firmware uploading and other stuff)
Besides that, Tim Waugh grabbed some minor fixes in our patches and
applied upstream.
About the other stuff I added to Mandriva, Tim opened bug reports in
s-c-p and hal-cups-utils and probably they will be added upstream soon
in a better way, (I hope):

These are the links he sent me to track the status:
https://fedorahosted.org/system-config-printer/ticket/99
https://fedorahosted.org/system-config-printer/ticket/95
https://fedorahosted.org/hal-cups-utils/ticket/3
https://fedorahosted.org/system-config-printer/ticket/98

[Mika Laitio]

> Concerning KDE4, dont forget about Digikam 10.0 beta3 with DNG, NEF,
> and PEF raw files support ( reading and writing ), multiple roots
> album paths, XMP metadata support, Video and Audio files using KDE4
> Phonon interface and improved UI ( Thumbbar with Preview mode, New
> advanced Search tool, Marbe support to locate photos with GPS
> coordinate ).
> Beta 3 : http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/376
> Interested people can look at Beta 4 too ( too late for inclusion, but
> maybe as an update ) : http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/371
> Video Tour : http://www.digikam.org/drupal/tour
> screenshots : http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/323

How about video recorders and video editing. Has anybody tested the
capturing of video over firefire (I suppose over usb does still not work)
and is Kino still the prefferred app for that?

Mika

[Mika Laitio]

>> ok, didn't knew. Thanks for the info.
>> Maybe we should talk about the Mandirva specific improvements done by
>> Mandriva in system-cofnig-printer.
>
> None of them are Mandriva-specific. We're being good boys and
> contributing them to upstream.

Well, that would indeed be a worth of mentioning in rel-note!

Mika

[Vincent Panel-3]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 6:05 PM, Thierry Vignaud <tvignaud@...> wrote:

> "Vincent Panel" <yohonet@...> writes:
>
>> Well yes, but how can you expect people from making screenshots if
>> this feature doesn't exist yet ?
>
> It does exists.
>
> Once the tree has been synced on all mirrors (may take up to 3-4 days):
> - api.mandriva.com will list right mirrors
> - mdkapplet from 2008.1's main/testing will be pushed to main/updates
> - improved gurpmi & perl-URPM will be pushed in 2009.0's main/updates
>

I meant "...does not exist _yet_ for the stable distro".

[Thierry Vignaud]

"Vincent Panel" <yohonet@...> writes:

> >> Well yes, but how can you expect people from making screenshots if
> >> this feature doesn't exist yet ?
> >
> > It does exists.
> >
> > Once the tree has been synced on all mirrors (may take up to 3-4 days):
> > - api.mandriva.com will list right mirrors
> > - mdkapplet from 2008.1's main/testing will be pushed to main/updates
> > - improved gurpmi & perl-URPM will be pushed in 2009.0's main/updates
> >
>
> I meant "...does not exist _yet_ for the stable distro".

It does exists for the stable 2008.1 distro

[Fabrice FACORAT]

2008/10/7 Fabrice Facorat <fabrice.facorat@...>:
> I look at the 2009.0 Releases Notes, and IMHO many things are missing.
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Tour

> 4. What's the status of PDF import support in OO3 ? Last time I
> checked, it was "working". We don't talk about that.

It seems that PDF support have been disabled ...
I can no longer open a PDF file with OpenOffice.org. Is this normal ?



--
Close the World, Open the Net
http://www.linux-wizard.net