Noteworthy Mandriva Cooker changes (18 May – 14 June 2009)

It’s a long time ago I posted something on my blog, so this is a good moment to break the silence with a Cooker update:

• GCC 4.4: better code generation and many improvements for developers, such as OpenMP 3 support and support for the upcoming C++0x ISO standard. This new version also improves code optimization thanks to the Graphite framework. Glibc was also updated to the latest version 2.10.
• Xen kernel 2.6.27: Mandriva now includes a kernel for running on a Xen Dom0 based on the 2.6.27 kernel instead of the outdated 2.6.18 kernel.
• The standard Mandriva kernel is now at the latest 2.6.30. This brings faster kernel booting, lots of ext3 bug fixes and performance improvements which also affect ext3 and of course it adds or improves the support for new hardware devices.
• GNOME is now at version 2.27.2: Tomboy now can sync your notes with the Snowy web service
• Pitivi video editor has been updated to version 0.13.1 which includes a complete core rewrite. Lots of interesting improvements for end users are in the pipeline for next versions.
• Elisa has now been renamed to Moovida. It includes a brand new graphical user interface.
• Many KDE updates: KDE itself is now at version 4.2.90 (aka KDE 4.3 beta 1), Koffice 2.0, k3b 2.0 alpha 2, kaffeine 1.0 pre 1, Digikam 1.0 beta 1
• qemu-kvm 0.10.4: the KVM virtualization tool had its first stable release under the name qemu-kvm. A test package is available in main/testing, under the package name “qemu”. This package merges the qemu and the kvm packages.  The version in contrib/testing removes kqemu support, but it will probably return at some later point.
• Sagemath, a mathematics software system combining the power of mathematic tools like Maxima, R, GSL and many more, is now available in contrib/testing. Note that this package is still work in progress. Your comments and bug reports are very welcome on the Cooker mailing list.
• Cups 1.4 RC 1 is available in the main/testing repository. This new version has some performance improvements, supports zeroconf aka Bonjour for automatic discovery of printers and has a totally redesigned web interface.
• bcd, a new Mandriva tool to build installation ISOs was published
• The Intel X11 driver is now using pre-release version 2.7.99.901, which will hopefully improve performancet thanks to UXA.
• Transmission 1.70 now supports DHT (distributed hash table), also known as trackerless bittorrent. Transmission will now still be able to find peers when a public tracker goes down.

And of course much more I forget :-)