We are happy to tell you that OpenSuSE 10.3 GM is going to be released next week. The official release date is 04/10/2007 . Until then, you can read the official release notes (don't ask the source from which we have them).
openSUSE 10.3 Release Notes
Copyright © 2007 Novell, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included as the file fdl.txt.
The release notes are under constant development. Download the newest version as part of the Internet test or refer to http://www.suse.com/relnotes/i386/op...-NOTES.en.html.
These release notes cover the following areas:
General: Information that everybody should read.
Update: Changes that are not mentioned in the Reference Guide, Chapter 5.
Technical: This section contains a number of technical changes and enhancements for the experienced user.
In the Start-Up Manual, find information about installation and basic system configuration. In the Reference Guide, the system configuration is explained in detail. Additionally, the most important applications are described in the GNOME and KDE User Guides. Detailed information on using AppArmor is provided by the AppArmor Administration Guide.
General
Text Installation Pattern
Adding Extra Software Repositories During Installation
Localization Support
YaST Software Management Gtk and Qt Front-Ends
AppArmor 2.1
GAIM Renamed to Pidgin
Update
New Location for KDE and GNOME
Technical
libata for IDE Devices
Changes in Setting up Encrypted Partitions
Enabling Quota Support
Zeroconf
Older Intel Graphics Chips
Intel Wireless Link WiFi Drivers
Tools to Write Optical Disc Media (CD-ROM and DVD)
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General
Text Installation Pattern
The scope of the text installation pattern is very limited. It is not recommended to install this pattern without adding additional software. Add packages from other patterns. The purpose of this pattern is to have a minimal bootable system running on real hardware. It provides a multiuser system with local login, network setup, and the default filesystems. No service is enabled by default and the only YaST modules installed that are those needed during installation.
Adding Extra Software Repositories During Installation
After setting up the update configuration at the end of the installation, YaST offers to add the following three software repositories as additional installation sources:
The "oss" repository contains the complete FTP distribution including more packages than are available on the CDs.
The "non-oss" repository contains software under a propietary or non-open source license.
The "debug" repository contains debuginfo packages used for debugging programs and libraries and getting backtraces. If an error occurs, this additional information helps you write good bug reports.
The source RPMs for "oss" are available at http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/src-oss, the source RPMs for "non-oss" are available at http://download.opensuse.org/distrib....3/src-non-oss.
Localization Support
The 1-CD installation media (GNOME or KDE) come with language support for American English only.
Support for all the other languages is available separately. If you are interested in additional languages, add an extra online repository during installation offering these translations. The "oss" repository, as mentioned above in Section "Adding Extra Software Repositories During Installation", is such a repository.
YaST Software Management Gtk and Qt Front-Ends
By default, the new YaST gtk front-end runs on the GNOME desktop, and the YaST qt front-end on all the other desktops. Feature-wise, the gtk frontend is very similar to the qt front-end described in the manuals.
One exception is the gtk software management module (see the Start-Up guide in Chapter 3), which differs considerably from the qt port. To start the qt flavor on the GNOME desktop, proceed as follows:
Open the /etc/sysconfig/yast2 file as root.
Change WANTED_GUI="auto" to WANTED_GUI="qt", save and exit the file.
To start the gtk flavor of YaST, no matter on which desktop, proceed accordingly, but changing WANTED_GUI="auto" to WANTED_GUI="gtk".
AppArmor 2.1
Find more detailed information about new features at http://en.opensuse.org/AppArmor/Changes_AppArmor_2_1.
The syntax now distinguishes directories from files. There are additional minor syntax bug fixes.
The reporting of change_hat related events and information has changed. The log messages and profile state (as available via /proc/
/attr/current) are reported as /profile//hat.
A new change_profile policy specification has been added. Change_profile is similar to change_hat, but allows changing to any profile (including hats), not just hats. The restriction is that the profiles that can be changed to must be specified. To change to a hat via change_profile instead of change_hat the hat name is specified by separating the profile and hat_name with // .
GAIM Renamed to Pidgin
The GAIM instant messenger has been renamed to Pidgin.
Update
New Location for KDE and GNOME
GNOME 2 is installed under the /usr file system hierarchy since openSUSE 10.3 and KDE 4 now follows. KDE 3 will stay in /opt for compatibility reasons.
Before starting the update, make sure that there is enough disk space under /usr (approx. 2.5GB for both the desktops is required). If you are short on space under /usr, resize or rearrange your partitions.
Technical
libata for IDE Devices
libata uses /dev/sda for the first harddisk instead of /dev/hda. Disks with more than 15 partitions are not handled automatically right now. You can disable libata support by booting with the following kernel parameter:
hwprobe=-modules.pataThen you see all the partitions > 15 again and can access them for installation.
Changes in Setting up Encrypted Partitions
The back-end technology of boot.crypto has been changed from cryptoloop to dm-crypt.
Any old /etc/cryptotab will work unmodified on openSUSE 10.3 (modulo hdX->sdX issues due to libata changes—see above). Additionally, /etc/crypttab (note the missing 'o') is now supported which also inluding support for LUKS volumes. In contrast to previous releases boot.crypto is no longer enabled by default. YaST enables it if you create an encrypted volume with YaST. You can also manually enable it with the following command:
chkconfig boot.crypto onIt is still possible to use cryptoloop via losetup and mount. Since we dropped the crude loop-AES patch from the util-linux package, some parameters for losetup (such as itercountk and pseed) no longer exist. If any of these settings are used in /etc/fstab the device cannot be mounted directly any more. Migrate these settings to /etc/crypttab where boot.crypto contains the necessary compatability code.
Enabling Quota Support
You now can configure quota for user accounts from within YaST. To enable quota support activate the
"Enable quota support"
check box in the fstab options when partitioning in the first stage of the installation. Thus, ensure that /etc/init.d/boot.quota script is executed at the boot time. Then in the second stage, the advanced options for user accounts provide the quota module where quota rules can be set.
If you enable quota support in the partitioner in the running system after the installation, either reboot the system or manually remount the partitions concerned and execute the following command as root:
/etc/init.d/boot.quota restartZeroconf
The Zeroconf service—also known as Bonjour, Multicast DNS, mDNS, or DNS-SD—is now provided by the Avahi stack instead of mDNSResponder. However, the mDNSResponder and howl compatibility libraries are still available.
To enable mDNS for all network interfaces, use the
"Zeroconf/Bonjour Multicast DNS"
SuSEfirewall rule.
Older Intel Graphics Chips
Older Intel graphics chips are supported by two drivers (
"i810" and "intel"). The intel driver is the default on openSUSE 10.3 due to the high demand for features like native mode setting (no longer VESA BIOS based) and RANDR 1.2 support.
When updating to openSUSE 10.3, the i810 driver is not exchanged with the intel driver. Use "sax2 -r" to switch to the intel driver.
The intel driver is still not as stable as i810; use "sax2 -r -m 0=i810" to switch back to i810, if you encounter problems that did not occur previously with the i810 driver. In those cases, consider to open a bug report against the intel driver.
Intel Wireless Link WiFi Drivers
Two drivers are available now: the traditional ipw3945 is installed by default and the new iwlwifi driver is an alternative offer. Note the following caveats:
ipw3945 works on hidden networks. It does not survive suspend/resume cycles.
iwlwifi does not work on hidden networks. It supports suspend/resume cycles.
You can change the the default using YaST. Click "Software" -> "Software Management" and remove the ipw3945 package. Then the alternative iwlwifi driver gets automatically selected for installation.
Tools to Write Optical Disc Media (CD-ROM and DVD)
The cdrecord package has been dropped from the distribution. The new wodim, genisoimage, and icedax packages from the cdrkit project can be used to record data or audio CDs on a CD recorder that conforms with the Orange Book standard. Binaries got renamed as follows:
cdrecord -> wodim
readcd -> readom
mkisofs -> genisoimage
cdda2wav -> icedax
If your application relies on the old names, install the cdrkit-cdrtools-compat package. In long term, however, it would be good to have native support for wodim in all front-end applications, because it offers some improvements:
the preferred way of specifying a device is dev=/dev/cdrecorder, dev=/dev/hdc, dev=/dev/sr0, etc.
available devices can be listed with wodim -devices
suid root is not needed
If you maintain such a front-end or script, consider adding native wodim support.
Use growisofs for writing DVDs. The graphical front-ends handle this transparently.
