Archive:Features 12.3

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openSUSE 12.3 – 自由、开源、卓越

亲爱的用户、贡献者、粉丝和朋友们。最新版 openSUSE 为您准备好啦!经过了 6 个月的奋斗,我们为您带来了自由软件所能烹制的最好的发行版,还有我们独一无二的绿色佐料 - 依然稳定、友好和谐趣。

openSUSE 12.3 更多细节

以下页面深入挖掘了本个 openSUSE 版本的许多细节。信息太多了?那样就看产品聚焦吧。

水面之下

我们升级了我们的基础设施、进一步整合了新技术的同时改善了稳定性、硬件支持和配置。主要修订列示于下。

Linux 3.7

这个版本为我们带来了 Linux Kernel 3.7,是从 openSUSE 12.2 中的 Linux Kernel 3.4 延续开发而来。新功能和改进包括:

  • 全部文件系统都将从 RAID 领域的改进中获益,如设置 RAID 系统变得更加快速,设备映射器支持了 RAID 10 支持,以及针对 SSD 的 discard 功能。作为省电手段,重制的内核文件系统接口允许移除一个每 5 秒就会唤醒该子系统的守护程序。主要的文件系统相关改进包括:
    • metadata 可包含小文件 (加速读写并节省空间) 并且可检查校验和以保护其在 Ext4 下的完整性了。也改善了配额支持并提升了覆写文件和缩放卷的速度 (即使是那些大于 16TB 的卷)。
    • btrfs 获得了 I/O 失败统计、子卷配额、配额组、快照差异、更快的 fsync、更快的虚拟机映像读写和为单文件禁用写入时复制的能力。
    • XFS 带来了更快的速度和更低的延迟,改善了大文件夹块支持,以及许多细小的新功能和改进。
  • 可使用像 Systemtap 或 perf 这样的工具或者一个新的仿造 strace 的 "perf trace" 工具来在用户空间探测 (probe) 以进行性能剖析了。
  • 许多对网络的改善。The TCP protocol saw performance work with support for TCP "Fast Open" mode for both clients and servers and TCP Early Retransmit (RFC 5827) as well as inclusion of the a "TCP small queues" feature and a new network queue management algorithm designed to fight bufferbloat. Other low-level protocol enhancements include support for checkpointing and restoring TCP connections and a new tunneling protocol that allows to transfer Layer 2 Ethernet packets over UDP. New is experimental SMBv2 protocol support as well as stable NFS 4.1 and parallel NFS support and the ability to have safe swapping over NFS/NBD.
  • 内核现在允许 Android 风格的机会主义的 suspend (‘wakelocks’) 了,并且支持同时混合挂起到磁盘和内存了,这种方法消除了若您在挂起到内存时电池没电的数据丢失风险。
  • In the security area we see added support for signed kernel modules, the Intel "supervisor mode access prevention" (SMAP) security feature, VFIO, which allows safe access from guest drivers to bare-metal host devices and a sandboxing mechanism that allows to filters syscalls. It has also become possible to tell the kernel to not follow hard- and softlinks in certain directories, when those links point somewhere higher up the directory tree, blocking a common way for crackers to increase their privileges on a system. Last but not least, the kernel has gotten better at gathering entropy, collecting it from previously unused sources like MAC addresses, DMI data and USB hardware information.
  • Other improvements include the ability to do SCSI over Firewire and USB, aggressive SATA device sleep for SSD and HD drive power saving and support for the PCIe “d3cold” power state.
  • As always there have been many improvements in hardware support, performance and stability in the graphics drivers, storage, webcam, audio, wifi, and other subsystems. Changes include code for handling the upcoming Intel Haswell graphics core, major changes resulting in a faster and more stable Nouveau NVidia driver with support for newer video cards, improved NFC support, and specific drivers for a large number of laptops.

(overview possible thanks to kernelnewbies.org and The awesome H online kernel logs)

ARM,UEFI 和 Secure Boot

File:OpenSUSE 12.3 booting on ARM 64 bit.png
openSUSE 在 64 位 ARM 上引导!
  • 这个版本为 x86_64 硬件带来了像样的 UEFI 支持和对启用了 Secure Boot 的硬件的实验性支持。更多信息请参考这个维基页面,关于我们所选的解决方案背后的故事请阅读这个博客
  • openSUSE ARM 团队发布了官方 openSUSE 12.3 ARMv7 映像,实验性的 64 位 ARM 映像也可在 AArch64 页面取得。

Systemd

openSUSE 12.3 完成了 systemd 迁移 (更新到 195 版),并放弃了 SysV init。我们为许多核心系统软件包添加了补丁并进行了改进以更好地与这个下一代引导系统协同。其它变化:

  • systemd 现在控制着系统休眠和挂机,以及电源、睡眠和屏幕上盖开关按钮。这意味着即使没有登入,合上盖子也能睡眠您的系统,这能在您没注意您尚未登入时防止您的笔记本过热。需要测试看看是否可行。要可行请移除本句提醒。
  • systemd-delta 可以让您查看装机后配置文件的修订历史。
  • 当使用诸如 systemctl, journalctl 这样的工具时,提到 systemd 服务时可以省略 “.service” 文件名后缀。
  • systemd GTK 配置工具被拆分成 systemd-ui 软件包了。
Journal

Systemd 现在把全部服务的输出(包括 syslog 项)聚合到了一个日志(Journal)。默认会转发此输出到您的标准系统日志实现 (rsyslog, syslog-ng)。

  • 可使用 journalctl 以人类可读的格式访问该日志。试试 journalctl -f 吧!
  • 安装 systemd-logger 软件包替换掉 rsyslog 后,日志项将以加密保护的二进制格式原生地写入到磁盘。
  • 有一个日志网关守护进程可允许通过 HTTP 和 JSON 访问该日志。信息见。这个网关不是默认启用的。

其它功能和修订

  • PulseAudio 从 1.1 版升级到了 3.0 版,添加了蓝牙音频来源支持,提供了更好的 AD2P 音频质量以及虚拟环绕声音模式,并支持了更多降噪模式。也带来了 UCM 支持,运行时可编辑的 LADSPA 过滤器参数,可配置的设备延迟偏移以及许多基础设施上的改进。
  • btrfs 文件系统快照工具 ‘Snapper’ 从 0.0.11 版跳到了 0.1.1 版,现在允许非 root 用户进行快照[1] 了,以及对 LVM 瘦置备快照的实验性支持 [2]
  • 最新的 Mesa 9.0 带来了 OpenGL 3.1 以及其它性能改进和故障修复。
  • 在软件包管理领域,zypper 的 1.8.9 版本现在可显示软件包安装进度了。zypper 的 PackageKit 后端被重写了,带来了改善良多的软件包管理体验以及可跨发行版的图形界面工具。
  • sshd 现在有了一个强壮的沙盒机制来防止攻击尝试。
  • shadow 替换了我们 fork pwdutils 得来的 shadow。我们的修改合并到上游去了。
  • 全新安装现在会默认使用标准 Linux PAM 模块如 pam_unix.so 和 pam_cracklib.so,因为它们现在提供了 SUSE 开发的 pam_unix2.so 和 pam_pwcheck.so 里老早就有的功能。
  • selinux-policy 更新至 2.20120725。

自由桌面

openSUSE 在主要 Linux 发行版中的与众不同之处在于它平等地提供了全部主要自由桌面:官方开发和支持的。这包括 GNOMEKDE 的 Plasma Desktop (默认桌面) 和 Plasma Netbook,XfceLXDE,KDE 3 和全新的 E17。与往常一样,这个版本从引导界面到应用程序飞溅屏幕均进行了养眼的美化。尤其是 KDE,获得了一个养眼的,全新的黑色 Plasma Workspace 主题。

Plasma 桌面

对 KDE 工作空间的更新为 openSUSE 带来了许多改进。openSUSE KDE 团队为这个版本带来了一个养眼的黑色桌面主题。若您也喜欢为您的应用程序使用黑色主题,您可以在应用程序外观设置中的颜色部分选择 openSUSE-dark 主题。另外内置的标准 'Obsidian Coast' 也是另一套值得尝试的颜色方案。对于偏好 Plasma 默认外观和感觉的人,也可用改良过的 Air 主题。以下是主要功能变化概览。

  • Plasma 桌面 4.10 版囊括了许多移植到新的 QML 技术的挂件。虽然没有带来新功能,这种移植改善了桌面部件的行为、性能和稳定性。
  • 窗口管理领域,现在可以轻松地下载为 KWin 提供额外功能和特效的脚本了。默认包含了一个新的窗口最大化的动画脚本。其它 KWin 改进包括支持在多数虚拟机中使用 openGL,并且窗口管理器现在支持为每个显示器进行色彩管理了。
  • 一个主要的新功能是支持了屏幕顶部或者标题栏菜单按钮。通过在「系统设置」-「应用程序外观」-「风格」-「微调」启用这些选项后,菜单会从应用程序里消失。它现在将变成窗口装饰上的一个新按钮(位置当然是可配置的)或者变成屏幕顶部的自动隐藏菜单(或者出现在屏幕顶部面板下面),当您鼠标移动到那里就会弹出。
  • Plasma 桌面的文件管理器部分,Dolphin,收到了许多性能上的改进,如大文件夹处理,基于元数据的分组功能,以及添加了一些更智能的搜索选项。
  • 元数据处理也在其它领域进行了改进,更快的索引可以更少地干扰日常工作。Nepomuk Cleaner 的引入提供了一个清理语义元数据存储的简易工具。它能够清理过时的和无效的数据并合并重复的项,显著地加速了电子邮件和文件搜索的处理。运行它会花费可观的时间(最多甚至要一天)但高度推荐这么做。
  • 打印机管理也进行了改进,引入了新的打印管理器。一个 Plasma 挂件将显示打印机并允许您控制队列任务,而系统设置屏幕允许您添加、移除和配置打印机。新的打印机向导比起之前那个更加智能,并且新的打印管理器与最新的 CUPS 也协同的更好。
  • Apper 更新管理器 v 0.8 应该不会再与 zypper 命令行和图形界面软件包管理器产生相互屏蔽的问题了。现在多了一个处理更新的等离子挂件。它没有默认包含但您可以从源中下载它。Apper 也将显示和描述未信任的软件包,并可自动下载软件包以供复核。妥善整合了通知,性能和图形界面也进行了改进并碾碎了许多故障。
  • 工作空间的蓝牙整合收到了一些行为和用户界面上的改进,现在能够建立更加稳定的连接,中断也更少了。

GNOME Shell

这是第三个分发 GNOME 3 的 openSUSE 版本。此版本的焦点包括:

  • 极大改进的通知,包括重新设计的消息托盘、更智能的通知、和其它调教与改进。托盘中的项更大、更清楚,并且不会到处乱跑,更加方便使用了。
  • 增强的活动概览以及改进的布局。一个修改是触发应用程序启动器的方式。在之前的版本中,您使用左上角的应用程序标签页来访问您的应用程序。这被替换成位于 Dash 中的一个新的格子按钮了。
  • 高度增强的文件应用程序 (也叫做 Nautilus),加上了能用的文件搜索、新的最近位置、重新设计的界面和许多故障修复和方便的新功能。
  • 整合的输入来源,使得输入不同字符集(如日文或中文)更轻松快捷。(注:上游功能,本版因为 IBus 并不稳定故未实现,IBus 仍未 1.4 版)
  • 按需的辅助功能,意味着通用访问功能如 Orca 屏幕阅读器可通过按下一个按钮启用。
  • 一个新锁屏。这在设备锁定时提供了一个诱人的视图,以及方便的功能如媒体控制。锁屏意味着您将能够看到您的计算机锁定时发生了什么,并且让您能够获得您离开时发生的事情的摘要。它也意味着您可以轻松地修改音量、跳过歌曲或暂停音乐,而不必去输入密码。

GNOME 3.6 中还有许多其它改进,包括 Online Accounts 支持了 Microsoft Exchange 和 Windows Live(通过文档应用程序访问 SkyDrive),以及高度改善的系统设置(包括更大的图标和更好的布局,现在在可行时会显示全部图标)。飞行模式现在能关闭全部无线电,包括蓝牙。许多 GNOME 基础工具也都收到了改进,包括磁盘用量分析器,磁盘和字体查看器。更多细节请见其版本资讯

Xfce

Xfce 桌面更新到了最新的故障修复版本并且 Thunar 文件管理器和 Terminal 有很多主要更新,后者被重命名为了 xfce4-terminal。Thunar 1.6.0 引入了标签页支持、改进的书签处理(包括轻松地添加远程书签)和一些图形界面改进,复制开始前检查空闲空间,以及广泛的性能优化。xfce4-terminal 0.6.0 更现代化了,修理了一系列故障并且,最重要的是,现在其支持一种 Quake 风格的下拉模式可随时保持一个运行的终端,该终端可快速地通过一个键盘快捷键调出。

其它自由桌面和窗口管理器

我们带来了新的桌面环境 E17 和两款新的窗口管理器 (awesome 和 Sawfish),本版 openSUSE 为那些非传统桌面爱好者提供了许多选择。

awesome 窗口管理器

openSUSE 12.3 新带来的是 awesome,一个高度可配置的、下一代框架 X 窗口管理器。它非常快速并且可扩展。它主要面向实力用户、开发者和任何每天都要处理计算任务的人以及想要细粒度地控制其图形环境并有能力付诸实现的人。

窗口管理器可能是您日常任务中最常用的软件之一了,剩下的是您的网页浏览器、邮件阅读器和文本编辑器。实力用户和程序员对于后面这些日常任务有大量工具和选择。有些是高度可扩展和可配置的。

awesome 试图填补我们缺少的这块空白从而补全整个工具集:一个可扩展的、高度可配置的窗口管理器。为实现此目标,awesome 被设计为一个框架窗口管理器。它极其快速、小巧、动态并可用 Lua 编程语言高度扩展。基本上,这个点子就是让您自己来构建您自己的窗口管理器,只提供您正期待的功能。

awesome 提供了一套易用和有详尽文档的 API 来让您配置和定义您的窗口管理器行为。

Sawfish(锯鳐)窗口管理器

Sawfish 是一个使用基于 Lisp 脚本语言的可扩展的窗口管理器。它的策略与多数窗口管理器相比是极简风格的。它的目标只是以最灵活和优雅的手段管理窗口。全部高级窗口管理器功能都是以 Lisp 实现的以供未来扩展或重定义。这些是一部分区别 Sawfish 和其它窗口管理器的功能:

  • 强大的按键绑定:实质上每个 Sawfish 提供的功能都可以绑定按键(或鼠标按钮)。
  • 事件钩子:对于许多事件(移动窗口等)您都可以自定义 Sawfish 相应的方式。
  • 窗口匹配:当创建窗口时您可以将它们匹配到一系列规则并基于规则自动执行动作。
  • 灵活的主题:Sawfish 允许创建非常不同的主题并且已经有大量的第三方主题可用了。

Sawfish 会检测您的桌面环境并整合之,无论您正在使用 KDE、Gnome、LXDE、XFCE 还是 Mate。

Enlightenment 17

Enlightenment 0.17 或 (E17) 终于发布了,我们很高兴为大家带来了它。它是对 DR16 的完全重写并设计为一个全面的桌面壳层,基于新的 Enlightenment 基金会库 (EFL)。更多信息请查看Enlightenment 专题页面

其它

PCMan,LXDE 轻量级桌面的文件管理器,升级到了新版本。1.1 版带来了一些 UI 改进如禁用了菜单和任务栏中没法用的项(比如「复制」所选项),「将备份文件视为隐藏文件」选项,修改细节列表视图中的列的功能,以及搜索引擎支持。底层改进集中在稳定性和性能方面,以及带来了卸载可移除介质但不弹出它们的支持和一些其它小改动。

这个版本的另一个部分是 WindowMaker 0.95,引入了一些首选项的修改并添加了一个新的「居中」放置策略,支持 _NET_FRAME_EXTENTS 和移除了处理菜单文件时的 CPP 依赖。

新日文输入法

全部桌面环境现在都可以使用 Mozc,一个由 Google 开发的日文输入法引擎。它正在成为日文 Linux 社区的事实输入法标准因为它提供了更加精确的转换并且看起来之前的标准引擎,Anthy,已经不再维护了。Zinnia 和 zinnia-tomoe 为 mozc 提供了手写识别。

Mozc 软件包已在 OBS 上的 M17N 项目酝酿了一年多了。它收到了许多测试,许多日文用户已在手动安装它了,因此是时候把它推送到 openSUSE 官方源里了。

中文用户链接:这里

TeXLive

LaTeX 爱好者将意识到 TeXLive 2012 已被拆分成了很多个软件包以提供一个高度模块化的 TeX 排版系统。该拆分是根据 TeXLive 上游已知软件包完成的。

这些软件包被分组为

  • 文件系统 (FHS/TDS),基础设施,收藏和样板软件包全是 noarch 的。收藏和样板软件包仅仅是为依赖关系占位的,它们需要
  • 提供了指定的格式如 latex,字体,风格和文档的 noarch 软件包。这些软件包需要
  • 提供了程序如 pdftex,dvips,xdvi,xetex 和更多引擎的二进制软件包

用于格式、风格和引擎的 noarch 软件包提供了文件作为虚拟依赖关系。也就是说,例如 texlive-latex 提供了

 ’tex(alltt.sty)' 到 'tex(tracefnt.sty)' 和
 ‘tex(article.cls)' 到 'tex(slides.cls)' 和 
 ’tex(omlcmm.fd)' 和 'tex(ullasy.fd)' 以及更多

若 LaTeX 缺了东西,例如

    ! LaTeX Error: File `multirow.sty' not found.

    ! Font U/pzd/m/n/10=pzdr at 10.0pt not loadable: Metric (TFM) file not found.

就可以使用以下命令解决:

# zypper install 'tex(multirow.sty)'
# zypper install 'tex(pzdr.tfm)'


该项目的 URL 在,下载软件源在

New and updated applications

音频、视频和照片处理

File:Amarok 12.3.png
Amarok 使用中

最新版本的 Linux 的最受欢迎的音乐播放器 Amarok 2.7 带来各种各样的修复和改进。

一系列主要变化:

  • Track dragging support in Unique Tracks tab of the Synchronize Statistics action; allows you to do a "diff" between collections and transfer missing tracks.
  • Amarok now scrobbles tracks in streams if the stream correctly updates meta-data.
  • When scrobbling to Last.fm, Amarok announces suggested tag corrections (configurable).
  • Ability to scrobble recently played tracks from iPod to Last.fm.
  • Synchronization of labels and rating between Last.fm and Amarok collections; play count can be synchronized one-way from Last.fm to Amarok.
  • Statistics synchronization between collections, supports rating, first / last played time, play count and labels.
  • Mark downloaded podcast episodes to keep, even when purge is enabled.
  • Nepomuk plugin: Play and manage tracks using the Nepomuk database.
  • Amazon store: It is now possible to add items to your shopping cart using Amarok:
  • Amazon store: Use the context info applet to show further infos about a selected item.
  • Amazon store: We now ship a utility to handle downloads from Amazon.

rhythmbox 2.98 brings a host of smaller and larger improvements:

  • New dialog for importing music into the library
  • New audio CD metadata lookup library, replacing libmusicbrainz
  • Improved transitions between album art images
  • Nautilus cluebar buttons now result in the right source being selected
  • Update notification buttons when playback state changes
  • Search musicbrainz for album art by album and artist name
  • Love/ban buttons visible in last.fm/libre.fm sources

Audioplayer Banshee 2.6 is the culmination of six months' work by 15 developers, 30 translators and dozens of bug reporters and testers. It adds device scrobbling support for LastFM, file management options are now specific to each source and the "Copy files when importing" and "Update file and folder names" settings can now be set independently for Music and Videos.

Totem Movieplayer got renamed to ‘Videos’ and hides its titlebar when maximized. The menus have been cleaned up, drag and drop in the playlist was improved, DVDs and other optical media are listed with Grilo and connection speed preferences got removed. There is a number of new nice animations and variable rate playback. Visualisations are now off by default and the plugins got improvements with a better search sidebar and a new recent-files handling plugin.

This release of audio editor Audacity 2.0.2 is mostly a bugfix release, with a significant bug that caused clicks on split lines having been fixed. But there are also improvements to several toolbars and to some Nyquist effects, keyboard shortcuts can now be allocated to effects and Nyquist plug-ins can be added to Chains.

The Blender 2.64 3D/video editor release was focused on integrating and stabilizing the long awaited BMesh modelling system, which has full support for N-sided polygons and many new modelling tools. New tools include Dissolve, Inset, Bridge, Vertex Slide, Vertex Connect, Bevel, and improved versions of Knife, Subdivide and Rip. see more here

File:Shotwell 12.3.png
Shotwell picture manager

Digikam 3.0 brings a large number of improvements to Linux’ most powerful Photo Management application. A list of some of these features:

  • Improvements to batch processing
    • new actions supported: change image sizes, crop, Gamma factor
    • can now handle several folders at once
    • multi-threading in batch manager
    • improved tool handling, including saving, importing and loading of chains of tools
    • more flexible placement of files in folder hierarchy
  • new video slideshow generator
  • Much improved Camera user interface
  • Video metadata support
  • Automatic noise reduction settings
  • better Presentation View
  • integrated UPnP/DLNA via plugin
  • Geolocation enhancements
  • include exif and IPTC data in html gallery export
  • import pipelines EXIF autorotation
  • new subtag search
  • much, much more

The updated libraw library supports a number of new cameras including the Canon 5D Mark III, G1 X, 1D X and Powershot SX200; Nikon D4,D800/D800E and D3200; Fuji X-S1 and HS30EXR; Casio EX-Z8; Olympus E-M5; Panasonic GF5; Sony NEX-F3, SLT-A37 and SLT-A57 and the Samsung NX20 and NX210.

Gwenview, KDE's image viewer, features improved thumbnail handling and generation as well as Activity support. It supports color correction of JPG and PNG files, working with KWin to adjust to the color profiles of different monitors, allowing for consistent color representation of photos and graphics. The Gwenview image importer now works recursively, showing all images available for display below, as well as within, a specified folder.

Personal Information Management and Chat

In the PIM area are applications handling email, chat and other communication duties. Many of these received significant improvements in this release.

Claws Mail has been updated to 3.9. This little GTK email client and news reader is known for being fast, extensible and easy to configure. It adds IMAP server side search and several speed-ups and optimizations.

Evolution 3.6 modifies the preferences and contact editor for small screens, allows you to save events, memos and tasks from the File menu and lets you re-configure already configured systems with the Assistant. Evolution no longer uses GConf but stores its account data in plain text files. The mail formatter received a rewrite and a better highlighter. The search folder can now update automatically and local contact photos are displayed in the image chooser for the contact editor. Also new is spell checking for the ‘Summary’ in Events, Tasks and the Memo editors.

KDE's PIM application suite Kontact has gotten many bugfixes and improvements. Substantial work with the search backend has vastly improved email indexing and retrieval, delivering more responsive applications with lower resource usage. Feature additions and improvements include:

  • KMail has a new ability to automatically resize images attached to emails, configurable in KMail's settings.
  • The quick search bar above the mail list now searches also in the full bodies of emails.
  • KMail introduces Text Autocorrection, including word replacement and capitalize the first letter of a sentence. The settings and word lists are shared with Calligra Words and are configurable.
  • HTML composer support has been expanded: tables can be inserted, with control over rows and columns as well as the ability to merge cells. Defined sizes for images are now also supported, as is the ability to insert html code directly .
  • The 'plain text' companion to HTML emails was also improved, with HTML tags convertible to plain text equivalents.
  • The import wizard gained support for importing settings from Opera, settings and data from Claws Mail and Balsa, and tags from Thunderbird and Claws Mail.
  • Other improvements to KMail include: opening recent files in the composer, adding new Contacts directly from KMail and attaching vcards to emails.

The SoftPhone, Video Conferencing and Instant Messenger application Ekiga 4.0 introduces a major ovarhaul of the main window, a new pulse audio plugin (in ptlib), New audio codecs: SILK (used by skype), G.722.1 (aka Siren 7), G.722.2 (aka GSM-AMR Wide band) , H.323 gatekeeper support, call auto-answer and support for handling multipe video streams (H.239).

The release of the chat application Empathy 3.6 Improves GNOME Online Account integration. This chat application is deeply embedded in the GNOME Shell and received several other minor improvements.

Text editor Gedit 3.6 has updated GtkAssistant support, an extensive new snippet collection for docbook and File Browser side panel improvements.

In the office

LibreOffice 12.3

The latest stable LibreOffice 3.6 release brings again a large number of additions and improvements such as:

  • General: PDF export with Watermark option; allow editing of read-only documents; performance improvements for Calc and Writer (document import, spreadsheet operations)
  • Writer: word count in status bar; improved auto format options; improved label and business card support
  • Calc: color scales and data bars; sort option in autofilter menu; merge cells using the cell context menu; CSV file import and export improvements; new formula options page with calculation settings
  • Draw: Corel Draw import
  • Impress: wide-screen format for slides, improved detection of external display

Version 4.0 of LibreOffice did not make it in time for openSUSE 12.3 but is available on software.opensuse.org.

openSUSE 12.3 comes with Calligra 2.5, a very complete productivity and creativity suite of applications.

  • In the productivity area, the word processor Words continues to focus on students or academic users. There is improved editing of tables and dragging of text as well as enhancements in the bibliography tools. Spreadsheet application Sheets has a new stand-alone docker for the cell editor and a new cell tool window with formatting controls. Kexi, the database application has a full-screen mode, new form elements and widgets.
  • In the artistic department, Free Software’s premiere drawing suite Krita introduces a new compositions docker for movie storyboard generations, textured painting, improved canvas handling and a large number of performance improvements.
  • All Calligra applications benefit from an improved autosave system, user profiles, improved charts component, better shape connection and various new effects for images.

Version 2.6 of Calligra was released just too recent to be included in openSUSE 12.3 but it will be available on short notice on software.opensuse.org.

File:Stage Words 12.3.png
Calligra Stage and Words

PDF viewer Evince 3.6 introduces offline help courtesy of Yelp, the ability to inhibit the screensaver, find options to the search bar and preserves file metadata upon saving a copy.

Okular Document viewer introduces new features including a technique called tiled rendering which allows the viewer to zoom in further and faster while reducing memory consumption compared to previous versions. The embedded video feature has been improved. Editing and creating annotations in Okular has become more user-friendly with the introduction of high precision QTabletEvents. Now a tablet behaves exactly like a mouse except when creating an annotation. With this task, the high precision position of the QTabletEvent is used, so free-hand annotations are smoother. A new feature allows easy history navigation, which can now be accessed by forward and back mouse buttons.

Calibre 0.9 brings a complete rewrite of the PDF Output engine, to support links and fix various bugs. It can show disabled device plugins in Preferences->Ignored Devices, the Get Books tool works better with Smashwords, Google books and B&N stores and adds the Nook UK store. There is a ‘clear ratings’ button for the edit metadata dialog and a new mass storage driver for rockhip based android smart phones.

Scribus 1.4.2 is mostly a bugfix release, it also adds an often requested feature, namely true cross-platform spellchecking. Until Scribus 1.4.1, the spellchecker worked only on Linux and UNIX systems, including manually built versions on Mac OS X. As of version 1.4.2, Scribus provides a modern spellchecker, similar to LibreOffice and based on Hunspell, which should be easily portable across all supported platforms. Scribus 1.4.2 will detect existing dictionaries already installed by hunspell packages or LibreOffice, on the system it has been installed onto. Additional dictionaries are downloadable directly from within the Scribus Preferences via freedesktop.org. The spellchecker now also works within the Story Editor.

openSUSE 12.3 and the web

File:Firefox Chromium 12.3.png
Firefox and Chromium under GNOME Shell

openSUSE always comes with the latest latest Mozilla Firefox version (19 at the time of release), part of our updates. Likewise, openSUSE always offers the latest Chromium from Google.

The GNOME webbrowser Epiphany 3.6 now integrates the app menu into the gear menu if the system has no global application menus and offers F10 as shortcut to the gear menu. Restoring the last session on startup is now default, the URL entry layout has been improved and a long click or right click on the back and forward buttons gives you a list of earlier visited sites.

Rekonq got updated to version 2.0. Features in this release include a "web-app" mode, inline spell checking, a new incognito mode similar to Google's Chrome, support for pinning tabs, an improved error page, and various other enhancements.

File:Rekonq KTorrent 12.3.png
Rekonq and KTorrent under Plasma Desktop

KTorrent is updated to version 4.3.1. Major changes:

  • Sort by total leechers and seeders, if connected seeders and leechers is equal
  • Add support for magnet links in the syndication plugin
  • Add search line to download order dialog
  • Add move top and bottom option to download order dialog
  • Add support for removable storage

Feed Reader Liferea 1.8.12 adds Google Plus and Instapaper.com to the Social Bookmarking Sites.

Games and Educational Applications

The ARAnyM Atari emulator got a new precise FPU emulation core and a fully working NF USB. It also brings GEM <-> Host clipboard interconnection and middle mouse click for input un-grab.

A new game part of the KDE Games suite is included with this release. Picmi is a single player logic-based puzzle game. The object of the game is to color cells according to numbers given at the side of the board in order to complete a hidden pattern or picture. Picmi includes two game modes—random puzzles are generated according to the selected difficulty settings or the included preset puzzles.

Other KDE Games have been improved, including the ability to print puzzles from KSudoku so they can be used away from the computer. KGoldrunner was rewritten based on the new KDEGames libraries; gameplay and UI are the same, but the game is prettier and smoother. KJumpingCube now allows adjusting the speed of moves and animates multi-stage moves to make them easier to understand. The UI has been improved and you can now choose which one you'd like to play against: Kepler or Newton. Smaller boards offer simplified playing styles. Pairs gained a theme editor.

The Rocs Graph Theory IDE, a educational application part of the KDE Education suite, has a much improved user interface and configuration dialog to make it easier to use. There is also new support for TGF, DOT/Graphvis (import/export) and TikZ/PGF (export only) files.

Also part of the EDU suite is Marble, the virtual globe for Linux. For this release, Marble moves forward into the area of Space Science. The European Space Agency supported work on a visualization of space orbiters around other planets inside the Marble Virtual Globe. As a result, Marble can display the positions and orbit tracks of space missions such as Mars Express, Venus Express and SMART-1. The visualization also includes the positions of the two Mars moons Phobos and Deimos. He also enhanced Marble's display of Earth satellite tracks. A video presents some of the features that have been added.

Another major feature new in Marble is support for the OpenStreetMap Vector format. A video of this feature is available as well. Currently, the default maps in Marble are not vector-enabled yet but other maps can be downloaded easily.

Ktouch, KDE's touch typing tutor has been rewritten. It now features a clean, elegant and vibrant user interface to make learning and practicing touch typing as enjoyable as it can be. The new user interface reduces complexity, and guides the user with color cues and inobtrusive animations. Many new features help improve the overall training experience—a new course editor has built-in quality checks, the user can review progress and identify weaknesses, the overall appearance is attractive and scaled to screen size, hinting and obvious problem solving tips are displayed prominently. See for some screenshots and further information this blog.

For developers

As always, we’ve updated our tool chain with the latest CMake, GCC, git, gtk2 and 3, Java and more. Below you can find an overview of the major changes in this release.

IDEs and tooling

Development tool Anjuta has been upgraded to version 3.6.2, adding ‘make check’ and subdirectories support to the project manager. It also has some improvements to the git integration, showing the Git Tasks dock when the Git dock is active and the Status view as default. There are also new plugins for indentation and language support.

QtCreator 2.6 introduces Kits as a replacements for ‘Targets’ in the 2.5 and earlier releases. Kits generalize the magic which Targets applied on top of the builds, offering settings for which device type to develop for, the sysroot, compiler, debugger, Qt version to use and a few more. This way, code sharing between projects is much easier. Another inclusion in QtCreator 2.6 is experimental Android support from Necessitas and support for QNX/Blackberry devices. Unfortunately, due to a lack of maintenance, Symbian support had to be dropped.

Other improvements include the ability to type e.g. ‘’’fii,txt:123’’’ in Locator to jump directly to that line in that file, fixes to the qrc file editor, highlighting of missing files in the resource editor, C++11 fixes and more.

Glade 3.14, the GNOME/GTK tool to develop user interfaces, brings back to life GtkAssistant support and let you define styles classes. Thanks to a rework of the UI with Glade itself, many small UI improvements are present as well as some larger ones like the new font dialog, the new color chooser and a new GladePreferences dialog.

Kate, the KDE Advanced Text editor got an improved notification system, an optional 'minimap' as scrollbar, a new Project Management plugin, predefined color schemes, improvements to the scripting interface, support for python plugins and much more. A great bugfixing effort reduced the number of open bug reports from 850 to 60. Work was also done to create a new Quick Open functionality and other enhancements. Most of these improvements also benefit applications using Kate Part for text editing, including the lightweight KWrite text editor and KDevelop.

Aside from benefiting from the improvements in its core text editing component provided by Kate, KDevelop 4.4 introduces a new QML based welcome screen. It is shown when no files are open and helps you to get started in an intuitive way. Its code screen offers a list of projects and coding sessions, the debug screen gives you the tools for debugging and optimizing applications and the review area helps you reviewing patches.

KDevelop

There has also been a host of smaller improvements, from cleaning up the templates to CMAKE integration improvements and much more.

The latest monodevelop 3 provides preliminary Android API17 (Jellybean 4.2) support and database extensions.

The powerful Valgrind 3.8 suite of tools for debugging and profiling offers a large number of enhancements. A quick list:

  • preliminary support for Android on x86
  • support for Intel AVX and AES instructions (only for 64bit code)
  • POWER Decimal Floating Point instruction support
  • significant changes to malloc support including the option to work with non-libc malloc implementations
  • memory leak check performance improvements
  • new GDB server monitor commands ‘block_list’ ad ‘who_points_at’
  • C++ demangler can work with at least G++ 4.6 binaries
  • more scheduling options for threaded code
  • and much, much more. See the valgrind website for more information.

New in openSUSE 12.3 is the Fossil Distributed Version Control System, which offers a number of unique features in the DVCS area: distributed wiki, bugzilla and blog functionality; autosync mode to reduce pointless forking and merging; and a build-in web interface. See LWN for more.

GCC has been updated to 4.7.2, bringing in several bugfixes.

openSUSE specific tools

KIWI is the openSUSE operating system image creator, used for generating hard disk images, Live CD’s and USBs, VMware appliances and a large number of other images including the official openSUSE release and the tens of thousands of images on SUSE Studio. This new version brings UEFI support and a load of other improvements. A list of the major changes in KIWI 5.04.37:

  • add error condition for architectures that do not support the creation of iso hybrids
  • added support for firmware="uefi" attribute. In contrast to the standard firmware="efi" support, kiwi will not create its own efi boot images but uses the shim and the signed bootloader modules as they are provided by the packages.
  • added the firmware type 'vboot' to support creation of images for arm based boards using google's chrome OS boot style
  • added support for EFI in live ISO images
  • added support for software raid into disk based appliances
  • added support for the apt-get/dpkg package manager to kiwi
  • added support for optional type attribute 'bootfilesystem' which can be one of ext2,ext3,fat16 or fat32 (bnc #788374)
  • Added armv5 support
  • added support for btrfs seed live ISO images.
  • added support for filesystem mount options during image build and later to become stored in the fstab file

openSUSE 12.3 includes the SUSEpaste script - the essential collaborative debugging utility to paste outputs/logs easily to the openSUSE Paste site from the command line.

A new security tool (gpg-offline) has landed in Factory. It is used to check for GPG signatures of upstream tarballs.

The Open Build Service command line client OSC now supports creating and releasing maintenance updates for openSUSE.

Languages and Development Libraries

openSUSE comes with a wide variety of languages. We ship not only python, PHP, Ruby, Go and many more but updated versions and interesting enhancements or modules can always be found on software.opensuse.org, courtesy of the Open Build Service. The major development Platforms like the KDE Platform, the GNOME libraries and the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries are of course also available on openSUSE, and them too, in various versions on OBS.

Languages

Mono 3 supports the new async C# 5.0 as well as some new assemblies: System.Net.Http, System.Threading.Task.Dataflow. Microsoft's open source ASP.NET WebStack is included as well as the Entity Framework and Partial support for Portable Class Libraries. Aside from performance and stability improvements there is also better GDB support for SGenGC internals.

Though Python 2.7.3 remains the default, Python 3.3.0 is now available, bringing a wide range of changes:

  • PEP 380, syntax for delegating to a subgenerator ("yield from")
  • PEP 393, flexible string representation (doing away with the distinction between "wide" and "narrow" Unicode builds)
  • A C implementation of the "decimal" module, with up to 120x speedup for decimal-heavy applications
  • The import system (__import__) now based on importlib by default
  • The new "lzma" module with LZMA/XZ support
  • PEP 397, a Python launcher for Windows
  • PEP 405, virtual environment support in core
  • PEP 420, namespace package support
  • PEP 3151, reworking the OS and IO exception hierarchy
  • PEP 3155, qualified name for classes and functions
  • PEP 409, suppressing exception context
  • PEP 414, explicit Unicode literals to help with porting
  • PEP 418, extended platform-independent clocks in the "time" module
  • PEP 412, a new key-sharing dictionary implementation that significantly saves memory for object-oriented code
  • PEP 362, the function-signature object
  • The new "faulthandler" module that helps diagnosing crashes
  • The new "unittest.mock" module
  • The new "ipaddress" module
  • The "sys.implementation" attribute
  • A policy framework for the email package, with a provisional (see PEP 411) policy that adds much improved unicode support for email header parsing
  • A "collections.ChainMap" class for linking mappings to a single unit
  • Wrappers for many more POSIX functions in the "os" and "signal" modules, as well as other useful functions such as "sendfile()"
  • Hash randomization, introduced in earlier bugfix releases, is now switched on by default

In total, almost 500 API items are new or improved in Python 3.3. For an even more extensive list of changes in 3.3.0, see this page.

Further in the Python world, Python-qt4 supports Qt 5 now and python-twisted 12.3 brings a number of bugfixes as well as some new features:

  • The new -j flag to trial provides a trial runner supporting multiple worker processes on the local machine, for parallel testing.
  • twisted.internet.task.react, a new function, provides a simple API for running the reactor until a single asynchronous function completes.
  • twisted.protocols.ftp.FTP now handles FEAT and OPTS commands.
  • trial now supports specifying a debugger other than pdb with the --debugger command line flag.
  • twisted.python.util.runWithWarningsSuppressed has been added; it runs a function with specified warning filters.
  • trial's skipping feature is now implemented in a way compatible with the standard library unittest's runner.
  • The setup3.py script is now provided to provisionally support building and installing an experimental, incomplete version of Twisted in a Python 3 environment.
  • twisted.python.util.FancyStrMixin now supports arbitrary callables to format attribute values.
  • Several new methods of twisted.trial.unittest.SynchronousTestCase - `successResultOf`, `failureResultOf`, and `assertNoResult` - have been added to make testing `Deferred`-using code easier.

Ruby and the ruby gems included in openSUSE have mostly seen minor updates to fix security and stability issues or support newer versions of their dependencies.

Haskell is a pure functional programming language and Haskell Platform is a carefully selected set of Haskell libraries. Haskell Platform [3] 2012.4.0.0. ships with ghc [4] 7.4.2.

Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is an actively developed a high performance Common Lisp compiler. In addition to the compiler and runtime system for ANSI Common Lisp, it provides an interactive environment including a debugger, a statistical profiler, a code coverage tool, and many other extensions. Lisp is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language. It supports a combination of procedural, functional, and object-oriented programming paradigms. As a dynamic programming language, it facilitates evolutionary and incremental software development, with iterative compilation into efficient run-time programs. Previously only clisp was available as the platform in openSUSE

Development platforms and libraries

GTK 3.6 is part of this release. Major new features include:

  • GtkSearchEntry: a GtkEntry subclass that is set up to be a search entry
  • GtkMenuButton: a button that pops up a menu. The menu can be generated from a GMenu or provided manually
  • GtkLevelBar: a new widget for displaying the strength or level of some quantity
  • Spin buttons can be oriented vertically
  • Text views and entries can display 'selection handles' when used with touch devices
  • Theming
    • Support for cross-fading and transitions
    • Support for CSS animations
    • Support for blur shadows

The KDE Development Platform introduces a more comprehensive SDK for Plasma.

  • Development tools are brought together into PlasMate and the use of Qt Quick within Plasma continues to expand, making it easier to extend and customize Plasma Workspaces.
  • Containments (the area where widgets on desktops and panels are situated) can now be written in QML, making them easy to customize for experiments or special use cases.
  • The KWin window manager introduces new scripting interfaces for window effects, behavior and management. A number of example scripts helps potential script writers get started. Find some tutorials here.

opencv 2.4 brings significantly improved and optimized Android and iOS ports and a greatly extended GPU (i.e. CUDA-based) module.

The latest Poppler 0.22 library brings improved PDF rendering, annotation and form improvements, more xhtml-compliant html output and a number of stability fixes.

The Soprano modular RDF storage framework brings a series of code optimizations as well as support for plain SQL queries in the Virtuoso backend, a custom socket implementation which makes it possible to use a single socket accross threads and some more minor fixes and improvements. The zeromq socket library version 3.2 brings many new features and API improvements. A list can be found here

In Cairo 1.12.8, the MSAA compositor was refined in the gl area. In cairo-xlib, SHM transport for image transfers to and from the X server was enabled, offering a notable reduction in rendering latency. Many corner cases in cairo-pdf were fixed, improving opacity groups and font subsetting. In cairo-image, support was added for rendering glyphs to pixman and using that from within cairo, improving glyph throughput for the image backend by a factor of about 4. A few bugs in the glyph rendering code were fixed, along with many other bugs.

Servers and virtualization tools

In the virtualization area, we’ve got updates to the main technologies letting you run other operating systems on openSUSE as guests or use openSUSE as a guest on other systems. For servers, openSUSE updates to the 9.2 release of PostgreSQL and moves to MariaDB, replacing mySQL as default.

Virtualization tools

VM's in GNOME Boxes

Virtualbox 4.2 brings support for limiting network IO bandwidth and improved 3D performance to your system as well as better network device support (up to 36 network cards, in combination with an ICH9 chipset configuration). It also introduce new features in GUI like grouping VM and possibility to alter some settings during runtime.

We also ship the 4.2.1 release of Xen

The KVM and Qemu updates to 1.3.0 vastly improved the USB stack with mass storage device and USB3 support as well as MSI/MSI-X support for the XHCI controller. Other goodies:

  • QEMU can now use the Linux VFIO driver for guest PCI devices
  • New paravirtualized hardware random number generator device
  • New block jobs: live block commit (a.k.a. snapshot deletion) and live disk mirroring (a.k.a "storage migration")
  • New CPU models: "Haswell" and "Opteron_G5"
  • USB redirection now supports live migration
  • NBD block devices can now be specified using URI syntax
  • QEMU embeds an NBD server, accessible via the monitor
  • Improved support for sandboxing using seccomp mode 2

This release includes the first major release of Boxes, an application for using remote systems and virtual machines. It offers a pretty and simple interface for handling any number of connections using Spice as protocol, featuring auto-detection of Virtual Machine format and a variety of other conveniences in a pretty interface.

Server technology and databases

Postgres's got you covered
File:Mariadb 12.3.png
MariaDB replaced MySQL as default

PostgreSQL 9.2 ships with openSUSE 12.3 and delivers native JSON support, covering indexes, replication and performance improvements, and many more new features. Native JSON support in PostgresSQL provides an efficient mechanism for creating and storing documents for web APIs. Range Types allow developers to create better calendaring, scientific, and financial applications. No other major SQL database supports this feature, which enables intelligent handling of blocks of time and numbers. See here for more information on this enterprise-class database.

openSUSE has moved from MySQL to MariaDB as default. MariaDB was first shipped with openSUSE 11.3 back in 2010. Over the years it proved itself and starting with 12.3 openSUSE is replacing default MySQL implementation with MariaDB. This means that whole distribution is compiled against MariaDB and in ‘M’ in LAMP means MariaDB from now. As MariaDB is a drop-in replacement, you don’t have to worry about compatibility. Apart from that, MySQL Community Server is not going away and you can still replace MariaDB with MySQL if you want.

If you've never heard about MariaDB, you can read more about all the cookies they have on their website. Especially more storage engines, speed optimizations and some other added features.

Infrastructure monitoring tool Nagios 3.4.4 adds bugfixes as well as a plain html page option to allow users to disable PHP and the loading of external references.

The latest Nmap supports 12 new protocols and the Squid web cache was updated to version 3.2.6, bringing the following main features:

  • SMP scalability
  • Surrogate/1.0 protocol extensions to HTTP
  • Client Bandwidth Limits
  • Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
  • Squid-3.1 adds native support for streaming protocol ICY. Also commonly known as SHOUTcast multimedia streams.
  • ICAP implementation (RFC 3507 and www.icap-forum.org)

Cloud

File:Openstack overview.png
OpenStack in action

12.3 is the first release of openSUSE to feature complete packages for OpenStack, the leading open source cloud computing platform (12.2 had some packages from the Diablo release, but not the full set of packages required to run OpenStack). As OpenStack is made of many different components and servers, it is highly recommended to read the upstream documentation. On top of that, packages for Grizzly (next release of OpenStack due in April) are already being worked on and will be available for 12.3.

Highlights of the Folsom release (see the Folsom release notes):

  • PKI support for authentication (in keystone)
  • return of Hyper-V support (in nova)
  • support for versioned objects in object storage (in swift)
  • new API and client tool for image service (in glance)
  • image replication (in glance)
  • new service for network (quantum)
  • new service for block storage (cinder) (used to be nova-volume)
  • improved web dashboard
  • several other features, tons of stability and performance improvements, as well as bug fixes
Studio live-previewing a KDE build

Finally, the DevStack tool which is used by developers to work on openSUSE has been ported to openSUSE. It makes it much easier to contribute to OpenStack from openSUSE, or to simply test OpenStack.

SUSE Studio is a project from openSUSE sponsor SUSE™ which builds upon the Free and Open Source openSUSE tools like KIWI and offers a convenient web interface for easy building of openSUSE and SLE based custom operating systems (appliances).

SUSE Studio users can expect availability of openSUSE 12.3 right from the release date, and support for upgrading existing appliances shortly after. This means it will be possible to easily create your own operating system for the cloud, desktop or portable devices based on openSUSE 12.3 with a custom package selections, artwork, scripts and any other properties. You can share your appliance or also browse other’s shared appliances on SUSE Gallery.

Live Images

Recovery Live Image

With the release of openSUSE 12.3 an additional, non-installable live image is provided for rescue and recovery purposes. It currently weighs in at 570MB and is thus considerably lighter than the GNOME/KDE live images and still fits on a CD-R. The new rescue live image is based on Xfce and thus provides an intuitive desktop environment with a number of applications allowing users to seek support, diagnose and recover from issues on their systems.

File:Gparted 12.3 on rescue.jpg
Gparted on the Rescue CD

Apart from the core Xfce applications like the Thunar file manager, we have tried to ensure the rescue image keeps all the support channels to openSUSE accessible. So we have

  • Midori, a lightweight browser which enables one to report bugs, access to search engines and forums, and allows one to send receive emails from a web based client
  • ePDFreader, a PDF viewer for reading pdf manuals, and
  • XChat, an IRC client enabling access to the the openSUSE community support channel at irc://freenode%23opensuse

For rescue and recovery purposes the rescue image contains

  • gparted (and YaST's disk manager) for editing partitions on the hard disk,
  • a small subset of relevant modules from YaST including bootloader manager, network device manager, remote administration (VNC),
  • command line tools for data recovery like dd_rescue which is useful to rescue data in case of I/O errors because it does not necessarily abort or truncate the output and photorec, a data recovery utility,
  • tools for data backup such as grsync, a graphical interface to rsync, and lftp, a feature rich command line ftp client.