Hipster 2015.03 is here

We released our last snapshot ISO almost half a year ago. I believe, you want something new. You'll get it. New ISOs were just uploaded to dlc server. Let's see what has changed.

First of all, most evident changes were made in desktop area. We've updated Xorg server and libraries, which allowed us to incorporate some important security fixes from Oracle x-s12-clone and Debian Xorg. Also we've moved much more closely to Gnome 2.32. Most packages were updated to this level, excluding packages which either have a lot of specific patches (like gdm) or just dropped some significant functionality (like cheese, which dropped HAL support in version 2.32). Not everything has gone smoothly. We had to drop trusted desktop support during update. I believe nobody seriously used it under OI. The most annoying thing is that updated Xorg and Intel driver require some DRM updates, which are still not ready. So, if you have Intel video card, either pkg freeze X-incorporation and xorg, or use vesa driver.

General system changes

All Sun Studio-compiled C++ libraries were removed from the system. The libraries were published in their current form to http://dlc.openindiana.org/c++-libs/, so you can grub necessary libraries and LD_PRELOAD them or use in alternative path if necessary. All X/g++/Y packages are renamed to X/Y and moved from /usr/g++ to /usr. We continue delivering system/library/c++/sunpro for the foreseeable future.

Text installer was changed to install OI on EFI-labeled disk by default. Note, in this case the entire disk is erased. If you want to install OI on MBR-labeled disk, choose partitioned install.

Desktop software and libraries

• A lot of desktop libraries were updated
• GTK2 is updated to 2.24.27
• libdrm is updated to 2.4.58
• libX11 is updated to 1.6.2, xcb support is enabled in libX11
• xf86-video-ati driver updated to 6.4.16
• nvidia proprietary driver was updated to 340.76
• Mesa is updated to 10.5.1
• Xorg is updated to 1.12.4. This requires updating xorg drivers and modules. OI-shipped modules will be updated automatically, but if you use VirtualBox, you'll have to update your guest additions to at least 4.3.22 version.
• Glib2 is updated to 2.43.4
• Enlightenment 0.19.3 is added as alternative desktop environment
• fontconfig was updated to 2.11.1
• libid3tag and libmtp were imported from SFE, gmtp is added
• rdesktop is updated to 1.8.3
• transmission is updated to 2.52
• XScreensaver is updated to 5.32
• gnome-commander is updated to 1.4.5
• QT 4.8.6 is added
• emacs is updated to 24.3

• Input Method Selector was added from upstream input-method gate. Bug in svc:/application/desktop-cache/input-method-cache:default service preventing correct input methods functioning in recent OI was fixed. In fact, gtk input modules cache was moved from /etc/(amd64/)gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules to /usr/lib/(amd64/)gtk-2.0/2.10.0/immodules.cache and service has to regenerate these cache files in new locations . So, after update you can safely remove /etc/(amd64/)gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules.

Development tools

• Subversion is updated to 1.7.19
• SQLite is updated to 3.8.8.3
• Python 3.4 is updated to 3.4.3
• Binutils are updated to 2.25
• OpenBLAS 0.2.13 is added
• Mercurial is updated to 3.3
• Ruby 1.9.3 is added
• Ruby 1.8 is marked obsolete, all OI software is switched to Ruby 1.9.3
• Ruby 2.2.1 is added
• Curl is updated to 7.39
• libncurses.so links are moved to /usr/lib(/amd64)
• gawk is updated to 4.0.2, this fixes issues with pkgsrc bootstrap
• MPICH is updated to 3.1.3
• Sun Studio indent in /usr/bin was replaced by GNU indent. Old one is preserved in /opt/sunstudio12.1/prod/bin/indent

Server software

• A lot of packages were updated, including apache 2.4, php 5.4, php 5.5, postgresql 9.3, samba 3.6, mariadb 5.5
• PostgreSQL 9.4 is added
• PostgreSQL 8.4 is marked obsolete
• ISC dhcp server is updated to 4.2.7
• BIND DNS server is updated to 9.9.6-P2
• rsyslog is updated to 7.4.10
• NTP is updated to 4.2.8p1

As always, we are proud to deliver to you latest illumos-gate bits.

There's also a lot of security fixes and small bug fixes.

Of course, I had more ideas than spare time, so some of them were not implemented. We still don't have PHP 5.6 and our OpenOffice package still doesn't work with XML-based document formats. I've looked at replacing cpp with one based on Schilix version, but unfortunately I found it to be not always compatible with Sun cpp. So, I've chosen preserve the status quo and we still deliver Sun cpp. I still would like to see postfix as first class MTA in OI.

I'd like to share some more ideas, which attract me now. First of all, we consider further updating of Xorg and other former xnv components (libXfont, freetype). GCC update is also on the roadmap. Our old samba and cups versions, dependency on python 2.6 and ageing Perl 5.16 make me sad.  Of course, I'd like to see PHP 5.6 in oi-userland and perhaps even look at hhvm.