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Articles: sidux 2009-02

Posted by slh on Jul 15, 2009 - 01:33 AM | (24119 reads)

Release Notes

A little later than originally planned, we now have the pleasure to announce the immediate availability of sidux 2009-02 "Αιθήρ", shipping with kernel 2.6.30 and KDE 4.2.4 in the following flavours:

  • KDE-lite, amd64, en/ de, ≈605 MB.
  • KDE-lite, i686, en/ de, ≈600 MB.
  • KDE-full, amd64+i686, en/ de (bg, da, el, es, fr, hr, hu, it, ja, nl, pt, pt_BR, ro, ru through liveapt) ≈2.2 GB.
  • XFCE, amd64, en/ de, ≈510 MB.
  • XFCE, i686, en/ de, ≈500 MB.

sidux is a full featured Debian sid based live CD with a special focus on hard disk installations, a clean upgrade path within sid and additional hardware and software support. The ISO is completely based on Debian sid, enriched and stabilized with sidux' own packages and scripts.

Release notes for Αιθήρ

"Αιθήρ" mostly concentrates on integrating KDE4 into sidux and implementing the changes caused by kernel 2.6.30. While KDE4 is certainly a work in progress, both upstream and in terms of making it viable for a release, this marks the first milestone release for sidux. Be aware that the KDE-lite flavours avoid KDE3/ qt3 packages, which means that k3b, kaffeine and umtsmon are not preinstalled. These packages will be part of the KDE-full flavours and are still installable.

Kernel 2.6.30 not only improves and stabilises hardware support for newer devices, it also further adapts the scheduler support to improve prioritisation of disk accesses to speed them up. The kernel and module initialisation process has also seen further performance improvements..

Another hot topic has been ext3 performance and ext4 stability. While ext4 still has to be considered a new filesystem, which should still mature a bit before it can be relied upon in production systems, it is progressing quickly. For these reasons, we recommend against using ext4 for the time being.

Starting with kernel 2.6.30, new wlan drivers for Atheros ar9170usb, Atmel at76c50x-usb and Intel iwl1000, iwl6000 and iwl6050 devices have entered the stage and access point mode (nl80211) finally becomes available for many mac80211 based wlan chipsets (in combination with hostapd).

Further areas of improvements are webcam and DVB support as well as finally bringing 2d acceleration for ATi radeon chipsets up to r780 (textured Xv).

We strongly recommend against allowing "ia32-apt-get", which ia32-libs-18 has started to depend on, to install on amd64 systems, as it seriously breaks system integrity in a barely repairable way. We cannot and will not support systems broken by installing this package and can only suggest a re-install. For further information, please see to the following threads:

As usual, a large number of individual functionality enhancements and bugfixes have been applied to the full package line up and sidux' own packages, in order to improve the general distribution infrastructure.

Our special thanks go to the sidux art team and especially all mirror hosters for their efforts regarding sidux. Following this we would like to welcome the new push mirror hosted by Office-Vienna in Austria, as well as a mirror hosted at OTE S.A. - Hellenic Telecommunication Organization, Greece.

Minimum system requirements:

  • amd64:
    • CPU requirements:
      • AMD64
      • Intel Core2
      • Intel Atom 330
      • any x86-64/ EM64T capable CPU or newer
      newer 64 bit capable AMD Sempron and Intel Pentium 4 CPUs (watch for the "lm" flag in /proc/cpuinfo or use infobash -v3).
    • RAM requirements:
      • KDE: ≥512 MB RAM (≥768 MB RAM recommended), ≥1 GB RAM for liveapt.
      • XFCE: ≥256 MB RAM.
    • VGA graphics card capable of at least 640x480 pixel resolution.
    • optical disk drive or USB media.
    • ≥3 GB HDD space, ≥10 GB recommended.
  • i686:
    • CPU requirements:
      • Intel Pentium pro/ Pentium II
      • AMD K7 Athlon (not K5/ K6)
      • Intel Atom N-270/ 230
      • VIA C3-2 (Nehemiah, not C3 Samuel or Ezra)/ C7
      • any x86-64/ EM64T capable CPU or newer
      the full i686 command set is required.
    • RAM requirements:
      • KDE: ≥384 MB RAM (≥768 MB RAM recommended), ≥1 GB RAM for liveapt.
      • XFCE: ≥192 MB RAM.
    • VGA graphics card capable of at least 640x480 pixel resolution.
    • optical disk drive or USB media.
    • ≥3 GB HDD space, ≥10 GB recommended.

Now to the interesting topics, like what's on the menu for now:

  • Debian sid, as of 2009-07-14.
  • kernel 2.6.30 (smp, hard preemption).
  • X.org 7.4 (xserver-xorg-core 1.6.2).
  • KDE 4.2.4 (en + de).
  • new, SVG based, art theme created by the sidux art team.
  • offline manual for en + de directly on the disc, online manuals for more languages online at http://manual.sidux.com/ and available via apt; a big thank you goes to the documentation and translation teams!
    Please note that the offline manual is only available on the running live CD or the installed system.
  • many changes for the manual.
  • iwl3945 support (Intel Pro Wireless 3945 chipsets).
  • iwlagn support for IPW 4965 and the IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n part of the Intel Wireless WiFi Link 1000/ 5xxxAGN/ 6000/ 6050 family.
  • at76c50x-usb support for 11 MBit/s Atmel wlan cards (at76c503a, at76c505 and at76c505a).
  • ath5k support for 54/ "108" MBit/s Atheros wlan cards (AR2425, AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, AR5213 and AR5414).
  • ath9k support for 802.11 draft-n Atheros wlan cards (AR5418+AR5133, AR5416+AR5133, AR5416+AR2133, AR9160, AR9280 and AR9281).
  • ar9170usb support for 802.11 draft-n Atheros USB wlan cards (AR9170 "otus").
  • b43/ b43legacy support for Broadcom wlan cards.
    OpenFWWF 5.1 opensource firmware for the following Broadcom AirForce 802.11b/g wireless cards:
    • BCM4306
    • BCM4311 revision 1
    • BCM4318
    • BCM4320
  • rt2x00 support for RaLink rt2400, rt2500, rt2570, rt61 and rt73 802.11b/g cards.
  • support for RealTek RTL8101, RTL8102(E), RTL8168B, RTL8168C and RTL8168CP PCIe ethernet cards.
  • support for RealTek RTL8180L and RTL8185 PCI/ cardbus wlan cards.
  • support for RealTek RTL8187 and RTL8187B USB wlan cards.
  • e1000e support for Intel 82801I, 82566DM-2, 82562GT-2, 82562G-2 and 82562V-2 Gigabit Ethernet cards (ICH9).
  • support for the Elantech multitouch Touchpad.
  • various new WMI drivers for different notebooks.
  • fw-detect to probe for hardware with non-free needs.
  • memtest86+.
  • OpenJDK 6 as part of the kde-full variant.
  • employ "insserv" to reorder the bootsequence based on LSB headers.
  • support kvm (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) for kde-full; kvm depends on hardware virtualisation support (AMD pacifica virtualisation extensions "svm" or Intel IVT (vanderpool) virtualization extensions "vmx")
  • ext4 selectable for installing, not actively supported yet! We recommend against using it in productive environments for the time being.
  • access point support for many mac80211 based wlan cards through nl80211 and hostapd (optional).
  • crda/ wireless-regdb.
  • fixed included locale packages.
  • liveapt fixes.
  • installer bugfixes.
  • new release artwork.

Localisation:

A new feature since sidux 2008-03 "Ουρέα" is the ability to select all other languages than German or US English from the grub menu (F4) in the kde-full flavour, installing the localisations for the desktop and many applications while booting. This ensures they are also present after installing sidux, while only installing the required languages for the given system. The amount of memory required for this feature depends on the language and sidux may refuse to install the given language packs automatically with insufficient RAM and the boot sequence will be continued in english language but with the desired locales-settings (currency, date/ time format, keyboard charsets). 1 GB memory or more is supposed to be safe for all supported languages, which are:

  • Bulgarian
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English (GB, AU)
  • Greek
  • French
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Croatian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (BR and PT)
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • the language selection depends on the availability of sidux-manual translations, get involved to add your language.

Hints for hardware with non-free needs:

sidux contains only dfsg free software, so you'll probably want to add contrib/ non-free to your /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list and ensure internet access. 

# See sources.list(5) for more information, especially
# Remember that you can only use http, ftp or file URIs
# CDROMs are managed through the apt-cdrom tool.
# The /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory provides a way to add sources.list
# entries in separate files that end with sources.list file.

# unstable
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
# deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free

# testing
# deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
# deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free

# experimental
# deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian experimental main contrib non-free
# deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian experimental main contrib non-free

and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sidux.list: 

# sidux e.V., Germany
deb http://sidux.com/debian/ sid main contrib non-free fix.main fix.contrib fix.non-free
#deb-src http://sidux.com/debian/ sid main contrib non-free fix.main fix.contrib fix.non-free

The required firmware can be determined with the following device/ firmware enumeration or by using the newly developed fw-detect script (packaged in configure-networkcard).

We try to provide packages for legally redistributable firmware from our non-free repositories, but not all vendors allow this.

Hints for Upgraders:

sidux tries hard to provide seamless upgrade path for debian and sidux' own packages, nevertheless a few things remain that could be improved with manual interaction.

crda

The new regulatory domain framework for cfg80211 based wlan cards requires crda to allow access to wireless channels above ch11 (2.4 GHz or their 5 GHz equivalents), without crda only the "world domain" (channel 1-11) is available. Previous hacks using module parameters ("ieee80211_regdom={US,EU,JP}") are no longer available and prevent cfg80211 from loading, please remove eventual module-init-tools overrides ("grep -R ieee80211_regdom /etc/modprobe.d/" to find them) manually. 

# apt-get update
apt-get install crda

ia32-libs/ ia32-apt-get

At the time of this writing, ia32-libs has started to depend on ia32-apt-get, installing (or upgrading to) this package serious breaks amd64 systems beyond repair. We seriously recommend against allowing this package to install and cannot support systems affected by this. For further information, please see the following thread ia32-libs depends on ia32-apt-get?. 

apt-get remove --purge ia32-libs

ia32-libs has never been part of any sidux release, but is often pulled in by installing non-free packages or using unsupported 3rd party tools.

firmware changes

Firmwares for the following common devices now needs to be supplied externally, please consult Hints for hardware with non-free needs for further advice or information about less common devices:

  • ATi r128/ radeon graphics cards
  • Broadcom NetXtremeII (bnx2, bnx2x) and Tigon3 (tg3) ethernet cards
  • Intel e100 (82559 D101M/ D101M, 82551-F, 82551-10) ethernet cards
  • Matrox MGA200 and MGA400 graphics cards
  • RaLink rt2860/ rt2870 wlan cards

gspca2

Starting with 2.6.27, the kernel ships with the new v4l2 based gspca2 driver, which replaces the old v4l1 based external gspca driver, which is needed for a large number of different webcams. Unfortunately most userspace programs are not aware of the new v4l2 API for devices formerly covered by gspca, meanwhile they need to be started using "LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so <program>". 

# apt-get update
# apt-get install libv4l-0
$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so <program>

KDE4

The upgrade from KDE3 to KDE4 is unfortunately less smooth than expected, so please be careful to follow these steps and be aware that further tweaks may be required. If you are unsure, reinstalling from this ISO might be easier.

Please backup your data or refresh existing backups!
It is absolutely crucial that X/ KDE aren't running while doing this upgrade! 

# init 3
# rm -f /etc/default/kdm.d/*
# apt-get remove --purge kdebase kpowersave powersaved
# apt-get install kdebase-workspace-data
# apt-get install kdebase-bin kdebase kdebase-workspace systemsettings kdm kdeutils
# apt-get dist-upgrade

Reboot and log into runlevel 3 again. 

# init 3
# apt-get dist-upgrade
# init 5

Log in and allow the automatically starting "kaboom" to convert your configuration (there is no way of return, so ensure a current backup), make sure that there's enough free space for a backup which might contain your Mails/ IRC logs, etc. and can easily be up to 5 GB).

The upgrade might miss certain packages, like your localisation packages (kde-l10n-${LANGUAGE_CODE}, e.g. kde-l10n-de) or kdepim. Depending on your graphics card or xorg.conf setting, "desktop effects" might slow down your system and should better be disabled. Take special care of powerdevil and orphaned packages, see below.

X.org 7.4 and evdev

Starting with X.org 7.4, Debian uses "evdev" to configure input devices like keyboards, mice, touchpads or graphics tablets, previous xorg.conf settings are ignored but may interfere with evdev. In case of problems with the keyboard layout, please make sure to have "console-setup" and "kbd" installed and reconfigure your keyboard preferences with: 

dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

If there are further problems, you might consider using an xorg.conf generated by the Αιθήρ live CD and copying it over to the installed system.

Timezone settings

Older versions of tzdata (as present in previous sidux versions) didn't record and set the timezone correctly, please reconfirm and select your current timezone – even if it appears to work – through: 

# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Obsolete packages

As part of the continuing development of sidux, a number of packages have been replaced by better alternatives or become redundant. This is particularly a case with the transition between KDE3 and KDE4, where many packages got replaced or dropped. As some of these are highly security sensitive, we recommend to weed out uninstallable packages with the help of apt-show-versions.

  • kpdf
    kpdf has been superseeded by okular, installing okular-extra-backends adds support additional document formats.
  • kpowersave
    powerdevil and acpi-support-base replace the combination of kpowersave and powersaved, please take care that that kpowersave/ powersaved need to be removed completely (--purge). The Debian default settings for powerdevil configure auto-suspend for idle systems, regardless of their battery state (including desktops), please visit the powerdevil profiles and select your configuration carefully.
  • kdebluetooth
    while still in the archvie, it hasn't been adapted to KDE4 yet and neither copes with the new bluetooth libraries yet.
  • many other KDE related applications
    Please use apt-show-versions as described below.

The following command is able to find packages not available from any active apt repository and may hint at obsolete packages, be careful about manually installed packages though. apt-show-versions is a separate package and isn't necessarily preinstalled. 

$ apt-show-versions | awk '/No available version in archive/{print $1}'

Disclaimer:

This is experimental software. Use at your own risk. The sidux project, it's developers and team members (all represented by the sidux e.V.) cannot be held liable under any circumstances for damage to hardware or software, lost data, or other direct or indirect damage resulting from the use of this software. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, you are not permitted to use or further distribute this software.

Download URLs, please give the mirrors some time to sync:

Europe

North America

South America

Asia

Africa

Australia

Our thanks go to all mirror hosters for their efforts regarding sidux.

How to get involved

Getting involved in sidux is easy, just join us at our Forum or even better on IRC (irc.oftc.net, port 6667, channel #sidux) and discuss your patches/ proposals or additions.

We will gladly discuss any dfsg-free patches and contributions, especially regarding alternative window managers (gnome, lxde) or general janitorial tasks or translations/ localisations.

Roadmap:

Please understand that the following roadmap is a rough estimate regarding our release schedule and is affected by the status of upstream Debian sid, major system components like X.org, KDE, the linux kernel and our own developments and is subject to changes.

  • sidux 2009-03 "Μώμος" — Q3 2009
  • sidux 2009-04 "Μόρος" — Q4 2009

The predicted release dates and code names for upcoming releases for 2010 will be announced with sidux 2009-04 "Μόρος".

Special thanks go to the entire sidux team.

Developers:

Joaquim Boura (x-un-i)
Michiel de Boer (locsmif)
Michael Deelwater (ModestUser)
Bernard Gray (cleary)
Aedan Kelly (etorix)
Stefan Lippers-Hollmann (slh)
Kel Modderman (kelmo)
Horst Tritremmel (hjt)
Niall Walsh (bfree)
Andreas Weber (webera)
Fabian Wuertz (xadras)

Documentation and Manuals:

Jose Tadeu Barros (ceti)
Alpha Mohamed Diakite (alphad)
Stefan R. Eissens (eislon)
Roland Engert (RoEn)
HarzG
Richard Holt (Richard)
Markus Huber (hubi)
Philippe Masson (LjanA)
Markus Müller (moto)
Mutsumu Nomura (muchan)
Gabriel Palade (ladepa)
Nicolas Poniros (edhunter)
Dinko Sabo (cobra)
speedygeo
Trevor Walkley (bluewater)
zenren
zerby
zonker
zulu9

Art Team:

David Creedy (klaymen)
Bernard Gray (cleary)
Daniel-S-P

Web design Team:

azoo
Bernard Gray (cleary)
Chris Hildebrandt (slam)
Dinko Sabo (cobra)
rieper|net
Daniel-S-P
Steve
Ferdi Thommes (devil)

vital Support:

Alessio Giustini (alessiog75)
Chris Hildebrandt (slam)
Ralph Hokanson Jr. (piper)
Latino
Gerald Prock (raider700)
Ferdi Thommes (devil)
Florian Schneider (hathe)
Torsten Wohlfarth (towo|)
sidux e.V.

Thanks to Hetzner Online AG for sponsoring sidux.com.

On behalf of the sidux team:
        Stefan Lippers-Hollmann (slh)

 
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