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Release Notes/1.3-release

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Important Changes

There have been several important changes to the Funtoo Linux release process, builds and packages that we will cover below.

Kit Snapshots

The kits in meta-repo are based on a 13 November 2018 snapshot of Gentoo Linux. Unlike Funtoo Linux 1.2, all kits are frozen and 1.3 will serve as a "long term stable" (LTS) release of Funtoo Linux. This differs from the 1.2 release of Funtoo Linux where some kits were frozen, and others were not. We moved to a fully-snapshotted kit model to prevent unpredictable dependency breakage due to upstream changes that would apply to some kits but not others, which was an ongoing problem with the 1.2 release.

   Important

Funtoo Linux will continue to follow a "snapshot" true release process so that we can focus our efforts on developing new features for Funtoo. Our release goal is to provide (at the very minimum) 4 releases per year, and backport critical security fixes into our LTS release. Work on our next release will begin immediately and will be based on a snapshot of Gentoo Linux from early 2019.

Deprecation of multilib Support

Multilib support -- the ability for 64-bit versions of Funtoo Linux to run legacy 32-bit applications -- has been deprecated, so that Funtoo Linux for 64-bit CPUs is now 64-bit only -- what we used to offer as a separate "pure64" build. This was done because 32-bit support was originally created as a stop-gap measure 15 years ago to allow for a seamless transition to 64-bit computing, and we believe the time has come to shed this ongoing maintenance burden and focus efforts that have historically been spent on 32-bit compatibility in other areas.

We realize that this may create inconvenience for some users. There are some workarounds that will work for most situations. One is to create a 32-bit chroot environment for the odd 32-bit application that you may still need to run.

   Important

We will be offering more advanced solutions in the future. For applications such as the popular Steam, we are developing a container-based solution with GPU passthrough -- essentially a "chroot on steroids" -- that will allow you to deploy Steam in a container. We welcome the challenge to deliver this solution to Funtoo users as the efforts we are spending on container GPU acceleration are more beneficial to the larger Funtoo community than continuing to maintain multilib. We are making good progress here (Thanks Pavol Cupka (palica)!) and expect to have robust support for legacy apps like Steam soon. We appreciate your patience while we work on getting this ready!

Move to LTS Kernel

Historically, we have bundled a prebuilt debian-sources kernel and initramfs in our stage3 tarballs to make it easier for users to install Funtoo. We are now pre-building debian-sources-lts 4.9.130-1. This is a 'long term stable' kernel which allows us to offer more compatibility with things like nvidia-drivers and virtualbox. It is also a production-ready kernel by default. We still provide official support for debian-sources, which is available for installation via ebuild, and will install as a pre-built universal kernel+initramfs if you set the binary USE flag.

   Warning

Please note that if you are not using debian-sources or debian-sources-lts, we assume you're an expert user and can take full responsibility for building and running your kernel of choice. While we allow you to run any kernel with Funtoo Linux, the only ones we officially provide support for are debian-sources and debian-sources-lts. This is because these are the kernels that we use ourselves, and test in both production and desktop/workstation environments.

Funtoo Linux 1.3 Improvements

Besides the important changes detailed above, there are a host of other improvements in Funtoo Linux 1.3, detailed below:

Core System

  • gcc updated to 7.4.1. Many thanks to Chris Giorgi (TemptorSent) for these udpates! This rewritten gcc ebuild also has major improvements such as crossdev support. (See FL-3787.)
  • binutils updated to 2.31.1
  • glibc updated to version 2.27.
  • gcc-config updated to version 2.0.
  • ego-2.7.2 includes many bug fixes. boot-update, Funtoo's official boot loader tool, has now been fully integrated into ego as ego boot.
  • openrc updated to version 0.40.2.
  • perl updated to version 5.26.

Kits system changes

The following kits have been created:

  • core-server-kit, for key LAMP applications typically used in a server environment.
  • core-ui-kit, for core UI frameworks.
  • core-gl-kit, for OpenGL/Mesa and core X11 protocols.

Database Improvements

Funtoo Linux now offers official Oracle mysql-community 8 ebuilds. The Oracle ebuilds provide a compelling alternative to mariadb for production database deployments.

Desktop Kit Improvements

The following improvements have been made to desktop kits:

  • xorg-kit is now fully forked from Gentoo, and is based around xorg-server 1.20.
  • gnome-kit is fully forked from Gentoo and now offers a reliable GNOME 3.30 experience without systemd. See GNOME First Steps for information on how to set up.
  • Wayland support has been integrated into Funtoo Linux and is available via the wayland mix-in, and is enabled for kde-plasma-5 by default (see below.)
  • kde-kit now delivers an updated KDE Plasma 5 experience that, like GNOME 3.30, uses elogind but not systemd.
   Note

It is now possible to enable both gnome and kde-plasma-5 profiles and have a system that runs both systemd-less GNOME and KDE Plasma. The KDE Plasma profile is currently based on the GNOME profile to ensure compatibility so KDE Plasma-only users will (for now) notice quite a bit of GNOME-related USE flags being enabled. This will be addressed in future releases.

Web Site Improvements

  • New Funtoo Linux MediaWiki theme.
  • New even more simplified Installation Guide with a tutorial-style page-by-page navigation style.
  • Addition of the Funtoo CPU Database with real-time search capability.
  • Upgrades made to bug tracker and forums.

Desktop parts

gnome-3.30 update

kde-plasma update

Kde now updated to version 5.14.3. Important change is that QT core ebuilds, which can be found under dev-qt/* category now belong to special core-ui-kit

   Note

kde-plasma-5 profile now also inherits the gnome mix-in.

xfce update

Xfce-4.13 updates available. xfce-kit had minor package set changes, for example ebuilds that was previously in other kits, now belong to xfce-kit, as well as other minor issues fixes (https://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-5557)

Multimedia fixes

gfxcard-nvidia mix-in created for better default USE settings for users with nvidia cards. nvidia-drivers now has uvm is enabled by default (https://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-5974). Number of fixes for video editing software included, such as media-libs/mlt, media-video/shotcut new media-video/flowblade ebuild added.

Security fixes

For reported problems that are required for 1.3-release since a freezing of tree happened.

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