Finally I’ve done it and I can release rc1 of Kongoni 1.12.3. Since alpha2 a lot of things have changes, a lot of things got added and the same removed. To not get into too many details I will write the most important updates which come with rc1, so here we go.
First of all, the kernel was upgrade to version 2.6.34.1, of course patched with aufs and lzma support for squashfs4. Remove Firefox and build and added Icecat 3.6.4, PIG was re-added, but also rebuild and it comes with new icon theme, fully moved the git repository to http://gitorious.org/ and the build packages moved them to http://sourceforge.net/. Remove gtk-qt-engine and replaced it with kcm-gtk (gtk-qt-engine has some weird issues with Icecat/Firefox), added QtCurve package, flash-nonfree package (not installed by default), radeon-firmware (also not installed by default), upgraded gparted to version 0.5.2, rebuild xorg-server so it would detect better the graphics cards (thanks to Ubuntu, Fedora for their patches). Added extra packages for default skel setup, custom profile for kongoni, redone the boot logo, splash logo of the Live CD, brand new KDM theme (named KongoniMe) and Kplash theme (named KongoniSplash) and brand new default wallpaper (named KongoniAbstract) also used in the splash screen and kdm theme.
The list of modification is really big, most packages where upgraded to the latest possible level, new packages where added and of course PIG now runs by default and you can manage the system using PIG (talking about install/upgrade/remove packages).
Some serious modification where done also the the boot process, parts of the boot processes where removed and added to system crontab, so the booting times will be lower, also this small parts where removed because there wasn’t much sense to keep ldconfig or update gtk icon cache at the boot time.
Added full support for nouveau drivers, but everything is experimental, so it might have a lot of bugs. I’m not sure how stable is nouveau, because I do not have the environment to test it, but I guess at the certain point, if any of you would like to test this and see some issues you can always drop me a comment or mail.
I guess, if this release will go thru without any real issues, the next will be the stable version of Kongoni 1.12.3. In my tests Kongoni behaved quite well and work as it should. On an Intel graphics card, the hardware acceleration worked perfectly, out of the box, but on a Radeon graphics card, it didn’t if radeon-firmware package was not installed, this problem is because of missing firmware in the kernel, but installing the radeon-firmware package should fix your problem. The same happens with Intel based wireless hardware, they work, but the firmware needs to be install, also can be done using PIG.
Finally, like I said before there is a really big difference between alpha2 and rc1, only even if we talk about looks. Anyway there are still problems and issues with rc1, but most of them are related to the packages management which is done using portpkg. I have noticed that the performance of portpkg is very poor and maybe the only real fix would be to actually redo all portpkg, but that is something almost impossible, due to time and man power.
Download Kongoni 1.12.3-rc1 from sourceforge.net:
ISO Image: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/kongoni/iso/1.12.3-rc1/kongoni-1.12.3-rc1-i486.iso
MD5SUM for the Image: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/kongoni/iso/1.12.3-rc1/kongoni-1.12.3-rc1-i486.iso.md5sum
NOTE: if you find some errors when installing some packages using PIG or portpkg, please send the buildlog found in $HOME/ports/log/ of the package to our mail kongoni-bugs@linux-source.org, to be able to fix it asap.
Don’t forget, your feedback is very important, if you find any issues and/or bugs, do not hesitate to contact me, you can comment on the post or write a mail.
Update: Added some screenshots of this new release
