I use Foresight Linux on my work computer. I don’t know if I’ve said it here, but I consider Foresight 2.1.0 to be one of the best releases of that distribution. I only had a few gripes: Evolution was still quirky (but that’s mostly Evolution’s fault), and Intel GMA acceleration left a lot to be desired — scrolling in applications, such as Firefox was unacceptable, and compiz was not ready yet.

Over the last month or so, Ken and the Foresight community have been quietly working on improving Foresight by bumping GNOME to version 2.26, as well as fixing issues regarding Intel GMA acceleration.

Yesterday, I noticed that someone was talking on #foresight about a bunch of package promotions to foresight.rpath.org@fl:2 which is the release “branch” of Foresight. I decided at the end of the day to log out of X.org, go to a console, and start a conary updateall in a screen session.

This morning, I came in: no failures in the update (226 update jobs). I then rebooted the computer (just in case there was a new kernel — I didn’t bother to look).

And, lo and behold, Foresight 2.1.1 booted up. Everything just worked.

I’m not sure what all the differences are, but I do know that Intel GMA acceleration is much better now; scrolling in applications (esp. Firefox) is an order of magnitude better than on 2.1.0. Font smoothing seems crisper, also. Compiz works great; to enable it, just select “Normal” or “Extra” under the Appearance preferences applet’s new “visual effects” tab.

Only one sour note: something in the default theme from GNOME 2.24 (in Foresight 2.1.0) caused the Appearance applet to throw up Bug Buddy on the first time I switched themes. It hasn’t happened upon subsequent theme switches, so it’s probably a minor fluke.

So, kudos to Ken and the Foresight Team! I’m looking forward to the “official” release.