- Patch #569042 by nenne, jhodgdon: INSTALL.txt should explain about where to put new modules/themes.

- Patch #566494 by Dave Reid, chx, JoshuaRogers, David_Rothstein, Gábor Hojtsy, moshe weitzman, Rob Loach, TheRec, catch: fixed cron doing a full bootstrap on every page request (including cached ones).

- Patch #570572 by winston, David_Rothstein | Shai, Xano, alexanderpas, emmajane, kazar: changed label for user/1 account from 'administrator' to 'site maintenance account'.

- Patch #331611 by sun, joshmiller, TheRec, Rob Loach, Damien Tournoud: add a poormanscron-like feature to core.

#517814 by jmstacey, justinrandell, pwolanin, drewish, Jody Lynn, aaron, dopry, and c960657: Converted File API to stream wrappers, for enhanced private/public file handling, and the ability to reference other storage mechanisms such as s3:// and flicker://.

- Patch #218539 by keith.smith: mentioned the security team and the security bug report process in the INSTALL.txt

#79018 by pwolanin, catch, Morbus Iff: document how can one hide CHANGELOG.txt, etc. to improve security a slight bit

#204411 by catch: elevate MySQL requirements to 4.1.1 (the first production MySQL 4.1.x was 4.1.5 anyway)

#194369 by lots of contributors: move default files directory to sites/default/files which can be created automatically on install, so no need to bug the user about it, making the install process easier

#196535 by sun, chx, dww: check whether Drupal can issue HTTP requests at all, so we know that this is the cause of problems, not the remote host not responding.

#197730 by keith.smith: standardize on a much more user friendly cron reference in help texts, explain its importance with more examples in INSTALL.txt

#175876 by hazexp, webernet, keith.smith: unify module/theme/translation download links and include more pointers to these locations

#191310 by JirkaRybka, keith.smith: ship with a files directory by default and improve installation error messages checking for all requirements on the same screen, instead of putting the user through individual error screens

#181088 by fajerstarter, catch and JirkaRybka: rename 'access control' to 'permissions' for usability reasons

- Patch #144634 by chx: fixed critical bug that prevented language negotiation to work after/when drupal_goto() is called.