Added 2D features include expanded Linux and Solaris printer support, new methods for creating fonts from files and streams, and new methods related to VolatileImages and hardware acceleration of images. A number of internal changes to text rendering code greatly improve its robustness, performance, and scalability. Other performance work includes hardware-accelerated rendering using OpenGL (disabled by default).
Refer to the documentation at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/2d/index.html.