Fwd: [Shr-User] SHR-unstable got a facelift. And you a christmas present....

Fri Nov 20 11:21:41 CET 2009

Bad XMas present, bad! :!

Sorry, it's quite nice, but mrmoku's image from Friday 13th works better
as a phone.

Forgive my anger but today I almost missed being interviewed on a
major portuguese radio about our horrible CyberCrime law (similar
to the german horror)... fortunately I still had mrmoku's image
on another µ-sdhc card and quickly replaced it

Good news regarding CC law... the Chief Inspector of the investigative
police agrees with us (Free Software activists) and wants the law changed,
as well as the president of the association of judges :)

Rui

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 05:01:03PM +0100, Thomas Zimmermann wrote:
> 
> ----------  Weitergeleitete Nachricht  ----------
> 
> Betreff: [Shr-User] SHR-unstable got a facelift. And you a christmas 
> present....
> Datum: Donnerstag 19 November 2009
> Von: Sebastian Spaeth <Sebastian at sspaeth.de>
> An: "SHR-devel" <shr-devel at lists.shr-project.org>, "SHR-user" <shr-
> user at lists.shr-project.org>
> 
> [Nov 19 2009, The Internets] It's been psychologically proven that the
> longer you wait for your presents, the more happy you will be when you
> finally get them. It seems, the SHR team wants to make you REALLY happy
> and has let you waiting for quite some time without updates to
> shr-unstable...
> 
> ENOUGH WAITING. Christmas comes a bit early this year, and a new
> SHR-unstable image is out for public consumption. Keep in mind that this
> is the first snapshot after quite many major transitions, so don't
> complain if things are a bit ..well... unstable in the beginning. We are
> working hard to stabilize things. If you depend on your phone, you will
> probably not yet want to use this, e.g. right now the ringtones aren't
> working (it just vibrates).
> 
> We had no resources to provide a nice and working upgrade path, so an
> opkg upgrade is very likely to lead to a non-working system. (Really! It
> won't work. We know you'll try anyway :). It still won't work). So
> download the image (http://build.shr-project.org/shr-unstable), flash it
> and start afresh. I am writing this before the new images are out there,
> so be a bit patient before you can really grab them.
> 
> We will take a branch off current shr-unstable in a couple of weeks
> (after the dust has settled a bit) and start a conservative branch that
> will allow for more -testing releases and -finally- a stable snapshot.
> If others want to volunteer to do that, I'll happy hand over that job
> though.
> 
> So what has changed, and what to expect:
> 
>     * First don't expect any miracles. While stuff has changed under the
> hood, you are still owning a fine piece of open. but outdated hardware.
> But a path has been laid for future improvements (also performance
> wise), so this is the way to go. Also, we have tried to keep the look
> and feel as similar as possible in the new phone apps. You will feel
> very much at home there. But improvements are much easier now.
>     * xorg server rather than glamo kdrive. We switched to using a
> proper xorg-server, with a graphics driver that is actively maintained.
> There have been some improvements, and developer Weiss thinks that there
> are more perf improvements to get.
>     * eglibc rather than glibc. Just like Debian did, we switched our
> libc library from glibc to eglibc which (apparently) is a bit better
> suited  to embedded devices.
>     * While the theme contest is still ongoing, we have decided to
> install the gry theme by Bernd Pruenster by default, it is faster than
> the default theme, which is not designed for obsolete embedded hardware.
> The illume theme is still set to "default" or "Illume SHR", so try
> stasetting it to *gry* through the top bar wrench (preference settings)
>     * The neo theme is also nice and fast. It is not installed by
> default, but it is in the feeds. You can easily install in with "opkg
> install shr-theme-neo". Another theme to try out is the niebiee theme
> which has been designed with speed in mind ("opkg install
> shr-theme-niebiee").
>     * the python-based frameworkd is being replaced bit by bit with
> components written in Vala. The first components that we use are
> fsousaged (which replaces ousaged), fsodeviced, and fsonetworkd. Mickey
> posted a status update
> (http://www.vanille-media.de/site/index.php/2009/11/10/towards-the-end-
> of-2009/)
> on the new fso stuff.
>     * phonefsod replaces the ophonekitd phone daemon and and
> phoneuid/libphoneui are now responsible for all things GUI with the
> phone apps.
>     * opimd is included and we have the possibility to save incoming and
> outgoing SMS as well as contacts on the SIM card or on the SD card
> (using the sqlite backend). New SMS/contacts are now by default saved in
> a database on the FreeRunner (SD card or NAND), so be careful before
> reflashing! (Someone should probabably give instructions somewhere on
> how to change the configuration to use the SIM card as default and how
> to transfer data from one backend to another.)
>     * We have proceeded with the integration work with openembedded.org
> and we are very close to their development branch now, patches will be
> submitted to really merge SHR with upstream. This also means that we now
> have updated versions of basically every software component in this
> image. This migration has unfortunately caused quite some head aches and
> build problems...
>     * mokonnect was finally able to connect to my WEP WLAN without
> crashing the kernel :).
>     * We will be providing a possibilitiy to upgrade the kernel to
> 2.6.31 (including KMS goodness, see
> http://www.bitwiz.org.uk/s/how-dri-and-drm-work.html) for adventurous
> users some time after this release. We just had to make a cut somewhere
> and this did not make it in yet.
> 
> What is NOT working:
> 
>     * Ringtones are not working yet after the first call (it just
> vibrates). There is an issue related to the new fsodeviced and how it
> handles alsa sound profiles. We are investigating this issue.
>     * 2s Power button press does not shutdown, as the delayed action
> thingie seems broken. You'll just get the "shutdown" menu in any case ATM...
>     * "Hoversels" in python-elementary seem broken, so you can't switch
> profiles from the shr-settings app.
>     * The time is off as the timezone remains set to "Europe/London".
>     * Number-to-Name resolution is currently broken in the SMS message list.
>     * ffalarms crashes when you add an alarm... So don't use your FR as
> an alarm clock with this image.
> 
> External packages, such as those from opkg.org might be broken due to
> the updated components. We do invite external app programmers to submit
> their applications for inclusion as a openembedded build recipe and have
> them added to the SHR feed, so that apps are just a simple "opkg
> install" away.
> 
> Finally, although this snapshot has taken quite some time, I think we
> should congratulate those people that have worked hard in their spare
> time to put it all back together, first and foremost mrmoku, who has
> been a great informal lead dev and tireless buildhost guardian. But also
> TAsn, dos1, JaMa, Heinervdm, JesusMcCloud, mickeyl, pb (and many others
> that I have forgotten now), as well as all those 3rd party application
> authors of apps that make the openmoko interesting.
> _______________________________________________
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> Shr-User at lists.shr-project.org
> http://lists.shr-project.org/mailman/listinfo/shr-user
> 
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