New stable build - Build 303 and Firmware release Q2B76.

[Jim Gettys]

Please update your systems to new firmware and new Sugar environments.
The firmware fix will improve battery charging substantially, and fix a
battery overcharge problem, so it is important to update both the
firmware and the Sugar environment.

We expect a series of stable builds through the month of March; please
do not wait, however, for a later one, as we'd like to reduce the amount
of trouble people are having with batteries in the field (and start to
get experience on the mesh network). While not finished, the battery
charging and discharging by the EC is substantially better than in
previous releases.

Both of the firmware and the NAND image will be updated by using the
procedure found here:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Autoreinstallation_image

Highlights of this stable build:

1) @orking mesh network!  
2) Updated web browser that scales on our high resolution screen, making
for a vastly improved web experience.
3) Gnash (free Flash player; still somewhat unstable) pre-installed;
Flash 9 is also known to work, but not packaged or installed.
4) touch pad driver fix for jumping cursor: the touch pad should be much
more usable, and the tablet usable on B2 systems.
5) boot time has substantially improved due to a scheduler fix.

Please read the release notes!

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Software_Release_Notes


o New activities:
- Blockparty (aka Tetris) (Vadim Gerasimov, J5) 
- Slideshow (Erik Blankinship, Marco)
- Journal Preview (Marco, Tomeu)

o Activity Improvements
- Write (Abiword team)
- TamTam (TamTam Team)
- Web Browser (Firefox, Marco)
- PenguinTV -> News Reader (Owen Williams)

o Latest sugar is included with lots and lots of bug fixes and
improvements

o Lots of bug fixes:
- sugar-shell taking up 100% cpu after a while (believed fixed based on
testing marco/dan/johnp)
- initial screen works on qemu or without a camera (fixed in 298 by
marco)
- nice scrollbars  (fixed in 296 marco)
- focus issues in some activities (fixed in 296 marco/tomeu)
- not able to log in in qemu build (johnp fixed)
- sugar blocks on service startup (johnp fixed)

o New sugar API (Dan, Marco)

o New Marvell firmware - working mesh!
        (Marvell, Cozybit, Marcelo, Michailis, Dan Williams, cjb)
- Please note that the GUI for associating with the mesh will
        become clearer in future builds later this month.
- Support for in-mesh multicast support
- Link-loss detection and route tear-down with RERR messages.  This
improves route restoration time.
- Mesh transmission rate is done a the highest available rate for each
hop. The rate for each hop is determined when the route is discovered.
- Deferred route discovery.  Route discovery is now done by a lower
priority task, which reduces the variance of transmission time.
- WDS problem workaround.  Wireless interface will accept WDS replies
from WDS-enabled access points.  This will only work with APs that have
a different MAC OUI than the xo's. (ticket #901)
- Fix to select the best MPP instead of the one with the highest
sequence number (internal bug #91).
- Fix for tickets #914, #861.
- Note: there has so far been *no* significant tuning of the mesh yet

o Kernel fixes
- Much better wireless driver (Marcelo, Dan)
- Packet corruption with the wireless under heavy loads.  TCP flow
control change for the mesh interface that fixes it.
- Tickless operation. (Thomas Gleixner, Salomon)
- New touch pad driver with fully working PT/GS mode switching.(Hull,
Salomon)
- New kernel; the old stable was 2.6.19, this has 2.6.21-rc2 (Linux
community)
- Analog input mode on audio input (Kumar, Salomon)

o Better X Window System performance 
  (X.org, Jordon Crouse, Adam Jackson, cjb)

o EC/OFW fixes (Bradley, Smith, Lilian)
- Update from B43 to B76
- Fixed SD boot support
- USB Kensington keyboard fix
- LED for battery is solid red instead of blinking
- Reset the wireless chip when the firmware boots to fix wireless not
showing up on boot
- Beginnings of support for wireless (not yet finished, Walter).
- Much improved battery charging code and data reporting (Quanta)
- Battery overcharging fixes (Quanta)
- EC now idles in very low power mode when it has nothing to do: this
  means the EC no longer drains the battery quickly when the battery is
  left in the system, but there is no power from the power adapter; this
  was causing many batteries to go completely dead. (Quanta)


Some important bugs not (yet) fixed but well underway:
 o network devices interfere with the cache and slow applications and
boot significantly fix/workaround is in progress.
 o suspend/resume is next: we have working firmware for suspend/resume,
and will be bringing up the Linux support.
 o still some more battery work to do.
 o JFFS2 GCD NAND fix now can perform error correction very fast.
(Segher)


Thank you all for your help and support. Please note that an
increasingly large fraction of the software development is from the
larger OLPC community rather than OLPC staff or those of the companies
involved in its production. If I've overlooked anyone, our sincere
apologies.
                   The OLPC Software Community.
-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child