PLEASE test Build 368 and Q2B84 firmware ASAP.

[Jim Gettys]

http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/development/build368

This is our release candidate for our initial field trials. There may be
a problem with the ext3 image generation we will investigate further on
Saturday before release.

Those of you with multiple systems machines, please test the mesh as
well.

The release notes have been extensively updated.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Software_Release_Notes

If you don't know how to install the build and firmware without an
autoreinstallation key, then this is probably not for you.

Attached is the draft of the announcement.
                           Thanks greatly,
                                      - Jim

-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child

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We are very happy to announce the availability of a new stable build.
It is composed of Build 35XXX and the Q2B84 firmware.

Highlights of this stable build:

1) Working mesh network!  UI to select the Mesh network!
2) Battery charging is under control at last!
3) An greatly web browser
4) Gnash (free Flash player; still somewhat unstable) pre-installed;
Flash 9 also works, but not packaged or installed.
5) touch pad driver fix for jumping cursor: the touch pad should be much
more usable, and the tablet usable on B2 systems.
6) boot time has substantially improved due to a scheduler fix.
7) battery indicator in Sugar
8) availability of Helix Media Player
9) instructions for customizing your own image

Please update your systems to new firmware and new Sugar environments.
The firmware fixes include key fixed for battery charging, and fix a
battery overcharge problem, so it is important to update both the
firmware and the Sugar environment.

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

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

Additionally, you can find the first content from the OLPC Library.
http://dev.laptop.org/pub/content/    has links to online content
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Library     has related information.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Library_Release_Notes has release notes.

We'd like to thank the people who have reported bugs; each bug is gold
to us, particularly hardware bugs.  *Please* let us know in trac
(found at http://dev.laptop.org/: you must enable cookies) of each and
every hardware failure (or strange behavior) you have, even if it
happens for "stupid" reasons.  Each failure, no matter what the cause
(good, bad, stupid, clever, even abuse), is of great help identifying
and getting problems fixed, weak mechanical components strengthened,
and bad electrical components identified.  In general, we'll try to
get you replacement machines too, so we can find the "root cause" of
malfunctioning machines. Please let us know of software problems you
see too; checking for duplicate entries in the trac system and adding
your report if you see a clearly matching report will also be
helpful. Including the version of your hardware, the firmware version
and the build number in your reports (both hardware and software) will
help us greatly in identifying problems.

We know battery problems have been a great pain and concern to you,
and are as relieved as you will be with their resolution. For those of
you with dead batteries with B2 systems, most, but not all of the dead
batteries can be recovered with the systems you now have with the new
firmware.  Recovering batteries in the field with BTest-1 systems is
harder; thankfully there are far fewer BTest-1 systems deployed. Please
follow the directions in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Battery_Charging.

Please read the release notes!

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Software_Release_Notes; they have been
extensively updated.


o New activities:
- Calculadora, A simple calculator activity 
  (Mauro Torres et. al. of the Tuquito Linux project in Argentina)
- Blockparty (aka Tetris) (Vadim Gerasimov, J5) 
- Slideshow (Erik Blankinship, Marco)
- xbook as an activity 

o Activity Improvements:
- Write (Abiword team)
  Toolbar bar buttons for open,save,justity,insert image. Much 
  less flicker on context changes and startup. Speedups for scrolling. 
  Fixes for bugs 404,822,824,823,771,826. Other fixes.
- TamTam major improvements http://wiki.laptop.org/go/TamTam_Release_Notes (TamTam Team)
- Web Browser (Firefox, Marco)
  This version lays out pages well on our high resolution screen
  for a vastly improved web experience. Unfortunately, we have not
  had time to integrate a table of media types to a media player.
- The News Reader now ships with new, more educational default feeds,
  including BBC World News headlines, Wikipedia Picture of the Day, and
  more. (Owen Williams)

Temporarily removed activities:
- Journal Preview,  (Marco, Tomeu)
- Chat (needs tender loving care)
- Memosono (needs some work)

"Extras" activities
- Helix Media Activity http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Helix_Media_Activity
  This is able to handle a huge number of common audio/video datatypes,
  having codecs for almost anything you can think of.
- Library

o Latest Sugar is included with lots and lots of bug fixes and
  improvements
- 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)
- sugar displays the battery status (marco, dcbw)
- UI tuning (marco, dcbw, eben...)
- New sugar API (Dan, Marco)

o Wireless
- New Marvell firmware - working mesh! Many bugs fixed since build 303
        (Marvell, Cozybit, Marcelo, Michailis, Dan Williams, cjb)
- Note: there has so far been *no* significant tuning of the mesh yet
- GUI for associating with the mesh!
- 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 #861, #914, #992.


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-rc5
  (Linux community)
- Analog input mode on audio input (Kumar, Salomon)

o X Window System
- touch pad driver fix for jumping cursor: the touch pad should be 
  much more usable, and the tablet usable on B2 systems.
- Support for BTest-2-2 touchpads
- Disable autorepeat on most keys, bug #1201 (jg)
- Better X Window System performance 
  (X.org, Jordon Crouse, Adam Jackson, cjb)

o EC/OFW fixes (Quanta, Bradley, Smith, Lilian)
- Much improved battery charging code and data reporting (Quanta), Bug #611.
- Battery overcharging fixes (Quanta), Bug #667
- Low battery charging fixes; most, but not all dead batteries can
  be recovered in the field with existing B2 systems, Bug #543 
  (Quanta (Lui), rsmith) See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Battery_Charging 
- Battery capacity reporting fixes (Quanta (Lin et. al.) Bug #596
  On B2 systems, average NiMH lifetime in a test (backlight fully on,
  wireless associated, all functional units on including GPU, but processor
  idle) was approximately 2h40m, LiFePo batteries were approximately 3h 10m.
  This will improve as our power management improves
- Update from B43 or B76 to B82
- 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).
- 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) Bug #533

o EToys activity
- we can now launch etoys projects directly from the web activity by
  clicking on a project file link
- the etoys camera plugin saw major improvements, we can read video
  at > 20 fps now
- big cursor support added to Squeak VM
- better tutorial authoring system (Event Theatre)
- for developers: binary etoys content moved out of git, download
  shrinked from > 200 MB to less than 20 MB


o Image customization procedure
  only be available in firmware versions Q2B84 or higher:
  see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Customizing_NAND_images

Some important bugs not (yet) fixed but well underway:
o suspend/resume is next: we have working firmware for suspend/resume 
  and the systems are resuming (already faster than commercial systems); 
  much work remains here.


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.