ANNOUNCE: F11-0.88 Alpha2 (os258py)

[Bernie Innocenti]

This is the Alpha2 milestone of our Sugar 0.88 series for XO.
Please refer to this page for the current status and download
instructions:

 http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployment_Team/Sugar-0.88_Notes

Surprise surprise! We now have parallel builds for both the XO-1 and the
XO-1.5!

I'll make an effort to keep the releases synchronized so people can test
on both platforms, but at this time we have no resources to work on
platform specific bugs affecting the XO-1.5.


== Changes relative to the previous release (os240py) ==

 * Include Sugar 0.88.1 packages (pbrobinson)

 * Rebase unmerged patches on top of 0.88.1 and shave off a few
   which are no longer needed. The queue is still very long, help
   is needed to upstream as many as possible before release

 * Disabled the hot corners for the frame, as requested by
   participants of the OLPC Realness Summit. I'm not convinced
   this is really a gain, but let's first see how many people
   ask to revert this change (tch, bernie)

 * Disable sshd startup to save time/memory (bernie)

 * add IRC and SIP protocols to Empathy client (bernie)

 * Include the Words activity (bernie)

 * Add a few small content bundles (bernie)

 * Pull latest OS updates from upstream (fedora)


== Bugs fixed in this release ==

 * xulrunner 1.9.2, attempting to fix font size problems (bernie)
   http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2018

 * Prevent double-clicks on entries in the journal from opening
   2-3 instances of the same activity (tch)

 * Rework code to read name widget in the activity toolbar,
   although there are still ways to fool it (bernie)
   http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1948

 * Fix font size in Terminal (jasg)

 * Fix layout of Record UI, although with a temporary kludge (m_anish)

 * Reconnect to last AP on startup (erikos)
   http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1883

 * Fix the nefarious 1-dot boot hang bug (dsd, bernie)

 * Make search box in library homepage narrower so it doesn't overflow
   (bernie)

 * Avoid duplicated mesh icons in neighborhood view (tch)

 * Proper Geode video driver fix for the "black boxes on buttons"
   bug in GNOME. Note, (frank_huang)
   https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15700
   http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10076

   NOTE: for safety, I have not yet removed the MigrationHeuristic
   option in xorg.conf. Please, try testing without it.


== Known bugs ==

We still have a bunch of serious regressions still open:

 * ALT-TAB does not switch between apps (tch, quozl, bernie)

 * Activities sometimes start and remain in window. Window
   appears at least briefly on all launches. (aa?)

 * Pulsing launch icon is delayed or absent; occasional "activity
   failed to start" message then the activity starts (tch)

 * Measure sometimes locks up on recording, quitting from frame
   then brings up metacity dialog "activity is not responding"
   (I could never reproduce this myself)

 * Font in Write is small and text does not fill the screen width (jasg)

 * Browse: sometimes clicking links in frames creates tabs
   (need someone to look at this. aa?)

 * Turtle Blocks: ctrl-c ctrl-v sometimes do not work (walter)

 * Sugar sometimes restarts; only seen 3 times, twice clicking on
   journal and once deleting a journal entry
   (can't reproduce this, maybe a geode driver bug. Next time please
   check /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old and other logs)

All the above bugs seem quite hard. Any help fixing them would be
greatly appreciated.


== How to help testing ==

Feedback from the entire community is very appreciated, although we're
not planning any further releases of the Sugar 0.84 series.

Bugs affecting upstream components are better filed in their respective
trackers:

 * Sugar and activities: http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/
 * Fedora 11: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/
 * Drivers and OLPC OS customizations: http://dev.laptop.org/
 * Paraguay-specific bugs: http://trac.paraguayeduca.org/

If you're unsure where a bug belongs to, use the Paragauy Educa tracker.
Please, always assign these bugs to "Carlos", who will keep our status
summary updated.


== Acknowledgments ==

I wish to thank Paraguay Educa and Activity Central for providing
essential engineering resources to make this effort possible.

I also appreciate the expertise and support of many dedicated community
developers and testers.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/