Announcing the development of OLPC OS 12.1.0

[Daniel Drake]

Hi,

We have now formalised the plan and schedule for our first major OS
release of the year, 12.1.0, so it is time to announce it:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/12.1.0
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/12.1.0/Release_plan

(we had actually already started development a few months ago, but did
not have all the details in place around the release process and
schedule until now)

As described in the release plan, we are currently in open development
until May 7th - all features and invasive changes need to land in
relatively-stable state before that date. We will then follow with a
4-week bug-fixes-only period, followed by a 4-week
regression-fixes-only period, followed by the release on July 2nd.

I will act as the release manager, and Peter Robinson will continue
making and publishing the development builds throughout the
development phase.

Our latest development build, version 4, is somewhat broken (e.g. no
networking, fails to boot on XO-1) but we will release a new build in
the next few days that will make things a lot more usable. We do not
have ARM builds, but we expect them to arrive shortly - the F17-on-ARM
efforts are progressing rapidly, we're just a few packages away.

Your continued feedback is appreciated: we are looking to draw in
testing, bug reports and development efforts from the community,
starting now :)

Thanks!
Daniel