[Olpc-open] debxo 0.4 release

[Andres Salomon]

Hi,

I just tagged DebXO 0.4 release.  This release looks much much nicer, thanks
to a new Xorg driver.  There's also a jffs2 fix which should make bootup from
NAND quite a bit faster.

The release can be found here:

http://lunge.mit.edu/~dilinger/debxo-latest/images/

Note that there's a known bug when running DebXO off the NAND; every once in
a while during boot, a race will be encountered whereby the machine kernel
will loop infinitely with CRC Node errors.  It's not critical, and a reboot
should fix it.  It's been there all along, as some people have already seen.


CHANGES:

 - Gnome improvements: the battery applet shows up properly, GUI apps
   that require root access (ie, the stuff in System->Administration)
   should launch properly despite lack of a password, auto-mounting of SD
   and USB keys is now enabled.

 - A new geode Xorg driver (2.11) is included.  This fixes font issues with
   a number of applications, and things simply look better.  With 0.3,
   the default fonts in LXDE looked terrible; in 0.4, this is no longer
   the case.  Applications like NetSurf (where font size cannot be
   overridden) are now usable.

 - Better hardware support; the MIC LED no longer is on by default, the
   ALSA driver saw a bunch of updates, and the gamekeys now work.  I've
   mapped the gamekeys to scroll on the right, and support pageup/pagedown
   on the left.  This could change later on, depending upon feedback and
   what HAL ends up accepting upstream.  The brightness and sound
   adjustment keys on the keyboard now work.

Those are just user-visible changes.  Other changes can be seen at:
http://lunge.mit.edu/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=xodist;a=summary


INSTALLATION ONTO NAND FLASH:

To install onto the XO's NAND flash, download the jffs2/$DESKTOP.dat
and jffs2/$DESKTOP.img to a USB or SD stick (where $DESKTOP is
one of the various desktops - gnome, kde, lxde, sugar, base, or
awesome). Boot into OFW (make sure your XO is unlocked!), and run

update-nand disk:\$DESKTOP.img

or

update-nand sd:\$DESKTOP.img

(depending upon whether you downloaded to an SD or USB disk).

If update-nand spits out any errors, make sure you're running an
appropriately up-to-date version of OFW.  The q2d* series do not
support update-nand, and versions q2e18 and q2e19 are known to be buggy
with partitions.  Firmware and instructions for upgrading
can be found here:

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


INSTALLATION ONTO SD/USB:

To install onto an SD or USB device, download the
ext3/debxo-$DESKTOP.ext3.img.gz file, and run

zcat debxo-$DESKTOP.ext3.img.gz > /dev/mmcblk0

or

zcat debxo-$DESKTOP.ext3.img.gz > /dev/sdX

(depending upon whether you're writing to an SD or USB disk).  Note
that this will overwrite any data that is on the SD or USB disk.


USAGE:

By default, a user 'olpc' is created (with no password, and sudo
access).  Some desktops automatically start a display manager and log
you in; some do not.  The root password is disabled by default.  This
is a stock Debian Lenny system with only a few modifications, so it can
obviously be tailored.


HACKING:

xodist is the name of the collection of scripts that are used to
produce DebXO.  The git repository can be downloaded via:

git clone git://lunge.mit.edu/git/xodist

There's also a web interface to that:

http://lunge.mit.edu/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=xodist;a=summary

Help is always appreciated.  The roadmap for future releases can be found
here:

http://lunge.mit.edu/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=xodist;a=blob;f=TODO


CREDITS:

Thanks to James Cameron and Erik Garrison for various
patches/tweaks/fixes, and to the various people who tested and provided
feedback.


Enjoy!