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Offline nicholasTopic starter

Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« on: June 20, 2011, 08:00:40 PM »
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Haiku R1 Alpha 3 Release Notes
  These are the release notes for Haiku R1 Alpha 3, our third official  release. For this third alpha release, we strove to provide an improved  version of Haiku that is more stable, introduces more features for both  the end-user and developer, and has a greater chance of properly booting  on more hardware.  
  We have tried hard to make this release as good as possible. Still there  are a few known issues and missing features, some of them collected  below. Please keep in mind that this is alpha software, which means it  is not yet feature complete and still contains known and unknown bugs.  While we are mostly confident in the stability of this release, we do  not provide any assurances against data loss.
  Another goal that has driven the release of the Alpha 3 was to provide  current and future Haiku developers an updated and (mostly) stable  operating system to work on their software projects. Therefore we have  included the basic build tools, along with clients for cvs, svn, git and  hg. This release of Haiku is capable of building and running binaries  using either GCC 2 or GCC 4. The use of GCC 4 is discouraged however if  not absolutely necessary, as no API compatibility is guaranteed with  future versions of Haiku.
 
System Requirements

  Haiku currently only works on x86 systems. Minimum memory required is  128 MB. If compiling Haiku within itself, 1 GB of memory is recommended.  Haiku has been tested to work on CPUs as slow as a Pentium II 400 MHz,  and requires as little as 700 MB of drive space.
 
New Features

  This is a glimpse into some of the more notable improvements and  additions to Haiku, since the previous release, R1 Alpha 2. It should be  noted that over 950 bugs closed as fixed since R1 Alpha 2.  Additionally, more than 250 subtle bugs have been fixed, which were  discovered by Coverity.
  Improved read (and write support) for various file systems, which  includes btrfs, exFAT, ext2, ext3, ext4, NTFS, UDF, and others.
  Various enhancements for hardware support, such as IO-APIC, ACPI, video drivers, network drivers and USB.
  Gutenprint is utilized to provide additional printer support.
  Partial fallback for displaying unsupported glyphs of any font. For  example some Japanese and Chinese characters will now display.
  MediaKit's support for decoding and encoding file formats has been improved.
  Addition of a general MIDI SoundFont by Tim Brechbill which enables support for many BeOS MIDI applications.
  New IMAP implementation. Mails are now synchronized with the server and not just downloaded like in POP3.  
  The mail daemon replacement (MDR) and parts of the Mail Kit have been rewritten. MDR crashes are fixed now.
  Integration of StackAndTile, which was originally pioneered by the University of Auckland (available via setdecor SATDecorator).
  Additional window management controls for moving and resizing windows   (CTRL + CMD + first mouse button and CTRL + CMD + second mouse button).
  Update of the secondary and experimental compiler to GCC 4.4.4 (available via setgcc gcc4).
  Support for weak symbols and symbol preemption in GCC 4.
  The user interfaces of several programs have been overhauled and include  BootManager, DiskUsage, MediaPlayer, ReadOnlyBootPrompt and ShowImage.
  The locale support was extended and consolidated to use a single backend  (ICU) for both Haiku's native and POSIX's locale API. The interface and  reliability of the Locale and Time preflet were improved considerably.
  More applications now use Haiku's Layout API, making their GUI's more  resilient to font changes and localization. Furthermore, the layout API  has continued to progress towards being stable and public. However, this  API is not finalized: it may change at any time, so developers beware.
  Support for PAE (Physical Address Extension) was implemented, so that physical memory beyond 4 GiB is used now.

 Missing Features
  Haiku does not yet support WPA encryption for wireless networking, only WEP encryption is supported.
  Package management is still being developed and is not included in this  release. For the time being, a temporary script is included to help  install a small set software (available via installoptionalpackage).
  USB keyboards attached to OHCI or to USB 2.0 hubs do not work in Kernel  Debugging Land (KDL). They need to be connected to UHCI root ports to  work in KDL. Also note that when entering the kernel debugger by means  of a panic it is possible that the keyboard does not work. To work  around this issue you can manually enter the kernel debugger once and  leave it again to enable the USB keyboard.
 
Known Issues

  LiveCD and first boot performance: After an initial installation or a  boot into LiveCD mode, some background tasks are executed to finish the  installation setup. This is known to degrade performance. On hard disk  installs this usually is not a problem as the tasks are done quickly. In  LiveCD mode the performance hit is more prominently visible due to the  usually bad seek performance on CDs. Since the CD is read-only, this  setup takes place on every start of the LiveCD. On writable media it  will only be done once, so further boots shouldn't experience the same  delays.
  Font rendering, while improved due to the expired font hinting patent,  is still not optimal. Due to the uncertain situation about patents, the  official release has disabled code, which is known to be patented. This  sadly includes the subpixel code used by FreeType. Once the situation is  better understood and a decision has been made, subpixel font rendering  may get re-enabled for official releases.
  Haiku's ACPI support, which is enabled by default, might cause problems  on some hardware. ACPI can be disabled in the boot loader's safe mode  options menu.
  Copying large amounts of data from faster to slower disk drives (like USB sticks) can cause the system to start paging.
  The Haiku boot loader has been reported to hang on some hardware.
  Support for localization/internationalization is still a work in  progress. Some applications might only be partially translated and have  issues with long strings in languages other than English.
  Firmware for some wireless network cards need user acknowledgement,  prior to their intsallation. This includes Broadcom 43xx, Intel ipw2100,  Intel ipw2200 and Marvell 88W8335. As a temporary measure, a script is  included to assist in this process (available via install-wifi-firmwares.sh).
 
Source Code

  The source code of Haiku itself, the source code of the required build  tools and the optional packages (except for closed source ones) is made  available for download at: http://www.haiku-files.org/files/releases/r1alpha3/sources/
 
Reporting Issues

  There are over 2000 open tickets on Haiku's bug tracker and over 5000  closed items.  If you find what you believe to be an issue, please  search our Trac to see if it has already been reported, and if not, file  a new ticket: http://dev.haiku-os.org/
  To see the list of tickets reported in Haiku R1 Alpha 3, visit http://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/R1/Alpha3/ReportedIssues
  For information about major issues that have been fixed since the release, visit http://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/R1/Alpha3/ReleaseAddendum
  For more help see the 'Welcome' link on the Haiku desktop, or visit the Haiku Project's website at www.haiku-os.org.
 
http://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku
“Een rezhim-i eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az sahneh-i ruzgar mahv shaved.” - Imam Ayatollah Sayyed  Ruhollah Khomeini
 

Offline spihunter

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Re: Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2011, 08:19:44 PM »
I've got a couple of spare laptops here that I might have to try this on....
 

Offline XDelusion

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Re: Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2011, 09:31:52 PM »
I just shit bricks!!!
Earth has a lot of things other folks might want... like the whole planet. And maybe these folks would like a few changes made, like more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and room for their way of life. - William S. Burroughs
 

Offline XDelusion

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Re: Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« Reply #3 on: June 21, 2011, 06:41:03 PM »
I tested it on a few computers last night. One of them allowed me to install it, but upon reboot I was stuck at a flashing cursor. Will try to remove the MBR by hand then install again. If memory serves correctly, having a Windows MBR on the drive always screwed things up.
Earth has a lot of things other folks might want... like the whole planet. And maybe these folks would like a few changes made, like more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and room for their way of life. - William S. Burroughs
 

Offline yakumo9275

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Re: Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« Reply #4 on: June 21, 2011, 07:11:47 PM »
this alpha has been the biggest crash fest for me, all the previous alphas and nightly were rock solid. this all but gives me the kernel debugger no matter what I do. 4 attemps at install before successful. once in, a terminal and trying to get some optionapackage etc bewm. kernel debugger. I gave up.

alpha 3 is total shit.
--/\\-[ Stu ]-/\\--
Commodore 128DCR, JiffyDOS, Ultimate 1541 II, uIEC/SD, CBM 1902A  Monitor
 

Offline XDelusion

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Re: Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« Reply #5 on: June 21, 2011, 07:14:19 PM »
Sounds like my experience going from RC1 to RC2, though I did end up finding a machine that supported it.
Earth has a lot of things other folks might want... like the whole planet. And maybe these folks would like a few changes made, like more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and room for their way of life. - William S. Burroughs
 

Offline yakumo9275

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Re: Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« Reply #6 on: June 21, 2011, 07:36:30 PM »
I just run virtual box. none of my settings have changed from r1 -> nightlies -> r2 -> nightlies -> r3. r3 is just flaky. I need to test with a single cpu, I wonder if its a race condition or something with smp..
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Offline minator

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Re: Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« Reply #7 on: June 21, 2011, 08:44:38 PM »
According to the developers the Alphas throw up a lot of issues that get fixed very rapidly (within a few weeks).  If you have problems try the nightly builds in a couple of weeks.
 

Offline Nostalgiac

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Re: Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« Reply #8 on: June 21, 2011, 08:51:01 PM »
Quote from: XDelusion;646407
I just shit bricks!!!


Now *that* sounds painful....

Tom UK
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c128/1541/1750/1351 with Dolphin Dos and eprom burner
 

Offline XDelusion

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Re: Haiku R1 Alpha 3 released
« Reply #9 on: June 21, 2011, 09:17:25 PM »
It was! :)
Earth has a lot of things other folks might want... like the whole planet. And maybe these folks would like a few changes made, like more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and room for their way of life. - William S. Burroughs