Improvements since R1/Alpha1

Haiku R1 Alpha1 was released on September 14, 2009 as hrev33109 This page outlines some of the more notable changesets since then. Additions and corrections are encouraged.

• Enabled font hinting in freetype,
  • hrev33789
  • The patent for Freetype's TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER expired some time before Oct. 27, 2009.
  • Note: subpixel rendering is disabled by default

• Various vendor software has been updated, most notably bash from 2.x to 4.x

• Locale kit merged to trunk, some applications and preflet already localized and translated to some languages

• Creation of a Localization team for translating the User Guide and other documents.

• Vastly improved USB mass storage performance through a better page mapping strategy

• API/ABI Changes
  • BJoystick -- fixed a BeOS compatibility issue
  • GCC 4 ABI changes that require apps to be recompiled
  • Introduced library versioning

• WiFi merged into trunk from external repo
  • As of hrev35515, drivers and if needed, associated firmware need to be added via UserBuildConfig
  • Encryption is not implemented

• SpicyKeys integrated as Shortcuts

• Huge speedups -- specifically with compilation times.

• Many lock contentions have been improved

• Numerous code refactoring to kernel/VM subsystems

• Compile times of Haiku from within Haiku have greatly been reduced

• HDA on nvidia chipset improvements

• Haiku GCC4 can now be compiled directly on a 64bit Linux distro. GCC2 still requires the use of linux32

• DriveSetup will now install a basic bootloader when partitioning a disk. hrev33263

• hrev33417 , hrev33418 RemoteDesktop client

• PackageFS
  • initial commit hrev34172
  • basically working
  • for proper integration a UnionFS needs to be implemented, such that one can edit a file that has been inserted by a package (like config files).
  • thorough testing required
  • test packages need to be created

• Bug fixes galore