wiki:R1/Beta2/ReleaseNotes

Version 13 (modified by humdinger, 4 years ago) ( diff )

added link to April activity report

[Draft] Haiku R1/beta2 Release Notes

This page is intended as a draft for the release notes. Eventually these should be formatted for and published on the main website.

Sources

Use this query to get all closed enhancement tickets with resolution type fixed between September 28 2018 and April 13 2020, to find a list of enhancements.

Haiku Activity Reports:

System requirements

Minimum:

  • Pentium II or AMD Athlon processor (the MMX instruction set is required)
  • 256MB of memory (TODO confirm the minimal amount needed)
  • 800x600 display
  • 2GB of disk space (TODO confirm install size with all optional packages disabled)

SSE2 support is required to use the WebPositive web browser. On machines where this is not available, it is recommended to install the NetSurf browser instead.

Haiku takes advantage of modern hardware and will run faster on newer machines.

Upgrade instructions

It is possible to update your Haiku install from Beta 1 to Beta 2. You need at least XXX megabytes of free space on your system partition and a reliable internet access for downloading the packages. Alternatively you may download the beta 2 disk image and extract the updated packages from there if your Haiku system does not have sufficiently reliable internet access (XXX explain how to do this). The folowing procedure should be followed:

Updating to the latest version of beta1

pkgman update

Updating the EFI bootloader

The EFI bootloader must be updated manually. Download the new bootloader from XXX and replace the old one in your EFI system partition.

(XXX should this be done before or after updating the system?)

If you boot your computer using BIOS and MBR, no manual bootloader update is needed. XXX explain how to check which bootloader is used.

Switching to the new repositories

pkgman add-repo https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haiku/r1beta2/$(getarch)/current
pkgman add-repo https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haikuports/r1beta2/$(getarch)/current

Updating to beta2

pkgman full-sync
shutdown -r

Some highlights

  • New Input preferences, support for more than 3 mouse buttons as well as horizontal scroll wheel
  • Driver fixes: xHCI (much better USB3 compatibility), hda, intel_extreme, NVMe (experimental and broken, we may disable it by default), network?, i2c touchpads/touchscreens if that gets merged in time
  • Installation smoothening: better EFI integration (still incomplete), optional packages in Installer, improved DriveSetup (shows partition used space, shows encrypted volumes, etc)
  • Probably something about haikuports and stats about new and updated packages too?
  • DeskBar improvements (new mini mode, better scaling, ...)
  • HiDPI displays compatibility (did we make some progress on that since beta1?)
  • Lowered memory requirements (to be checked - how low can we go now?)
  • Security fixes (syscall audit, smap/smep violations fixing, ...)
  • #15294 Meta key in Terminal - has a great description of what it does.
  • #5126 Improvements to the Tracker API

Applications

Deskbar

  • #4971 Resize Deskbar from the Deskbar settings, our by using the CTRL-ALT-right click drag
  • #8537 In menus, the size of the icon will now always be the same size as your chosen font size
  • #8691 The icons of replicants are running in the Deskbar, will scale according to the settings
  • #13304 Auto-raised deskbar will now also auto-unraise

DriveSetup

  • #10098 Encrypted disks will actually display that they are encrypted instead of empty

HaikuDepot

  • #10358 When a package is queued for download and installation, it will now have the status 'queued' in the interface.
  • #11652 When showing all packages, the installed packages are part of the list by default. Before they were hidden by default.
  • #12198 HaikuDepot can now display multiple screenshots, when the package has multiple to show.
  • #12428 It is possible to switch between a view with all tabs, and a view with featured packages, by using the tabs at the top of the window.
  • #13806 The application will now clearly show when it is downloading screenshots for the packages you are looking at.
  • #13808 Overall, it is more clear when HaikuDepot is contacting the web to retrieve information or updates.

Installer

  • #14310 The installer now supports the user showing and selecting optional packages, when they are available on the installation medium

Launchbox

  • #11237 Launchbox will now start automatically at boot, when that has been configured in its settings.
  • #13835 Icons of 96x96 and 128x128 pixels are now supported.

MediaPlayer

  • #6628 When MediaPlayer is opened by opening a media file from Tracker, there will be a mark at the timestamp at the point where the user last stopped listening/viewing that file.

People

  • #9397 It is possible to quickly create a new Person file from Tracker, with the 'Create new...' feature

SoftwareUpdate

  • #14002 When updating the system packages itself, SoftwareUpdater will now display a 'Restart' button to inform the user that a restart is necessary.

Terminal

  • #15294 Support for an emulated Meta key

Tracker

  • #1264 multi-range selection in Tracker and list views
  • #3011 Directories with a large number of files are now loaded quicker
  • #5126 Improvements to the Tracker API
  • #10529 For files that are part of a package, show information about that package in the info window.

WebPositive

  • #14845 Allow selecting any font size (was previously limited to 18pt).

Command Line Utilities

  • #10288 uname now shows which specific Haiku nightly revision is built
  • #12665 the built in ftp is now replaced with ​tnftp

Drivers

Audio

The hda driver has had some improvements, that will allow it to work properly on more devices. If you had problem in R1/beta1, then it is worth a shot to try it again.

Other notes

  • #9910 NVMe device support
  • #5056 Intel Extreme: support X4500HD
  • #12723 Intel Extreme: support hardware panel scaling for chipsets that support it
  • #13987 FreeBSD Network Drivers: upgrade network drivers to FreeBSD 11.1

Preferences

  • #10171 Support configuration of advanced mice and trackballs

System

  • #10139 Add UEFI Loader (the Beta 1 DVD image shipped with an EFI loader, but it was added manually to the release image)

Translator Improvements

  • #10354 WebP images now support images with an alpha channel.

Localization

Haiku is available in 26 languages, and the User Guide is available in 20 languages.

  • Friulan translation added.
  • Turkish translation added.
  • (to complete with the list of added and removed translation)

For Developers and Porters

POSIX

  • ​fcntl.h A non-functioning version of posix_fadvice() has been added, to make it easier to port software.
  • ​net/if_tun.h A public API for the tun/tap device compatible with the Linux API has been added.
  • ​net/if_types.h Add some constants for IFT_LOCALTALK, IFT_TUN, IFT_L2VLAN and IFT_BRIDGE
  • ​pthread.h Implement pthread_attr_[get|set]stack()
  • ​spawn.h Add POSIX_SPAWN_SETSID
  • ​stdlib.h Make putenv() conform to POSIX standard (no source/binary change)
  • ​sys/resource.h Add [gs]etpriority() from the POSIX-1.2013 standard.
  • ​unistd.h Add the _SC_HOST_NAME_MAX, _SC_REGEXP, _SC_SYMLOOP_MAX, and _SC_SHELL for sysconf()
  • ​unistd.h Add nice() from the POSIX.1-2008 standard.

Game Kit

  • ​FileGameSound.h Allow initialisation of the BFileGameSound from a DataIO object, to allow for opening game sound files from sources other than files.

Interface Kit

  • ​Deskbar.h Add MaxItemWidth() and MaxItemHeight() as part of the work to support variable size icons for Deskbar replicants.
  • ​View.h New B_MOUSE_BUTTON macro that helps you identify which mouse button was clicked on a mouse with more than three buttons.
  • ​View.h Add a the new B_TRANSPARENT_BACKGROUND, to identify views that have a transparant background (i.e. the background will not be drawn for those views).
  • ​View.h Add Tiled Background methods to BView objects to asynchronously draw bitmaps as background tiles for the view, using the overloaded DrawTiledBitmapAsync() method.

Locale Kit

  • ​Country.h Add a SetTo() and an InitCheck() method to the BCountry class.

Package Kit

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