Fatdog64 631 released
A minor release, mainly updates for firefox/seamonkey and the flash player.Release notes here.
Forum announcement here.
There is also a special version of Fatdog64 631 for Acer Chromebook C720. Details here.
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Early glimpse of Fatdog 700
Kirk and I have been working on the next generation Fatdog64 - the 700 series.Without revealing too much now, I can say that the new Fatdog is based on a completely new, modern base, and a new, flexible build infrastructure that can carry us forward into much further into the future than earlier builds; but it will still remain Fatdog that you know and love.
Today, an early build of 700 finally boots under UEFI and BIOS to a working openbox/rox desktop.
Functional-wise, this build is already at parity with FatdogArm Beta, but not yet at parity with the latest of the 600 series (Fatdog 630). Eventually the plan is to surpass 630 - after all, this is the next generation Fatdog :) We'll get there.
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Running new application on older glibc
New article on running new applications on older glibc here; and patch for yaf-splash enable support for UTF-8, here.No comments - Edit - Delete
Happy Easter
Easter is just around the corner. Happy Easter everyone
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Musl Libc 1.0 is released
musl libc is a new system library for Linux systems which features small, correct, and clean code; with full-support for static linking, and still being reasonably fast (in that order).Because of its size, it can easily acts as a replacement for uclibc or even dietlibc, because of its completeness and compatibility it can even replace GNU libc (glibc) for many purposes.
After being in development for over three (3) years, musl has finally hit its 1.0 release.
Musl libc is included as part of Fatdog64 development package (devx.sfs) mainly for building small static executables; musl took over this role from dietlibc two years ago.
Go musl!
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FatdogArm Beta1 kernel packages re-uploaded
If you have downloaded FatdogArm Beta1 recently, please re-download the kernel packages again. The ones I uploaded before have one leftover settings from my development that I forgot to turn off: they have SSH server enabled by default. You can easily turn them off using the Control Panel --> Services Manager, or justchmod -x /etc/init.d/S50dropbearThe newly-uploaded kernel packages have SSH disabled by default.
Note: I have just re-uploaded the kernel packages, and it usually takes about 24 hours for the mirrors to sync. So either hit ibiblio.org directly or wait 24 hours from this post before hitting your favorite mirror.
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FatdogArm Beta1 is released.
After being in the cooker for over two months, I can happily announced the next release of FatdogArm: the Beta1 release.Get it from ibiblio.org as usual, or from one of ibiblio's popular mirrors: nluug.nl and uoc.gr if you're in Europe, or aarnet.edu if you are in Australia. Many thanks for ibiblio and the mirrors for providing this public service.
Read the release notes first; and if you are new to FatdogArm, please also read the INSTALL instructions. Unlike many of Linux ARM distributions out there, FatdogArm is *not* distributed as images.
Forum announcement here.
FatdogArm Beta1 is the second-generation of FatdogArm; despite its name it is *not* a continuation of Alpha: it is in fact a full-rebuild using LFS 7.4 as the base (I would like to claim "the latest LFS" but LFS 7.5 had just been released as I was gearing for release, oh well) with glibc 2.18 and gcc 4.8.1 but otherwise with many of the packages remain identical with its Alpha counterpart (updates are only done for stability reasons).
The major goal of Beta is a change of hardware platform (from VFPv3-d32 to VFPv3-d16 *without* NEON) to enable it to run on larger class of hardware; as well as a fully-reproducible build system. As a bonus, Beta1 also supports 3D GPU acceleration for all supported platforms, which are: Odroid-U2, Odroid-U3, A10/Mele A1000, A20/Cubieboard2, OLPC XO-1.75 and OLPC XO-4.
Just like Alpha4, Beta1 also ships as a "meta-distribution" (now conveniently provided as a tarball instead of fossil repository) that enables you to build your own customised version as you see fit: headless console-only version; etc. All the kernel sources are provided (kernels were cross-compiled using Linaro cross-toolchain)) so you can also also build new modules etc if you need.
Special thanks to mavrothal and 01micko for OLPC XO support and testing.
Enjoy.
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Puppy Linux lives!
In case you haven't heard it, Puppy Linux Slacko 5.7 has been released !This release is special in so many ways.
Firstly, it represents the FIRST ever official Puppy release from Woof-CE, the community-maintained version of Woof (the Puppy-builder, the meta-distribution of Puppy Linux).
Secondly, it represents the FIRST ever official Puppy Linux release after Barry Kauler (the original author of Puppy Linux) stepped down back in September last year.
More than everything else, this release is a statement of reassurance to the world that Puppy Linux will continue to live and grow strong under the new stewardship and community contributions.
It will continue to move with the times and adapts to new future. Already, a 64-bit thoroughbred Puppy Linux is in the works (Slacko64). The mailing list is rife with contributed ideas on how to bring Puppy to boot on UEFI machines.
Congrats and greets to the team: 01micko (Puppy Slacko), mavrothal (Woof-CE gatekeeper) and many other contributors (zigbert et al).
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Gearing for FatdogArm Beta1 release
In preparation for FatdogArm Beta1 release, I have removed Alpha3 images and binaries from ibiblio to make some space. Alpha4 will remain for the moment, I will probably remove them when Beta is considered "stable" enough.I have also updated the article about how to run FatdogArm in Qemu (and the example shell script) for use with Alpha4 onwards (which no longer ships as images) - the instruction will also be useful for Beta1 when it is released.
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Beware of dud flash drives
I just found about this last week.TL;DR: Sandisk changed their their USB flash drives to identify themselves as fixed disks instead of the more reasonable, and historical-standard, removable disks.
And what for? To meet Windows 8 certification.
And why is that? Because as everyone knows, Windows *even in its latest incarnation* is unable to read a USB removable flash drive that has more than one partition; but it has no problem reading *fixed disk* with multiple partitions.
So what is easier: change the code to enable reading multiple partition off removable flash drive (the code is already there anyway for "fixed disk", just the pathway to recognise or not recognise the partitions); or tell everyone else to mark their "removable" hardware as "fixed disk" so I don't have to do anything and it will just work - even if as the consequence that hardware would cause things to subtly break, including its usage on my own prior operating system?
Of course. Writing certification requirements is easier than digging through decades-old code, buried several layers deep, written by perhaps unrelated groups of persons. Better not upset the house of cards.
Funny thing is, practically any other operating system has accepted that USB flash drive can have multiple partitions for many years (regardless of how they are marked); it has become a standard trick that to hide data from windows we just create a second partition on the flash drive and put our data there. What does this tell you?
Good thing that, according to the link above (see last comment), Sandisk regained its sanity (no doubt provoked by market feedback) and restored marking removable devices as "removable". Just make sure you don't get those dud ones (marked ominously as "Windows-8 certified" or "Windows-8 compatible").
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