10-05-2020, 10:24 AM
Hi!
Again, a lot has happened under the hood, but there were also quite a few user-visible changes this time
We also went through a bunch of upgrades that didn't went that well (the famous "yoyo" episode, as well as the switch to 5.8 kernel), and are working towards preventing such issues. In the short term, more breaking changes are unfortunately to be expected while we get rid of old hacks and questionable choices made in the early stage of development.
Within a few weeks however, we should have a much reliable upgrade path for the kernel, and dropping a few more custom/patched packages will help us achieve this goal. In the end, we expect we'll be able to release our first stable version within a month, if everything goes well
The other big development topic is audio routing: while we have a (almost) perfectly working solution, it relies on heavily patched versions of both wys and calls (which both landed in Debian's main archive, BTW), and our patches are PinePhone-only. As we plan to support more devices in the future, this is clearly not an acceptable solution.
This is why we started working on a call audio router with the goal that it will be used by all phosh-based distributions. This should soon allow us to drop all device-specific code from calls, even drop our custom wys from the PinePhone images, and overall improve the telephony software stack.
Work on the on-device installer images and full disk encryption support is still ongoing and is seeing encouraging progress, though it's not ready for testing yet.
As usual, today's image is now the reference release, and contains all the latest and greatest improvements
Enjoy!
Again, a lot has happened under the hood, but there were also quite a few user-visible changes this time
- The kernel was upgraded to version 5.8 and HDMI output was re-enabled
- Mobian metapackages have been reworked to use "softer" dependency relationships; this way, users can choose to uninstall most bundled apps without removing the metapackages, and therefore, without risking losing essential packages later
- Some important apps have been updated:
- Firefox ESR is now version 78, and it now uses the mobile config tweaks from our friends at pmOS
- GNOME Maps 3.38 has been released and now has a (mostly) adaptive UI
- GTK, the underlying foundation to every GNOME software, has been updated to version 3.24.22
- Firefox ESR is now version 78, and it now uses the mobile config tweaks from our friends at pmOS
- We also added a couple apps in the default build:
- GNOME Weather is patched for adaptive UI, and therefore finally usable on the PinePhone
- Thanks to Martijn Braam's fantastic work, Megapixels is the new default camera app. We still hold great hopes for Pinhole, but it just isn't the best option for now.
- GNOME Weather is patched for adaptive UI, and therefore finally usable on the PinePhone
We also went through a bunch of upgrades that didn't went that well (the famous "yoyo" episode, as well as the switch to 5.8 kernel), and are working towards preventing such issues. In the short term, more breaking changes are unfortunately to be expected while we get rid of old hacks and questionable choices made in the early stage of development.
Within a few weeks however, we should have a much reliable upgrade path for the kernel, and dropping a few more custom/patched packages will help us achieve this goal. In the end, we expect we'll be able to release our first stable version within a month, if everything goes well
The other big development topic is audio routing: while we have a (almost) perfectly working solution, it relies on heavily patched versions of both wys and calls (which both landed in Debian's main archive, BTW), and our patches are PinePhone-only. As we plan to support more devices in the future, this is clearly not an acceptable solution.
This is why we started working on a call audio router with the goal that it will be used by all phosh-based distributions. This should soon allow us to drop all device-specific code from calls, even drop our custom wys from the PinePhone images, and overall improve the telephony software stack.
Work on the on-device installer images and full disk encryption support is still ongoing and is seeing encouraging progress, though it's not ready for testing yet.
As usual, today's image is now the reference release, and contains all the latest and greatest improvements
Enjoy!
