Fork status: what's ahead of upstream

[alvesmaicon]

What this fork (branch develop) adds on top of CodeZombie/goodluckOS main, and where each change stands on its way upstream. I keep this post up to date instead of a file in the repo.

Important

This is not a goodluckOS distribution. For goodluckOS, use the official project: CodeZombie/goodluckOS.

This fork is my personal workspace. I use it to improve my own console (a GA36-MB v1.1, A33) and to prepare contributions, which I offer upstream as small pull requests, only the ones Jeremy wants. It is not meant to compete with goodluckOS or to be installed by anyone else: there are no releases or images here, and none are planned. Everything in it was written with an AI coding assistant (Claude Code), has only run on my device, and is still being reviewed.

Last updated on 2026-10-11. develop includes upstream main up to 4a31a08 (the device tree split, kernel 7.2.9 with exFAT, TF-2 hotplug, the credits list).

A checked box means the change is in upstream main.

Merged upstream

• Shutdown and reboot no longer hang when no USB cable is plugged in.
• Power off works: the AXP223 is the system power controller.
• HOME shows up on the PC over USB (MTP), like a phone, with a kernel fix for USB copies that hung (Feat/mtp home CodeZombie/goodluckOS#52).
• SELECT+START closes the active app and FN+SELECT+START kills it: Jeremy built it into appctl from this idea.
• Headphones play on both sides, and FN+D-pad down switches between the speaker and the headphones (Headphones on the GA36-MB A33, and FN+DPAD_DOWN to switch speaker/headphones CodeZombie/goodluckOS#56, fixes Get Headphone Audio Working CodeZombie/goodluckOS#7).
• Boot on upstream main: the launcher starts again (appctl's full path) and init no longer respawns the removed power-manager.sh (Fix boot: start appd with appctl's full path, drop the power-manager respawn CodeZombie/goodluckOS#55, Main doesn't start the launcher on boot (appctl not in PATH), and init keeps respawning power-manager.sh CodeZombie/goodluckOS#54).
• The second SD card (TF-2 slot) works and its games show up in the launcher (Power the TF-2 slot and list the second card's games CodeZombie/goodluckOS#59, fixes figure out TF-2 CodeZombie/goodluckOS#15).
• post-build.sh can run again on the same target, so incremental builds don't fail (post-build.sh: make it safe to run again on the same target CodeZombie/goodluckOS#60).
• Holding a direction in the launcher repeats the move (Puppy: holding a direction repeats the move CodeZombie/goodluckOS#64, fixes Puppy Launcher: navigation feels slow and difficult CodeZombie/goodluckOS#61).
• The card in the TF-2 slot also shows up on the PC over USB (MTP), next to HOME (MTP: show the TF-2 card on the PC too, next to HOME CodeZombie/goodluckOS#66).
• A23: a Speaker Switch, so FN+D-pad down can switch the output, and headphones driven directly (A23 audio: speaker/headphone switch and headphone direct drive CodeZombie/goodluckOS#70, for A23: Headphone output not working correctly and random audio spikes CodeZombie/goodluckOS#68).
• MTP: a copy cancelled on the PC no longer leaves its partial file on the console, and a folder made and renamed on the PC no longer shows twice (MTP: remove a cancelled copy's partial file, and fix a renamed folder showing twice CodeZombie/goodluckOS#77).
• The A23 device tree powers the TF-2 slot like the A33's: it came with Jeremy's device tree split, so DTS: power the TF-2 slot (mmc1) on the A23 too CodeZombie/goodluckOS#69 is no longer needed.

PR open

None right now.

Waiting for a PR: fixes

• Shutting down or restarting with the USB cable in no longer hangs on the USB teardown: every step that can block has a timeout, and MTP is waited for before it's taken down.
• Holding VOL+/VOL- (or FN+VOL for the brightness) repeats the step: the kernel's sun4i-lradc-keys driver now honours the device tree's autorepeat, and the volume and brightness scripts drop a repeat instead of losing a step (Volume and brightness keys: holding VOL+/VOL- should repeat #6).
• RetroArch FN hotkeys: menu, save/load state, state slot, fast forward, pause, screenshot (FN+L2), quit. (The A/B and Select/Start mapping went upstream through Fix swapped A/B buttons in RetroArch CodeZombie/goodluckOS#48.)
• Upstream's System Settings app: the brightness shows its real level, the volume slider works, and both are saved on change.
• Brightness, volume and CPU mode are kept across reboots.
• Silent boot, with "Starting system...", "Restarting..." and "Shutting down..." on screen.
• Resize Home mounts HOME again with its fstab options, so it stays owned by the player instead of root until the next boot.
• Launcher: Game Boy entries, and zip/7z games.
• FN+D-pad up's FPS/CPU overlay (Gallium HUD) is configurable: content, graph or text, corner, shown on game start (Add GALLIUM HUD options to the menu CodeZombie/goodluckOS#23).
• After upstream's move to appd/appctl, a few things lost their target:
  • the autolaunch entry runs again at boot (nothing read /home/player/autolaunch once puppy-bootstrap.sh was gone);
  • FN+D-pad up's FPS overlay finds the running app through appd's cgroup, and signals only the processes that catch it;
  • the POWER key turns the screen off in game again;
  • exit-active-process.sh and kill-active-process.sh call appctl (S99appd doesn't accept stop-application).

Waiting for a PR: hardware

• The speaker gets a 500 Hz high-pass filter, so it stays clean instead of buzzing on bass. There's also no more digital clipping.

Waiting for a PR: interface

These are bigger and will be proposed in an issue first.

• Launcher (Puppy) redesign:

  • tabs per system, plus All Games, My List (favourites) and Recent (the last 30 games played, newest first), and you choose which tabs show;
  • a tab strip with five tabs of the same width, the current one in the middle, wrapping around;
  • grid and list views, and search with an on-screen keyboard;
  • names, descriptions and covers from gamelist.xml;
  • game options: rename (its saves and states follow, in RetroArch's per-game folders too), move to trash;
  • power and START menus, analog sticks;
  • button hints in the bottom bar;
  • a top bar with the date and time, the volume and the battery.

• System Settings, built into the launcher (START opens it):

  • a menu of sections: Display & Audio, Launcher, Interface, Overlay, Date & Time, Storage, System, Input Settings;
  • level-bar sliders, and long values that scroll when selected;
  • a shortcut list and a button tester;
  • Resize Home in Storage, and a Credits page in System that shows upstream's credits list;
  • Restore default settings.

  It replaces the separate System Settings, Resize Home and confirmation apps.

• Translations: every text can be translated, and Brazilian Portuguese is included.

• Interface font option: Inter, ProggyClean, VT323, Pixelify Sans.

• Accent color: the colour of the selection, the buttons in the hints and the bars, and of the in-game volume and brightness feedback: yellow (the default), orange, red, pink, purple, blue, cyan or green.

• Overlay over every game, drawn by a patch to Mesa's Gallium HUD (Modify MESA driver to inject custom overlay into GALLIUM HUD CodeZombie/goodluckOS#24):

  • the volume, brightness and audio output feedback;
  • an optional status bar with the CPU and power chip temperatures, the date, the time, the battery and the volume and output, each one on or off.

  RetroArch's own notifications, menu clock and battery, and PCSX-ReARMed's FPS counter, are turned off, so nothing overlaps.

• Power mode: Battery saver, Balanced (the default) or Performance, in System Settings > System. Each one sets the CPU governor and top speed and the GPU speed range, and it is kept across reboots. It replaces the Performance mode checkbox.

• Date and time: set from System Settings and kept by the clock chip while the console is off; time zone, 12/24-hour and the date format.

• Music and video player:

  • mpv (a Buildroot package), full screen through DRM/KMS, with the console's buttons: A or START pause, B quit, left/right seek 10 s, up/down 1 min, L1/R1 previous/next, X the playlist, Y repeat, L2/R2 the audio/subtitle track;
  • Music and Videos tabs in the launcher for HOME/media/music and HOME/media/videos, left out of All Games. A folder (an album, a series) is one entry that plays whole, with its cover.jpg as the art; a single file plays along with the rest of its folder;
  • songs show the artist, the title, the time and the position in the playlist;
  • the A33 decodes in software: 640x480 H.264 plays smoothly, 1080p and H.265 don't. The README has the ffmpeg line to convert bigger videos.

Planned

• Launcher themes and options:
  • a Retro theme (today's look, in the EmulationStation style) and a Modern one (the game's art in the background, rounded cards, button hints drawn like the console's buttons), picked in System Settings;
  • the on-screen keyboard's layout as a setting: QWERTY (default) or ABC;
  • later, the launcher on its own name and package, next to Puppy, so upstream merges stop touching it.
• Battery: time left next to the level, and a low-battery warning in game (and maybe save and quit when it's about to run out).
• Luanti (an open source block-building game, like Minecraft) with Minetest Game: it runs on the console, with the gamepad driving a cursor in the menus and the inventory. It is still in testing on its own branch, because the frame rate needs more work.

Fork only

Not meant for upstream.

• How the fork follows upstream: upstream's data, scripts and kernel are kept as they are, so merges stay clean, and the interface is the fork's own. Upstream's separate apps (System Settings, Resize Home, credits) stay in the tree but aren't built: the launcher shows the same things.
• The console shows up on the PC as "goodluckOS" instead of "GA36MB", the board's code: the system's name is right on every console it runs on.
• The fork follows upstream's appd/appctl and doas: power-manager.sh is gone, and the launcher, System Settings and the power menu run their root actions through doas.
• An External Card tab in the launcher, and Eject/Detect in System Settings > Storage, on top of upstream's TF-2 hotplug.
• System Settings > Interface > Show Puppy on loading screens: on by default (the ASCII-art dog, as upstream); off shows a translated "Loading..." instead.
• Restart and Shut down leave "Restarting..." / "Shutting down..." on the screen until the console goes off (since appd, the loading screen stayed there instead).
• Windows tools: chip-version reads the microSD card that came with the console and tells an A23 from an A33; convert-videos converts a folder of videos for the Videos tab.
• README notes about this fork and the AI-assisted workflow.
• CLAUDE.md and dev/: notes for the AI assistant, partial builds (dev/gl: one app, overlay files, the Mesa patch or the kernel, in a native Debian container on Intel or Apple Silicon), launcher screenshots to compare before and after a change (dev/gl scenes), a serial shell tool (dev/glserial.py) and a Mac card writer for the kernel or rootfs regions (dev/sdcard-mac.sh).