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@equetzal equetzal released this 05 May 20:30
· 83 commits to main since this release
alpha-v0.3
1dc7bf8

The Mexican ICPC Qualificatory Round 'Gran Premio de México' is about to start next week, and we're ready to rock it!!

First of all, good news!

  • The huronOS team is growing!
    Please greetings to Daniel Cerna @DT3264 from the ITSUR university who is officially part of the team!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉
    Daniel has been an impressive contributor and definitely his impact for the alpha-v0.3 is huge, I'm sure you'll will really feel the improvements that he have added to the project. Cheers to Daniel!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

  • We're rocking a new and fresh website
    Please, go to https://huronos.org and check out the new website, we've finally refreshed our old looking website! We've used Docusaurus to build it and the experience it's being amazing. This website is having a huge focus on documentation and even if it's not as vast as we would like, we're on the way to reach that!
    Please feel free to contribute on documentation, this is very time consuming task and it's one of the easier ways to contribute, either by typos, improving the paraphrasing, grammar or even writing docs you feel are needed; all is welcome here.

  • New Github org!
    So, from now on, all the new huronOS git repositories will be created on the new huronOS Github organization. For now this repo will remain here in my personal profile because of some features of Github Pro that I'm able to get as an student, but when donations are enough to cover some paid features on the org, we'll be moving this repo too.

  • New Mirrors Site
    Now, https://mirrors.huronos.org will be holding all of our blob store, so all the upstream releases well be available here. You can create a mirror if you want to provide better speeds to people near your location. Please contact us to add you to the mirrors list.

The release

Let's go ahead, we've been working on this new version for over 3 months, we're really proud of what we've build and we hope all this features improve the usage and reliability of the system.

Changelog

Breaking Changes

  • New WallpaperSha256 directive
    Now, all the wallpapers needs to have a WallpaperSha256 value on the directives file corresponding to the image utilized, this is to minimize Wallpaper download load to the servers on the modality change. As expected this value is calculated by the sha256sum utility.

  • Software additions and deletions
    We've made some movements to the availability of software on the default installation:

    • Removed JetBrains CLion
      Basically, we don't have a working license to attach to it, so we had to remove it.
    • Added JetBrains Rider
      Huge thanks to Daniel who is packing an student license for using Rider, please use this carefully, we all benefit from this.
    • Added C# support with mono and dotnet compilers
    • Replaced vscode with vscodium
      Because VScode is bloated with telemetry and extension suggestions and huge dependency on internet connectivity, regular VScode pops-up several error messages related to no connectivity. We've replaced VScode with Codium which is the unbloated version of vscode and to not present this behavior.
    • Removed Chrome
      We will be removing Chrome from the available software as we're already supporting chromium which have the exact same compatibility and have better support in the open software. Please move to Chromium if you're using Chrome as your default.

Huge Changes

  • New network system tray
    This was a known issue on the previous release, and now it's solved!. We've replaced the nm-applet with an applet compatible with connman, making the new icon on the system tray accurate to the current connectivity. This applet also enables to easily change the network configuration for wifi or wired.

  • Now the config URLs support direct IP addressed
    So, previous versions only supported having domain names in configuration URLs such as the directives URL or the wallpapers URL. With this new support, now is possible to have URLs with the direct IP on them (e.g. http://192.168.1.61:80/directives.hdf). This feature is highly important because hosting your directives and wallpapers is just as easy as setting a webserver, dropping the files to it and setup the URL on the installer and your directives.

  • Installer Improvements
    This version is having a huge focus into improving the installer of the system, so here we have some of the best features added to it.

    • Verification of installed files
      Now the huronOS installer will verify the checksum of all the installed files, this will ensure that all the installations have the complete data and are not providing with damaged software to the contestants.
    • Partition cleaning on format
      With the previous installer when re-installing huronOS on a USB that already had installed the system, it could be possible that the installation wasn't accurate. This fix now zeroes the partition sectors on the disks to ensure the filesystem is newly-created always.
    • Custom root password
      Now the installer will allow you to setup a different root password for the system! This was a very asked feature and will allow to everyone add a better layer of security among contestants. Please check the docs on how to install huronOSfor guidance on how to setup the root password.
    • Fixed device selection
      When selecting a target device to install huronOS on, devices that were named with spaces caused and wrong labeling of the device during the listing. Now all devices should be displayed correctly, avoiding error selections.
    • Forced firewall exception for Sync Server IP
      Now you can setup an IPv4 address during the installation process to ensure that the firewall is always open to this server no mattering the modality that is running. You can also leave this field in blank to backup to the previous behavior of resolving via DNS to the current IP. If you setup the exception IP the system will still resolve the IP of the domain setup in the directives URL, but will keep the exception of the configured IP. Please, check the docs on the firewall to get more information about this.

Medium Changes

  • Wallpaper consistency
    In alpha-v0.2 wallpaper was being applied in relation to the current time and not with the real applied mode (such as contest or event), leading to a confusing behavior were a computed did not changed mode but the wallpaper was actually changed. Now this is fixed and the wallpaper always represent the applied mode, so that it's a quick visual identified of when something is not going ok (e.g. a computer that lost internet connectivity and did not change mode).

  • Fixed plank dock bad positioning
    When a computer changes the resolution of the screen either manually or by a side effect of connecting an external monitor, plank used to stay floating at the middle of the screen or outside the screen bounds. This fixed this behavior and now plank is repositioned each time the resolution changes.

Small changes

  • Now the installer system partition will be of 6 GiB.
  • Now the directives download deactivates cache, so that the directives are always accurate to the server state.
  • Crow Translate released new versions and now display it's icons accurately to improve the UX confusions.
  • Updated the bootloader options to Start contest system, Start no-sync mode and Debug huronOS

Build tools improvements

  • Fixed kernel-builder.sh AUFS patch order.
  • Created the new make-iso.sh tool to improve ISO packing and checksum calculation.
  • Added kernel-build.sh --restore-kernel to untar, install and change the current kernel with the one packed before with this tool.
  • Now savechanges utils, always skip connman network configs, so that any personal password is not leaked.
  • Now the huronOS-build-tools/docs triggers a push to huronOS-website/docs which triggers a deploy of the website.

Known Issues

Sadly, we've find out some issues that we've not been able to solve in time and will be impacting this release.

  • System hangs with certain Nvidia graphic cards
    In certain scenarios (which we've not been able to reproduce), the system hangs and freeze, leading to a forced reboot. This issue only happens with certain Nvidia Graphic cards and is a wide bug on the Nvidia generic drivers. We're tracking this issue here: #59, we will try to find a workaround for this, but this problem is external to the distro.
    Please, avoid using the system on official competitions if you're affected by this problem. We well close the issue when we're certain this does not happens anymore.

  • System OOMD not working as expected
    In the previous build we added the Facebook's OOMD to kill processes that utilize a massive amount of memory, such as a bad programmed DP. Even if this software helps in most cases, in other ones it is not being able to kill them leading to a system memory overflow and freezing the UI. Track the issue on: #79 #61
    If this happens to you, please reboot the machine

  • Bookmarks do not update after first browsers launch
    Bookmarks cannot be updated during a running contest mode or event mode, they can only be changed on a fresh start mode time date. We will work to improve this behavior, but for now please make sure to setup this data with enough time to avoid unsync issues.

Download!

Please go to https://huronos.org/download to check the newer versions and the mirrors.

Contributors

DT3264
Assets 2
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