Ros-general December 2009

ros-general@reactos.org

6 participants
3 discussions

Positions
by Aleksey Bragin 27 Dec '09

27 Dec '09

Hi, I have two concerns with the current positions in ReactOS: 1. what is the situation with Release Engineers currently? For the last few releases, Colin was de-facto the only one doing all release- related work. Wiki page states Z98 as a release engineer. Z98 - are you still available for this position, or should we try to get someone else to help Colin? 2. Klemens Friedl unfortunately has not been available for quite a long time, really long time. He informed me about it, so it's fine, and sometime in future he is going to get back to ReactOS hopefully. But, as of now, I think he can't hold the Web Coordinator position. Should we move this to someone else who is active now, like Colin or Danny if they have time? Opinions are appreciated. WBR, Aleksey Bragin.

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ReactOS 0.3.11 Released
by Ged Murphy 19 Dec '09

19 Dec '09

The ReactOS team is proud to announce the release of ReactOS 0.3.11. This release has been delayed by quite some time due to various blocker bugs which manifested each time we tried to release. A lot of time has gone into hunting down these bugs and various steps have been taken to try to ensure we don't hit this problem again. This isn't to say we don't have a lot of new and exciting features in this release. Two of which stand out are the huge changes to the Memory Manager and another leap forward for the sound stack It's difficult to sum up all of the changes which have taken place in the memory manager short of saying it's been almost a total rewrite. These changes have not only brought a much more stable and reliable component, but also now includes support for ARM processors. ARM memory management units (MMU's) are handled in an entirely different manner than that of x86 and x86-64 MMU's, however the ARM Mm component has been written alongside the x86 component with various areas sharing code when possible. Further to this, these changes bring much improved compatibility with WinDbg. WinDbg support is now at a level where the majority of everyday features are working and tasks which previously seemed so distant using WinDbg, such as stepping through the kernel, listing process threads or dynamically editing memory are now working. We're now at a level where having PDB's (Microsoft's debugging symbols) would make debugging the reactos kernel a similar experience to debugging the Windows kernel, with the added advantage of source mode. For the technically inquisitive, here <http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/ChangeLog-0.3.11#MM> are the Mm changes in this release The sound stack continues to see extensive work throughout all areas. This release brings with it support for wave recording and mixer support such as volume level adjustment and muting. Improved core component compatibility with WinXP means that more components now run within Windows and goes some way to showing the level of compatibility the sound stack is now achieving. Compatibility and stability changes have been continuing throughout the entire operating system with a great deal of fixes coming from the Wine test framework used to ensure application interface compatibility. As this is the 0.3.11 release, we felt a certain degree of nostalgia towards 'Windows 3.11 for workgroups' and added a fun easter egg in tribute. See if you can spot it, the older generation will surely have no problems Along with the rest of the 0.3 series, this release is still considered alpha quality software so it may not run all your apps or run on your hardware. Changes summary A detailed consolidation of all changes can be found in the changelog <http://www.reactos.org/wiki/index.php/ChangeLog-0.3.11> . A sum up of some of the more important changes is as follows: * A rewrite of the kdcom kernelmode library which is now much more compatible with the Microsoft version. This allows for improved built-in support for WinDbg * Support for delay loaded dlls has been added in our build tools, providing delay loading functionality for our shipped libraries * Support for Chinese and Korean fonts has now been added * A new handler has been written for setting and getting system wide parameters (see SystemParametersInfo API), now making it much more complete and compatible with the Windows implementation * A selection of application compatibility improvements can now been seen, including Opera, Open Office, Firefox 3.5, VLC1.1 and skype * For fun, a new Spider Solitaire application has been added * Synchronization of most of the Wine usermode DLLs and some Win32 subsystem code shared with Wine VirtualBox install note A bug has surfaced meaning that installing ReactOS in VirtualBox will result in a hang when loading the USB driver, unless the VM has 256Mb RAM or more. To counteract this, either raise the RAM from the default 192Mb or disable the USB device. We have created a preloaded VirtualBox VM for download incorporating this workaround. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

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Call for participation to the "Alt-OS" devroom at FOSDEM
by François Revol 11 Dec '09

11 Dec '09

During the previous edition of the Free and Open Source Software Developer's European Meeting (FOSDEM) <http://fosdem.org/>, several alternative FOSS Operating System projects (Haiku <http://haiku-os.org/>, ReactOS <http://www.reactos.org/>) shared booths, but there were discussions about going beyond presenting each projects on its own, and instead seek cooperation. Recently, at the Google Summer of Code mentor summit, other OS projects gathered and formed the Rosetta OS group <http://code.google.com/p/rosetta-os/> to work on driver sharing. This year, the FOSDEM (in Brussels, 6-7th February 2010) will host the "Alt-OS" devroom on sunday from 9:00 to 17:00, organized by members of the Rosetta OS project. This devroom is meant as a place for Free and OpenSource Alternative Operating System projects to share ideas and work on topics like: * distinguishing design and features, * device drivers and how to share them, * sharing code for internal components, * internal usage of other FOSS projects to build upon, * application portability, * interoperability, * file formats, * extended attributes... We are interested to hear about your OS projects, how they are designed, and what they could eventually share for other projects' benefit. In addition to all FOSS OS projects, any application project that is seeking new target platforms is invited. Featured projects will include participants from the Rosetta OS project which charter <http://code.google.com/p/rosetta-os/wiki/RosettaOSCharter> matches our devroom goal. As time allows, we are also interested in transversal subjects in cooperation with other devrooms. As an example, possible topics could include: * unusual package management with the Crossdistro room, * standardization of GUI elements and behavior with the Crossdesktop devroom, * scalability with the Embedded devroom, * ways in which BSD drivers were reused in your project, * concerns about porting Java, * Gallium3D port progress reports... The format of the talks can vary, from 45min large speech to 15 min general project presentation, or hand-on hacking session. = Proposals = Proposals should be sent to François Revol by mail: revol(a)free.fr Your proposal should include: * duration (in 15 minute blocks -- please stick with that granularity, as it will make the schedule somewhat easier to follow for visitors), * activity title (please try to be descriptive, there are ~250 talks at FOSDEM during the week-end ;)), * a short abstract (1-2 paragraphs), * a longer description if appropriate, * optionally a list of links to the project website or similar * for each speaker: * the speaker's real name, * a short overview of her bio in a couple of lines, * optionally also a longer bio, * optionally a picture (please send it to us as 128x128 PNG), * optionally links to her website, blog, ... Plain-text format is preferred by the FOSDEM team, it makes their life easier, something like: ------------------ John Doe john.doe(a)example.org John is currently working as a freelancer and spends most of his free time contributing to various opensource projects, most prominently on libjohndoe. John currently lives in England with his wife, 2 kids and a bunch of kitten. He loves spending his time walking around in the woods, and of course kitten. He has a masters degree in kitten science, which helps him a lot with coding. blog: http://johndoe.example.org/blog/ attached: john_doe.png ------------------ = Deadline = The deadline for submissions is 2009-12-25, please try to stick to it. Acceptance notification on 2009-12-31. = Organization = The room provided by the FOSDEM team has: * room number AW1.105 with 48 seats, * a video projector with VGA cable, * wireless internet. We will try to provide a wifi router with ethernet ports for demonstrations since we know many projects do not have functional wifi drivers yet. We will also try to provide a laptop to load your slides on if you can't use your own machine. It is advised to see with your project supporting associations for possible reimbursement of travel and hosting cost, since the FOSDEM team cannot help there. Attendance is free however. Also remember to check other devroom calls as well as the call for lightning talks <http://fosdem.org/2010/call_for_lightningtalks>, for subjects that might not fit our topics of interest. = Projected schedule = 9:00 Welcome (15min) 9:15 "Rosetta OS" project morning project presentations, design... afternoon more projects, workshops... 16:45 Closing (15min)

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Ros-general December 2009