Release Notes for Familiar v0.5

Help in furthering this project is, of course, also very welcome!

Familiar v0.5 is brought to you by a cast of thousands: see below for approximate details.

Supported Platforms

Familiar runs on the Compaq iPAQ H31xx series, though with some remaining nits.

The H36xx and H37xx are fully supported.

Familiar does not *yet* run on the iPAQ H38xx series. Stay tuned for progress.

Base Familiar System

Release Engineering (e.g. image creation) and Instructions (Alexander Guy)

Base Familiar configuration, infinite general hacking - (Alexander Guy, Carl Worth, others)

ipkg updated - does dependency installation order checking (Carl Worth, Jamey Hicks).

Compaq iPAQ specific notes

There are now other (non-Compaq) platforms of interest appearing. Ports are welcome.

bootblaster replaces osloader for initial install (Brian Avery)

Important note: saving WinCE is now done by gzip'ed images. Not only does this make the upload MUCH faster and simpler, you can and should test that your image is not corrupted via the checksum included in gzip. "gzip -tv wince.gz". As xmodem is a lousy protocol, this is important to ensure a saved WinCE image is intact after transfer.

Consult the bootblaster changelog for details

bootldr (Brian Avery, Dave Panariti)

Will load kernels directly out of JFFS2 partitions. This makes configurations much easier, and saves flash space. Multiple kernels can be booted, from the bootldr prompt.
Params block can be replaced by a file in JFFS2 partiton.
By default, sets params up for Familiar v0.5, but can be configured to boot old partition setups.
Details in: the bootldr changelog

Kernel

updated to 2.4.7-rmk3-np1 -- see kernel.org and arm.linux.org.uk for changelogs (Linus Torvalds, Russel King, Niko Pitre, Jamey Hicks, Andrew Christian, and a cast of thousands)
audio driver supports many sampling rates from 8KHz to 44.1KHz, but stereo only
devfs filesystem used for dynamic /dev
jffs2 has improved stability
CF, single and dual pcmcia sleeves supported
new, improved hotplug capability
suspend/resume works
RTC works (see atd) (Russ Nelson, others)
touchscreen driver rewritten
stowaway keyboard rewritten
aironet pcmcia wlan card supported
wvlan_cs driver replaced by orinoco_cs driver
wlan-ng driver included in release
kernel by default loaded out of jffs2 root partition
IPV6 (Steve Ayer, Jamey Hicks)
The full IPv6 stack functions as expected once the kernel module is loaded. Several IPv6-compliant accessories are available as ipkgs, namely ping6, wget6, telnet6, ipv6web-bits with ipv6 apache and w3m, an ipv6-compliant ppp.
Mobile IPv6 is also available as an ipkg; a wiki page explicitly covers a installation and setup for all associated MIPv6 functionality. Full roaming capabilities across ethernet subnets is available.

X based GUI

TrueType fonts can be used via the XRender extension; it is important to run the postinstall script, which installs them. Fonts down to about 4 points can be read on the screen! 5.5 point Andale mono is quite nice! The rxvt-aa ipkg has the correct anti-aliased font support for a terminal emulator. (Keith Packard and Jim Gettys)
Resize and rotate extension is available: you can rotate the screen on the fly from the main menu (or from your program). We still need to teach GTK+ to put pop-up menus on the screen properly after a rotation, however. Fixed in next release. The initial rotation can be set by modifying the /etc/init.d/x script.
New default window manager: ion, (written by Tuomo Valkonen) which has< no overlapping windows. Includes hacks by Keith Packard to use TrueType fonts, titlebar buttons, and application docking. (Keith Packard and Carl Worth)
The ion window manager replaces blackbox as the default. Blackbox is also available in the feed. While not perfect (Familiar needs one built from scratch by someone with taste), most people prefer ion in daily use. (Carl Worth, Keith Packard, and the ion team)
xstroke 0.5: Cute translucent strokes and a new docking control
window. Better recognition with a new alphabet that has separate
letter, number, and punctuation modes, (former Palm users should be a bit happier). This replaces permenently the scribble program. -(Carl Worth)
new keyboard program replacing old one (who?)
GTK version 1.2.10 - (Michael Taht's squashed patches forward ported by Jim Gettys, further work is underway and expected in the next release). No XRender support at this time; GTK 2 and Pango have full support, so someday.... Or we'll get the shared library hack to provide support in 1.2 installed. We have a updated GTK with a number more widgets (like file open) converted, but it was not tested sufficiently for release: stay tuned.
X server and Libraries updated to XFree86 4.1 - (Jim Gettys)
RandR extension - resize and rotate extension (Keith Packard and Jim Gettys)
Render Extension - anti-aliased text and graphics (Keith Packard)
libXt, libXmu, libXaw - Familiar complete no longer includes these libraries in the core load, as nothing depends on them anymore (saving 2 megabytes of code space, before compression). Packages built on Familiar .4 not updated to call out these dependencies will (obviously) not work. They are, of course, available in the feed as separate packages, and correctly built ipkg's should work fine. (Jim Gettys, others who replaced utilities that had dependend on these libraries).
xaux-clients - some of the less used X clients are packaged into a separate package, to save space (Jim Gettys).

Packages

The software mentioned here is in the mainline Familiar feed. Please be aware that there is *MUCH* more software out there than we package in the base Familiar distribution. You can very easily take almost any Debian package for ARM and run in on the iPAQ, up to and including running the Intimate environment that gives you a full Debian environment.

Additionally, there are many ipkg feeds providing additional software, that can be installed either on the base Familiar system, or on Familiar complete's X environment. Please peruse these feeds for more information. The software available there is very diverse, including:

QPE, Konquerer
compilers
IRC clients
many games
Java
software not ready for widespread deployment.

Please add your feeds as appropriate to the list on that page. Note that many of those feeds may be ephermeral, and software tested in one feed may end up in future releases in the Familiar core feed. And please remember to garbage collect obsolete feeds there occasionally!

Credits here are going to those who wrote or repackaged the software for Familiar. These may or may not be the author or maintainer of a debian package, or of the software itself; my apologies for any inaccuracies. You will note certain people are maintainers for too many packages: feel free to volunteer!

This list does NOT include many driver or library packages.

atd (Russ Nelson): real time clock daemon to wake up at arranged times
bash (Carl Worth): bash shell
bkgnd (Scott Scriven>: set the X root windwo to a random image (using Qiv, for example)
blackbox (Carl Worth): window manager for X; was standard in v0.4, replaced by ion in v0.5.
bluetooth modules (Jamey Hicks): kernel modules for bluetooth. Unsure how tested.
checkers (Carl Worth): checkers program
clerk (Gareth Greenaway): file manager written in python and GTK
cpu-scale (Carl Worth): menu entries to control speed of processor
diff (Carl Worth): diff
dillo (Eduardo Macan): dillo web browser
dosfstools (Carl Worth): MS-DOS FAT file systems
e2fsprogs (Carl Worth): EXT-2 file system utilities and libraries
familiar-postinst (Alexander Guy): Install truetype fonts and NTP server
fdisk (Carl Worth): Partition hard disk, also includes mkfs and mkswap.
foal (James Weatherall): Python based application launcher, which will dock with ion.
ftp (Carl Worth): ftp
gcardinfo (Andrew Christian): gtk interface to the PCMCIA card services
gdb (Alexander Guy): gdb debugger
gpsd (Russ Nelson): GPS daemon
grep (Carl Worth): search
gsoko (Russ Nelson): puzzle game using GTK
gtk-engines-thinice (Stephen Crowley): thinice theme for GTK
gtk-menu (Carl Worth): GTK based menu program
gtk-theme-thingreeber (Gareth Greenaway): ThinGreeber gtk theme
gzip (Carl Worth): Gzip tool, can also handle .Z files
h3600-utils (Carl Worth, Andy Christian): backlite and LED control
hostname (Carl Worth): set/show hostname or domain name of the machine
hotplug (Jamey Hicks): hotplug scripts for H3600
ifupdown (Carl Worth): high level network configuration programs, based on /etc/network/interfaces
intimateboot (James Conner): boot scripts to boot up intimate
ion (Carl Worth, Keith Packard): window manager for X
ipaqstat (disconnect): Task bar display for date, time, apm, mem, df, and wvlan. Will dock with window managers (e.g. ion, blackbox).
ipatience (Keith Packard): lots of solitaire.
ipkg, ipkg-build (Carl Worth): ipkg tools
irda-common, irda-utils (Jamey Hicks): IRDA support
jove (Keith Packard): Jonahtan's Own Version of Emacs
less (Carl Worth): file pager program, similar to more
libfltk (Carl Worth): Fast, light toolkit (optional, may be used by apps)
libXt, libXmu, libXaw6, libXaw7 (Jim Gettys): antique X toolkits, please avoid when possible
libfreetype (Jim Gettys): freetype 2 font engine
libgtk1.2 (Jim Gettys): GTK library, used by most Familiar X applications
loadmeter (Carl Worth): graphic CPU load monitoring
lrzsz (Carl Worth): zmodem/xmodem/ymodem package
madplay (Carl Worth): high quality, fast, fixed point MP3 player
madplay-bleed (Greg Berenfield): latest versin of maplay, + madtime
metaprof (Greg Berenfield): profile manager for sysset
mingle (Gareth Greenaway): contact manager
mixer (Ken Causey): Xlib based mixer app
netcat (Carl Worth): TCP/IP swiss army knife
netkit-ping (Carl Worth): ping
notepaq (James Weatherall): Simple persistent notepad program
ntpdate (Carl Worth): Set system time from NTP servers
pikpak (Mathew Allum): really cool package manager GUI for ipkg. Try it, you'll
portmap (Jamey Hicks): The RPC portmapper
pyditor (Carl Worth): python based text editor
pygps (Russel Nelson): GPS user interface, shows satellite positions, track, and moving maps
pypaq (Greg Berenfield): a madplay mp3 frontend written in python
python (Carl Worth): python 1.6
qiv (Carl Worth): quick image viewer for X
reflash (CRL): allows flash to be rewritten from linux while file system is mounted, to allow reflash of entire images (e.g. WinCE, other image you may want)
reiserfs (Carl Worth): ReiserFS journalling file system
rsync (Carl Worth): file synchronization utility
ruby (Kero van Gelder): Ruby scripting language interpreter
rxvt (Carl Worth): vt102 emulator
rxvt-aa (Carl Worth): vt102 emulator, with AA text support
sambaclient (Tom Lawler): Samba client code
sambaserver (Tom Lawler): Samba server: make your iPAQ appear on your Windoze network!
sed (Carl Worth): GNU sed stream editor
slang1 (Carl Worth): S-Lang programming library
ssh (Carl Worth): secure rlogin/rsh/rcp replacement (OpenSSH
stowaway (Andy Christian): Stowaway keyboard support
syslog (Andy Christian): syslog
sysset (Carl Worth): python utility for configuring system settings
tar (Carl Worth): tar utility
tcl (Kero van Gelder): TCL scripting language
textutils (Carl Worth): various text utilities
tk (Kero van Gelder): Tk toolkit for tcl
toad (James Weatherall): Persistent to-do list manager
tone (Keith Packard): tone generator for tuning instruments
vic (Carl Worth): multicast video teleconferencing tool with ipV6 support
vim (Wichert Akkerman): Vim verion of the Vi editor
wget (Carl Worth): utility to retrieve files via HTTP and FTP
xauxclients (Jim Gettys): some less used X utilities (e.g. xwd, xev, etc.)
xbaseclients (Jim Gettys): basic core X clients
xcalibrate (Carl Worth): calibrate touch screen
xkbd (Mathew Allum): xlib based keyboard
xserver-tiny-h3600 (Jim Gettys): X server for iPAQ H31xx, H36xx, H37xx

Jim Gettys