Release Hotfix 7 Alpha 3 released

[EvilDragon]

Actually, it was uploaded a few days ago, I just didn't have the time to post it yet here: HotFix 7 Alpha 3


Here are the changes compared to HotFix 6 Final:


* MiniMenu: Now reading the PNDs WAY faster, this reduces the startup speed a lot if you have many PNDs on your card!


* MiniMenu: Remembers the last selected application now.


* MiniMenu: Added WIP version of new skin (Clean). You can select that in the skin selector


* Charging: As some had issues with getting less time out of the battery since HF6, one patch has been reverted. So charging should hopefully work good for everyone once again (missed to include that in a2, it is now included!)


* Touchscreen: notaz tweaked the touchscreen and it is now WAY more responsive. The system feels way faster thanks to that


* notaz' SDL now included in the firmware


* modemmanager has been added - but it's not tested yet (didn't have a 3G stick handy). Please test - some 3G sticks (the ones that don't need a modeswitch) should now work using NetworkManager


* Some other tweaks and bugfixes.


The most notable things are of course the touchscreen fix and MiniMenu speedups.


Please test it and report back


Known bugs:


* In some cases, MiniMenu doesn't show icons on first run after a reboot.


* MiniMenu doesn't run some PNDs


* Touchscreen occasionally stops registering clicks (mouse button still works through nubs in that case)


Thanks of course to notaz and skeezix for these updates!


Here's the download: Zaxxon Hotfix 7 Alpha 3 Flash


As this is a full flash, it will delete all your personal settings and files that are stored on the NAND! Be sure you don't have anything important there!


To install it, simply extract the archive onto the root of your SD Card.


Insert the SD Card into the left slot. Keep R (shoulder) pressed while switching on your Pandora and select "Boot from SD1"


If "Boot from SD1" doesn't appear, try to reformat the SD Card using Panasonic SD Formatter, recopy the files and retry.


You can also use the SD Installer and run HF7a3 off SD Card.


Grab the image needed for the SD Installer here


Enjoy

 

[budweiser]

Going to give it a try ..


Thank You ...............Bud

 

[JustinEVC]

Thanks ED, will downld and test.


Cheers

 

[Phelsumania]

cheers ED wil have a play about with this for the next few days x

 

[milkshake]

whats difference between HF7a2 and HF7a3?

 

[EvilDragon]

whats difference between HF7a2 and HF7a3?

* Modemmanager added


* New mmenu WIP skin added


* Charging settings changed (and hopefully working for everyone fine now).

 

[skeezix]

FWIW, sometimes minimenu comes up 'too fast' now so the pnd-scanning is not yet complete; I'll have a patch for that soon, so you know there will be an HF7a4 (and a5 and so on Theres a numbner of things porg itemized nicely for me (plus some old requests and bugs in the tracker, plus some requests from ED), so lots to do for libpnd and minimenu, and I'm plugging along as best I can


Normally I'd have a big fat patch with lots of stuff, but this week I'm really beat up with work and home (and hey, got new twins around, they''re slowing me down just a bit (and my 3 month old little man just threw my tablet across the room. Wow )


But yeah, so lots more minimenu patches and features to come. (I keep really wanting to build a searchmode so you can type in a text substring to filkter the display by, in All tab.) But gotta fix the custom categories again now that its using the .desktop fast load instead of pnd-scan itself and so on. (One of the main changes from HF6 to HF7 is minimenu assumign the rest of the system is always present and fast loading stuff to improve bootup time significantly; previously, you could just run minimenu by itself with nothing else, and everythign would still work.. but theres a speed hit for that. This is all configurable now, so you can go back to old behaviour for cusotm building firmwares; it also is disabling background loading of icons and such since that just slowed things down, but you can turn on background preview pic loading and background icon and app loading and such. Sorry, in a rushg right now, just blabbing


jeff

Didn't realize ED had posted this so quick; not sure if this has my latest patch in it or not, will ask him Last night my time I put in a fix for very recent minimenu (HF7a1/2) not being able to run all apps (Crimson Fields, Comix, etc), so if this is not in a3, I can post binaries for folks to fiddle with, or you can wait for a4


jeff

 

[TitanUranus]

whats difference between HF7a2 and HF7a3?

Perhaps it now contains the obligatory health warning that Pandoras and their OS were assembled in a factory that may contain nuts.....

 

[skeezix]

ED tells me a3 was built a few days ago, so it definatley does not have my latest minimenu patch.


If a few folks like, we can try to put up an ipk for opkg, or I can put up a pnd that installs something, maybe tonight. Otherwise, wait for a4


jeff

 

[skeezix]

Another patch ready for tonight, so in theory minimenu should spin and wait for application discovery to complete (now that it depends on the bootup services for app discovery.) Its pretty smart about it .. and is configurable with how long it'll wait and so on; we'll tweak it as we see, so as to minimize any wasted time spinning and waiting.


It is tempting to make a shorter 'max wait' time, and then if that fails, auto refresh the app (rescan) 30 seconds later or something, but thats pretty disriptive to workflow.. will have to mull it over..


jeff

 

[dsleaf67]

FYI,


The SD bootable version don't boot. a2 (which I was using) had no prob booting. I checked the card after creation and it looks fine but doesn't boot, just black screen after pandora logo.


guess I wait til next version. I was was going to try downloading again but I've already ready spent the better part of a day and 2 cards trying to get this to boot.

 

[Lobo]

I just did an SD install last night and it worked for me.


Also, for the first time in months I can charge to 100%! Yayy!!!

 

[TitanUranus]

I manually installed 7a3 on the same SD card as Debian and Arch and all 3 boot fine. Might be you needed to manually create a boot.txt or perhaps the file you downloaded didn't finish right so it didn't extract all the files (this has happened to me a few times). Try downloading again and reinstalling to SD.

 

[milkshake]

@titanuranus when your manually unpacking the OS files are you also updating the kernal on the boot partition?

 

[peelie]

how do you turn on bluetooth?


i tried the setting/bluetooth and gives me message no devices present?


cheers


edit


doh! forgot to enable system/toggle bluetooth status

 

[TitanUranus]

@titanuranus when your manually unpacking the OS files are you also updating the kernal on the boot partition?

Yeah, I boot the OS straight from the EXT3 partition it's installed on, never saw the point of arseing around with a tiny FAT partition. Why do people do that anyway?

 

[Lobo]

Have a bug to report. I installed it using the SD Installer pnd, booted up for the first run wizard and created UserA. Everything is good for this user.


Then I created UserB, shut down and rebooted to log in as this new user. Boots into xfce, though I thought it would let me choose the GUI I wanted. So I tried to change the default GUI for UserB... But it wont let me! From what I can tell, any kind of admin utility(user manager, change default GUI, etc.) only result in SD light flashing, then nothing happens.


Any thoughts? Any place I can look to see what errors are happening?


Thanks in advance!

 

[peelie]

Have a bug to report. I installed it using the SD Installer pnd, booted up for the first run wizard and created UserA. Everything is good for this user.


Then I created UserB, shut down and rebooted to log in as this new user. Boots into xfce, though I thought it would let me choose the GUI I wanted. So I tried to change the default GUI for UserB... But it wont let me! From what I can tell, any kind of admin utility(user manager, change default GUI, etc.) only result in SD light flashing, then nothing happens.


Any thoughts? Any place I can look to see what errors are happening?


Thanks in advance!

getting the same though it does switch to minimenu if i try to log out of xfce; also once in minimenu won't let me switch back to xfce

 

[RobFord]

There is a bug that has been in all of the latest hotfixes.


If you decide that you want to hide the task bar at the bottom of the screen, when you press the pandora button the menu fails to launch. The curser disappears for a short bit which indicates that the panda is trying to open the window, but it fails to show.


As soon as you have the task bar at the bottom of the screen the menu works.


Is there a fix for this at all?

 

[skeezix]

massive -- no, thats how it is.


Before this (HF4 and earlier?) we just mapped pressing the pandora button in xfce mode to popping up the menu; works fine... except xfce's menu popping code is dumb enough that if you call it 10 times, you ahve 10 menus on top of each other, and no easy way to get rid of them. Gets annoying and goofy quick!


So around HF5 (guessing) it was switched to the way it works now .. essentially a macro that moves the pointer to the bottom left, clicks, and returns; thus it just pretends to click the Start menu for you. If theres no menu there... no luck! But at least it doesnm't goof up the menu :/


Someone shoudl write a better menu launcher for xfce, or submit some bug reports to the xfce team etc; it boggles the mind how it is the way it is, but its pretty low ojn the totem pole for xfce project I imagine


jeff