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GeeXboX 1.2-beta1

November 1st, 2008 No comments

As usual, it took way longer than expected but there it is: GeeXboX 1.2-beta1. Why Beta release ? Honnestly, this version should now be pretty stable. However, too few tests have been done by users on forum recently and we wanted to confirm the good feedback we have before releasing the final 1.2.

So what has changed to take so much time ? As told at 1.1 release’s time, the major change is X.org inclusion. This was a lot of work but this allows GeeXboX to fully support wide screens and all of the new HDTVs monitors. Everything is autodetected and configured and it should detect the best resolution that suits your monitor. Along with X.org, come all of its video drivers. Say bye bye to VIDIX (as good as it was) and welcome XVideo. This brings video acceleration (but still no GPU offload) to nearly all video cards in the wild (whether it is Intel, nVidia, ATI, S3, SiS, VIA …).

Alos come many kernel and internal changes. The whole distributions is now modularized to best detect your hardware and load ony what is needed. Many drivers have been added and installation has been completely reworked for better usability.

This version also has been optimized for various platforms like EeePCs, EasyGate and bring official support of MacIntels computers. It also introduce a new port to x86_64 architecture which brings a small performance boost regarding to the 32bit edition.

Unless major bugs are encountered, you may expect the final 1.2 release to come pretty soon. In the mean time, the more you test this beta version and report bugs, the fastest it’ll be issued.

Detailed Changelog (relative to 1.1 release):

System:
- X.Org 7.4 inclusion (default, change it with generator).
- Support for SMP and multi-cores.
- Update to Linux 2.6.27.4.
- Update BusyBox to 1.11.3.
- Update to SysLinux 3.72.
- Use of initramfs instead of initrd.

Toolchain:
- Update to GCC 4.3.2.
- Upgrade uClibc to 0.9.30-rc3.
- Upgrade glibc to 2.7.
- Use glibc as a default when building with X.Org.

Ports:
- Port to x86_64 architecture.
- Port to PowerPC 64bit architecture.
- MacIntel support.
- Optimizations for EasyGate platform.
- Optimizations for EeePC 700.

Player:
- Update MPlayer to r27662.
- Enable ASS support.
- Add MonkeyAudio decoder.
- Add GOOM audio visualization.
- Fix for CDDA playback.
- Add TV selection menu.
- Add de-interlace filter for DVDs and TV streams.
- Use of keypad for DVDNAV controls.
- Add support for extended PLS netstream entries.
- Enhanced DVD Navigation Menu support.
- Fix somes issues with encrypted DVDs playback.
- Use per stream type configuration profiles.

Video:
- Add widescreens and HDTV screens support.
- Add X11 video acceleration for most graphic cards (Intel, nVidia, ATI, S3, SiS, VIA …).
- TV-Out is no longer available when booting with X.Org enabled.
- Some Intel VESA driver fixes.
- ATI VIDIX driver color fixes.
- Restore VIDIX support on PowerPC.

Drivers:
- X.Org hardware autodetection.
- Dozens of new WiFi, Ethernet, DVB … drivers supported.
- All drivers are now modularized (no longer built-in): only useful ones are actually loaded.
- Add kernel drivers auto probe and load mechanisms.
- Fix many PATA devices issues.
- Add support for 16bit PCMCIA cards.
- LIRC 0.8.4

Networking:
- Upgrade to Samba 3.0.32 (better support for MS Vista shares).
- Add support for Plan9 network shares .
- Add NFS v3/4 support.
- Add PXE boot from Samba.
- Allow for defining static samba mounts

Installator:
- Introduction of configurator: post-install reconfiguration utility.
- Use of libparted instead of old fdisk for disk partionning.
- Enhanced install to USB process.
- Provide faster boot methods for install to HDD.

Generator:
- Add HDTV (X.org) related new options and configuration settings.
- Add GOOM audio visualization settings tab.
- Add NFS shares configuration tab.
- Add static Samba shares configuration tab.
- Automatic packages download at ISO image compilation.

Miscellaneous:
- Add AppleIR remote support.
- Add X10 RF MCE remote control support.
- Add ACPI multimedia buttons handling.
- Enhanced system information menu.
- Enhance VESA boot menu.
- Enhanced Web interface and better browser compliance.
- Add optional support for Video Disk Recorder (VDR).
- Use FeH image viewer instead of FBI.

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Categories: GeeXboX, HDTV, PowerPC, Release, x86 Tags:

GeeXboX Progress Report

August 12th, 2008 No comments

It’s been more than a year that we’ve released GeeXboX 1.1. At this time, as usual, I’ve stated that “So, just stay tuned, most of these features are already available, and 1.2 won’t take a year to come this time“. Yeah, that was already 14 months ago. What happened since then ? That’s a recurrent question indeed as I receive a lot of mails from people asking me whether or not the project’s dead. That’s for sure no good advertising. This situation is also one of the reason I wanted to start this blog, that may act as an official GeeXboX homepage.

So, people often wonder what has changed since then. GeeXboX internals have changed quite a bit in development tree, even if it’s not completely visible to end user. As expected, HDTV support has been brought up and that’s probably the killing feature of next release. To be accurate, previous versions were already able to decode HD streams (depending on your hardware configuration) and the upcoming release won’t help much in this area. What I mean by HDTV support is that we now fully support HDTV screens (TFT and Plasma TVs). For last 4 years, the trend is to have widescreens (16:9 or 16:10) monitors, resulting in the slow death of their 4:3 ancestors. The problem is that GeeXboX was running in pure console mode, using the 20 years old VESA standard, which only provide 4:3 resolutions. Hence, when using GeeXboX on a widescreen, all you had was a distorted picture. The thing was to add X.Org server to GeeXboX. It was quite a hell of a job as X.Org is a monsterpiece. As a result, ISO size grew up a lot but we now have much more video cards that are supported, with much better performances and GeeXboX should normally automatically find and fit the native resolution of your brand new screen.

We also improved a lot our toolchain and ported the distribution against various CPU architectures. Using latest development tree, you should now be able to build GeeXboX for:

  • regular 32bit x86 PCs and MacIntel.
  • 64bit x86 PCS and MacIntel (decoding speeed boost of 15% towards 32bit version)
  • 32bit PowerPC Macintosh G3 and G4 (no Pegasos and other embedded boards are not supported)
  • 64bit PowerPC Macintosh G5.

Interestingly, it seems that the 32bit PPC never has been so popular since someone tried (successfully) to port it to Nintendo Wii. It seems to work not that bad (from videos I’ve seen, I do not have a Wii) but still requires a lot of work. Also, at current stage, please consider it as a completely unofficial hack that is absolutely not supported. We receive a lot of mails about it but can’t help much out there.

The 64bit PPC port is more interesting to me. With the recent GCC 4.3 toolchain upgrade, it should now be able to port GeeXboX to Sony PS3. We are however still facing difficulties booting the kernel out there (a.k.a. the black screen effect, damn easy to debug …). I’ll keep you informed of progress later on, as this is pretty experimental right now.

So, why’s GeeXboX 1.2 not released ? To be fair, I’d say it’s 95% complete but the problem is that it’s so for the last 4 months. We’re are still facing a major bug with installator and it’d be pretty much ok afterwards. Though, no one seems to be willing to fix it and really too few people out there actually test development releases that are posted on forum. Every developer (including me) seems to be much more interested by other aspects than fixing this nasty thing. In the mean time, we continue adding new features and do not waste enough time on fixing the existing ones. So 1.2 might come out, that’s for sure, but I still have no timeline for that …

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First beta of HDTV Ready GeeXboX

May 8th, 2007 No comments

According to recent user survey, you were more and more asking for a proper HDTV support. So finally here it is. Let’s introduce the first beta of the HDTV Ready GeeXboX (based on 1.x version). Please have a try at it but also remember it’s only a beta (no release date). More informations can be found on Forum .

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Categories: GeeXboX, HDTV Tags: