GeeXboX

Ok, beta2 was not the last one and here comes beta3 which is definitely candidate for 1.2 release. We’ve performed a huge amount of bug fixes in various area and were able to correct some long standing issues we had. Two major changes come with this release: a completely new automounter that now relies on D-BUS and HAL and the restoration of installer feature. So yeah, finally (it’s been time …), you should be able to install GeeXboX again, on both your HDDs and USB keys. Other parts of GeeXboX also welcomed a few changes, mostly regarding the player, that received a few fixes for AudioCDs, DVDs, AAC and RealVideo 9 playback.

Detailed Changelog (relative to 1.2-beta2 release):

System:
- Upgrade Linux kernel to 2.6.27.10
- Rework of installator, now works fine with both HDD and USB installs.

X.Org:
- ATI Radeon driver upgrade.
- ATI Rage128 driver addition.

Player:
- Updated MPlayer to r28184 (provides native RealVideo 9 / RV30 decoder).
- Use FAAD2 for AAC decoding (fixes many audio playback issues).
- Fix CDDA/DVD playback issues.

Networking:
- Add optional Samba server support.

Miscellaneous:
- Complete rework of automounter, now based on D-BUS/HAL.
- Mounted disks names are now much more eloquent.
- Fix some disc eject issues.
- Add optionnal disc images (.bin, .iso, .img, .mdf, .nrg) mounter.
- Restore the old menu font.

Here comes GeeXboX 1.2 second beta release. Thanks to your feedback on forums, we’ve been able to iron out a lot of nasty bugs from beta1. There’s no major changes in terms of features but the distribution is now much more stable, which is always a good thing. Most of the corrections took place at the driver level, as many people encountered some issues with hardware support. The few PowerPC users that still exist will also be pleased to know that we’ve manage to resurrect the port to this architecture (latest release was 1.0, more than 2 years ago).

We truely hope it’ll be the very latest beta release before 1.2 comes out. In the mean time, just test this one out.

Detailed Changelog (relative to 1.2-beta1 release):

System:
- Upgrade Linux kernel to 2.6.27.9
- Massive firmwares support upgrades: fixes many driver loading issues.

Toolchain:
- Update uClibc to 0.9.30.

Ports:
- Restore PowerPC architecture support.

X.Org:
- Update X.Org server to 1.5.3.
- Add HAL support, X.Org now uses evdev/XInput to handle input devices: this provides a complete X.Org settings autodetection.
- Fasten X.Org startup.

Player:
- Upgrade MPlayer to r28089.
- Native RealVideo 10 decoder.

Video:
- Remove RadeonHD driver, use legacy ATI instead (should fix some X.Org ATI drivers issues).
- Upgrade Intel X.Org driver to 2.5.1

Drivers:
- Many UDEV related rules changes (should fix some legacy PATA devices driver loading issues).
- Fix LIRC Serial driver issues.
- Fixes some CD/DVD loading issues (bad fs was used on Video DVDs).

Networking:
- Restore UPnP feature.

Miscellaneous:
- Fix FBI Image Viewer loader.
- Various enhancements on info display menu.
- Many fixes to WebGUI.

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.

Although development never stopped, more than a year has passed without any new official GeeXboX release. This new one is a really good candidate for your HTPC multimedia distribution choice. It comes with an improved hardware support, providing dozens of new drivers (a lot of new WiFi controllers, DVB card chipsets and new remote controls). It also comes with a massively upgraded and more stable MPlayer, which features native decoding of various audio/video formats/codecs that used to be available through non-free Win32 DLLs only (such as Windows Media Video, Flash …). Also, GeeXboX now has some decoding speed improvements (use of SSSE3 instructions from Core2Duos has been added) and the OSD menu has been completely rewritten to provide a lot of new attractives features. Oh, and did we mention ? It can plays decrypted EVO files from HD-DVD ?

While still working on version 2.0, the next version of GeeXboX (1.2) will come with some features that were requested for quite a long time. First, it’ll come in both 32 and 64 bits editions (second one is 15% faster). But more importantly, it’ll be first version of GeeXboX to come with a native HDTV screens support. So, just stay tuned, most of these features are already available, and 1.2 won’t take a year to come this time By the way, speaking about the future, we’re looking for a Sony PlayStation 3 to port GeeXboX to: that would make the best HTPC ever. Feel free to help us doing so

But let’s get back to 1.1 release and just enjoy using it.

Detailed Changelog (relative to 1.0 release) :

System:
- Update Linux to v2.6.21.3
- Upgrade BusyBox to v1.5.1
- Update uClibc to 0.9.29.
- Upgraded SysLinux bootloader to v3.20.
- Better CPU frequency scaling capabilities.

Toolchain:
- Added optional support for GNU glibc 2.5 in toolchain for debugging purpose.
- Upgrade to GCC 4.1.2

Player:
- Upgrade to MPlayer SVN v23418.
- Added support libavformat demuxer in addition to internal libmpdemux.
- New native VC-1/WMV3/WMV9 video decoder (Windows Media Video).
- New native On2 VP50 and VP62 decoder (Flash video).
- New native lossless audio decoders for WavPack, TTA, and Shorten.
- Support for VC1 in MPEG-TS and MPEG-PS files (like HD-DVD and BlueRay ones).
- Support for EVO demuxing (HD-DVD file format).
- Added support for VP7 binary codec.
- Added binary extra codec (through Generator) for WMA Pro files handling.
- Added binary codec for VC-1 codec as the native decoder is not (yet) able to decode all samples.
- Support for audio stream switching in MPEG-TS/PS, Matroska and streams supported by libavformat.
- Support for audio stream switching between streams with different codecs.
- New native RTSP input (handles MPEG-TS over RTP only) for generic RTSP servers (like FreeboxTV) which deprecates Live555 usage.
- H.264 decoding speed improvements.
- SSA/ASS subtitle renderer.
- Added support for ICEcast netstreams.
- Radio is now handled direclty through V4L2.
- Support for 3GP, AAC, VDR and DVR-MS files.
- Added a new Preferences menu, with many new options to control audio streams, subtitles, colors and tweak all video parameters.
- Removed libdts, libmpcdec, libogg, libvorbis and libtheora, as deprecated by new MPlayer internal decoders/demuxers.
- Allows loading external subtitle files.
- Allows setting playback speed.
- Allow selection of radio Genres, and store each genre in a subfolder for easier discovery.

Video:
- Fix with VESA on i945 cards.

Drivers:
- Added support for IVTV based cards (such as Hauppauge PVR 150/250/350/500).
- Support for WPA encryption on WiFi cards.
- Added support for Broadcom BCM43xx WiFi chipsets (like Apple AirPort).
- Added Ralink RT61 and RT73 chipsets support.
- Added support for wireless TI ACX111 chipsets.
- Added support for MadWiFi-NG driver.
- Added support for ZyDAS ZD12x1 wireless chipsets.
- Added support for PVR USB 2 TV card.
- Added support for Rio Karma USB mass storage devices.
- Added support for USB soundcards.
- Fixed ATI USB mouse directional keycodes.
- Added Medion (also Aldi) X-10 OEM’d remote.
- Added support for Logitech UltraX Media remote.
- Added support for some USB to serial interfaces.
- Introduced new libata support in kernel for IDE disks support.
- Do no more force disks to 32bits I/O (crashes with CompactFlash over IDE).
- Much better autodetection of USB DVB devices.
- Support for more radio cards.
- Rework of DVB firmware loader.

Networking:
- Support for IPv4 multicast (useful for RTSP streams).
- Added NdisWrapper support that allows using Win32 network (WiFi) drivers under Linux.
- Upgraded bftpd to version 1.8.4 and added new file /etc/ftp for FTP authentication.
- Updated Samba to 3.0.25, uses UTF-8 charset to mount shares and fixes some mount points handling issues.
- Allows Samba and NFS mounts to come up if the servers are brought up after geexbox boots up, by looping in the background.
- Added basic WebGUI implementation.

Generator:
- Support for NDISwrapper driver loading.
- Added new tab to add extra files to generated ISO image.
- New generator option to set WiFi channel number.
- Support for Windows Vista.

Miscellaneous:
- Removed deprecated non-working recorder/mencoder support.
- Added remote=/receiver= cheat codes in isolinux for easy change.
- Added menus in installator for selecting remote/receivers.
- Added support for various keyboard mapping (azerty/qwerty/qwertz)
- New makefile rules to build and play VMware virtual machines (make vmx; make vmx-play).
- Fixed QEMU/VirtualBox emulation.
- Add autoplay support for USB devices.
- Reworked internationalization files.
- Support for multiple languages in the same ISO image.
- Support for JFS file system.

Thanks to your 1.1-rc1 testings, we’ve been able to fix out a lot of bugs from GeeXboX. It is now up to you to test this new release again. Once again, please test this version and report problems to the Forum . As usual, the more you’ll be to test it, the faster we’ll release 1.1.

Below are links to 1.1-rc2:
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc2 ISO for i386
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc2 ISO Generator for i386
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc2 ISO for PowerPC
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc2 ISO Generator for PowerPC
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc2 Light Sources

While the team is working on 2.x series achievement, the 1.x series has continued to evolve and here’s the first release candidate of the upcoming 1.1 version. In order for us to discover the remaining nasty bugs and help us release 1.1 as soon as possible, please test this version and report problems to the Forum . As usual, the more you’ll be to test it, the faster we’ll release 1.1.

Below are links to 1.1-rc1:
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc1 ISO for i386
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc1 ISO Generator for i386
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc1 ISO for PowerPC
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc1 ISO Generator for PowerPC
- GeeXboX 1.1-rc1 Light Sources

Xmas passed away and no new GeeXboX release came out this year. It’s a bit sad but we were focusing on next generation architecture which delayed a bit the 1.x serie development. You may however expect some 1.1 release any time soon, with it’s usual set of improvements. Time has come now to let you discover our very first technological preview of GeeXboX 2.x series.

Some of you may have heard about MPUI years ago, or OMC/libplayer a bit earlier this year but both approaches went down. The decision has been taken to make use of Freevo 2.0 (still work in progress, but so is GeeXboX 2.x) and Kaa, its multimedia framework as our new UI reference. As a consequence, many new packages had to be added (such as Python) to our distribution. In a near future, GeeXboX and Freevo projects will be more tighten than ever, and we should be the official Freevo LiveCD, still keeping in mind our embedded and easy-to-setup approach. Unfortunately, ISO grew up radically (it is now 20 MB) and so does RAM usage (at least 128MB is now mandatory).

But, as a development version, don’t take it too seriously, it’ll still change ’till the final release. If you want to have a try at this technological preview, just grab the GeeXboX 2.x 2006-12-31 ISO and burn it to a CD or try it through VMware or so. Don’t look for a generator or try to install it on disk, it is not yet meant for. Don’t expect it either to be fully functional, it’s still full of bugs and isn’t meant to replace the official 1.x serie anytime soon. Right now, it can be controlled through keyboard only (arrow keys and Enter/Escape) but should already be able to let you watch some videos, play audio files or view various pictures. Well, that’s said, here are some screenshots, just for you to know what to expect from 2007

Happy new year from all the GeeXboX team members …

Here we finally are … after more than 3 years of perpetual development, GeeXboX finally reaches its so long awaited 1.0 release. Many of you were waiting for it and this is probably the best edition of GeeXboX that you’ve ever had. We’ve spent so much time in the last few months to fix all the bugs that we can, so that you’ll be forced to enjoy it At the time Aurel and myself started working on GeeXboX, none of us would have expected our software to become that famous. I’m really glad that this version finally came out and I really really want to thank from the depths of my heart all the people of our development team who are getting involved in GeeXboX everyday. None of this would ever have been possible without the work you’ve all done on it. I’d also like to thank all users that trusted us and are now using our software in a daily manner. You are the ones who made it possible. So for now, I hope you’ll all enjoy our 1.0 release, we all did our very best on it, and we’re on the road to 2.0.

So, what can you expect from this final 1.0 release ? Well, so many things have changed, been added or simply fixed. The most noticeable thing probably is the support for DVD menus, this feature that had been requested so many times by so many people and that was unfortunately missing from MPlayer is now part of GeeXboX. A lot of work also has been done for playing back network streams from SHOUTcast WebRadios, WebTVs or even RTP/RTSP streaming so that you should now be able to easily watch any kind of network or broadcasted stream from your GeeXboX media center. The overall hardware support for various DVB cards, sound cards and video display adapters has also been improved. You’re now also able to see all metadata information and properties (like Codecs, resolution or ID3 tags) from your multimedia files. The easiest way to tell you the changes is probably for you to read the concise version of our changelog.

Detailed Changelog (relative to 0.98.7 release) :

System:
- Updated linux to version 2.6.16.17.
- Updated BusyBox to 1.1.3.
- Updated uClibc to 2006.05.05 snapshot.
- Updated udev to version 0.92.

Toolchain:
- Introduced GCC 4.1.1 as the new compiler.
- Support for C++ in the toolchain.
- All packages are now built with big files support flag.
- Added support for non-free binary firmwares at sources build.

Player:
- Updated MPlayer to 1.0pre8.
- DVD Navigation Menus support.
- SHOUTcast and Netstream support (with content filtering on adult/subscription-only streams).
- Support for LIVE555 library (RTP/RTSP/SIP streaming) which provides FreeboxTV support for French people using the Free ISP.
- Use mp3-lib instead of FFMpeg to avoid audible glitches while seeking.
- Fix MPlayer’s bug which prevents AVI files with ODML index (99% of XviD files) to be read when idx=yes (default).
- Fix sound/subtitles issues while playing MPEG-TS streams.
- Support for multichannel AAC in MOV files.
- Playback of IFO files (DVD disc ripped on HDD for example) now works as expected.
- Set minimal cache size (5% of cache) to start playback of file very quickly.
- Fix TV channel OSD name generation with spaces in their name.
- Allows RTSP client’s port forcing (for FreeboxTV users in router mode for example).
- Added support for DVD-RAM MPEG files.

Menu:
- Brand new menu item selection display (now with alpha layer).
- Added new menu that displays streams A/V properties.
- Allows metadata retrieval from MP3/OGG/FLAC audio files.
- Properties menu auto-opens and updates on audio-only media.
- Prevent user from browsing (and getting lost) in /
- Display NIC’s MAC address into information menu.
- Display CDROM size.
- Fixed display of disks partition size and freespace.
- Added release number information.

Audio:
- Update ALSA library and utilities to version v1.0.11.
- Added a lot of fixes for audio playback.

Video:
- Added support for different resolutions to be used through generator.
- Support for VESA with Intel i865, i910 and i915 chipsets.

Drivers:
- Added support for Serial ATA CDROM drives.
- Added support for ATAPI/IDE ZIP/LS120 drives.
- Added support for PcCard (32bits CardBus only, not 16bits PCMCIA).
- Added LCD displays support through LCD4Linux.
- Added support for most of the Gigabit NICs.
- Fix support of Nova DVB-S+ card.
- Updated LIRC to v0.8.0.
- Updated rt2400/rt2500 drivers to CVS 05.09.2006.
- Fix em8300 driver and firmware loading issues.

Networking:
- Updated djmount to version 0.53 (files are no more represented as playlist).
- Fixed bftpd FTP server write access error.
- Updated bftpd to version 1.4, and included fix for file transfers greater than 2GB.
- Update wireless tools to version 28.

Generator:
- Updated generator tools for MacOS X (support for MacIntel x86 OSX 10.4).
- Allow you to choose between multiple themes.
- Option for DVD Navigation menus to select it as a default or not.
- Option for autoplay to select it as a default or not.
- Option for SHOUTcast (radio and tv netstreams).
- Tab for video settings configuration (resolution, color depth and boot splash)
- Tab for support of LCD displays.

Miscellaneous:
- Fixed zoomed scrolling in FBI image viewer.
- Support for Microsoft Media Center Edition USB, StreamZap, Twinhan DTV, Toshiba VT76F and ATI Remote Wonder II remotes.
- Implemented full Digimatrix hardware support (apart from panel buttons).
- Allow multiple resolutions in themes.
- Support for VMware and QEMU (usefull for test purpose).

On this sunny sunday, GeeXboX comes with its very latest development release. This one is the latest one before the final 1.0 which should be available in all FOSS stores for the end of the week. We’re getting closer folks … just have a last try at it.

It’s been exactly 2 weeks since previous GeeXboX development release. Thanks to your reports, a lot of bugs have been fixed and we’re getting closer to the so waited for final 1.0 public release. It’s just a matter of a couple of days now. It’s now up to you to test this second release candidate in order to help us finalizing GeeXboX. Just remember it’s the last chance to report nasty bugs to us.