wiki:ReleaseNotes/0.14.1

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Oh no forgot to remove the placeholder comments and fill in the release date.

Release Notes for HelenOS 0.14.1

HelenOS 0.14.1 (Aladar) was released on May 19, 2024.

This document contains a summary of changes made to HelenOS since release 0.12.1.

Features Introduced in This Release

General

  • Updated toolchain used to build the OS
    • GCC 13.2 (from 8.2)
    • Binutils 2.41 (from 2.31.1)

Kernel

  • On ia32/amd64 and when supported, use write-combining memory to speed up kernel frame buffer

User Interface

  • Added a Start menu to the taskbar
    • Much more entries than Launcher
    • Can be controlled using mouse or keyboard, accelerator keys
    • Editable
    • Supports console mode

Start menu Stat menu in text mode

  • Windows can now be minimized (and unminimized)

Minimize button

  • Active window is now highlighted in the taskbar

Active window button highlighted

  • Added system menu to make WM functions accessible via keyboard (use F10, arrow keys)

System menu

  • Added generic list control (in addition to file list)
  • Menu entries can now be disabled
  • Menus will pop up above the menu bar if they do not fit below

Menu above the menu bar

  • Menus will not be obscured by taskbar
  • Support for multiple seats (i.e. multi-seat)

Multi-seat

  • Fixed menu accelerator keys not working when Caps Lock is enabled

Services and Drivers

  • In addition to Ctrl-key and Shift-key, serial console now supports Alt-key combinations
    • Useful e.g. for opening menus
  • USB HID driver
    • Fixed HID report bit extraction - fixes Lenovo USB wireless mouse
  • Better RGB downconversion in EGA text mode
    • Output server's EGA driver renders RGB using eight EGA colors (instead of just back/white)

Applications

  • New Taskbar Configuration utility (taskbar-cfg)
    • Allows editing the start menu

Taskbar Configuration

  • New UI and command-line display configuration utilities (display-cfg and disp) for configuring seats

Display Configuration

  • New ofw command-line utility for printing the OpenFirmware device tree (only on ppc32 and sparc64)
  • Taskbar no longer requires window management service to start (i.e. you can use it when system is running in console mode)
  • GFX Demo improvements
    • Quit more promptly
    • Only quit on Ctl-Q or Escape, not just on any key (e.g. Alt)
    • Handle keyboard events in console mode (gfxdemo console)
    • Detect screen size in console mode (instead of assuming 80x25)
    • Downsize window when running with text UI (gfxdemo -d cons@ ui)
  • Tester
    • Added IPC read/write test
  • Hbench benchmark tool
    • Fixed bug in default test time computation (it was too short)
    • Added IPC read/write benchmarks (read1k/write1k)
    • Added task_get_id system call benchmark
  • New About HelenOS application

About HelenOS

  • Launcher removed
    • Use Start menu to launch applications
    • HelenOS logo is now shown in About HelenOS
  • Barber Pole improvements
    • now fully supports text mode
    • You can now quit Barber using Ctrl-Q or Escape

Barber in text mode

  • Image viewer improvements
    • Viewer supports console (text) mode
    • Viewer can now be exited by pressing Escape or Ctrl-Q (apart from just Q)
    • Viewer will open a file browsing dialog if not passed image as an argument

Libraries

  • loc_server_register() can be called more than once
    • So that more components in one task can independently register services
    • Added complementary function loc_server_unregister()
  • New library libofw for enumerating the OpenFirmware device tree
  • A number of IPC protocol and I/O related stuff moved out of libc into separate libraries
    • ipctest
    • corecfg
    • clipboard
    • console (client + server code)
    • input (kbd_event, pos_event, KBDEV, MOUSEEV)
    • output (charfield, chargrid, color, concaps)

Regressions in This Release

  • For the list of regressions since the previous release, see this report.
  • Notable regressions

Fixed Logged Bugs & Enhancements

  • For the list of all logged defects fixed in this release, see this report.
  • For the list of all logged enhancements integrated in this release, see this report.

Known Bugs

  • For the list of known bugs still not fixed in this release, see this report.
  • For the list of all open tickets, see this report.

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