Hello, Here are some news about releases to come. First of all I'm planning to publish an update Hyperborea 2.1 that will mainly be a language update. I will probably also add a new game, fillet-ng. It requires about 100 MB and was then not installable as long as we were using a single CD. I also want to add a donation link in the web browser homepage, in the settings tab of the activity Whole DDL and even in the panel of advanced activities. This update could be published this month, most likely by the end of September.
Then the next release to build is concerning the move from Debian Squeeze to Debian Wheezy. Hyperborea is currently based on the old Debian stable release, Squeeze. We have discussed this topic with Elisa and Xavier during the RMLL in July in Brussels (also know as Libre Software Meeting). Hyperborea took a long time to emerge because there were a migration from Lenny to Squeeze, a deep change in the interface of the advanced activities, many changes in the application set and a full replacement of the artwork. We fear that the successor of Hyperborea (aka v3.0) take a long time to be built if we move to Wheezy, change the application set and change the artwork. Although I don't intend to change the interface a lot, I also recently discovered a technical issue for the move to Wheezy: the main activity menu, based on GDM v2, is broken in Wheezy because it ships with GDM v3 only. Unfortunately, GDM 3 cannot be themed like GDM 2 because it is a full rewrite of GDM. As a result our main menu is definitively broken in Wheezy… So I believe the move to Wheezy will be harder than the move to Squeeze was. Indeed this is probably the opportunity for us to replace the trick of GDM for our main activity menu and change it into a real menu application. This issue is detailed on a ticket of our project management tool [1]. However doing this change would require a lot of work and would prevent the move to Wheezy to be achieved within one or two months. Consequently, a temporary alternative can be to replace GDM with another display manager that would allow to make a graphical menu of users, for example LightDM. Trials are needed to evaluate this kind of temporary fix though. [1] http://team.doudoulinux.org/issues/111 Finally, Xavier proposed in July to build an intermediary release, say 2.5, that would just be a move from Squeeze to Wheezy. We would not change the interface, the artwork nor the application set except for software that disappeared between both Debian releases. This intermediary release could be published by the end of the year, opening the door to armhf (the quicker ARM port of Debian) and likely Raspbian (the Raspberry PI specific port). It would also provide newer drivers for a better hardware support. The release 3.0 would be published later, likely not before mid 2014, with changes in the application set and a totally new artwork. So my proposal for the *stable* releases to come is the following: * Hyperborea 2.1 for late September, mainly a language update release. * Hyperborea 2.5 for the end of the year, a move to Wheezy in which the GDM activity menu would probably be temporarily replaced with a LighDM one. * DDL 3.0 (name to be found), for mid 2014 or later, with updated application set and renewed artwork, plus the main activity menu changed into a real application. Note that we quite quickly need a name for version 3.0 so that artists can start to think about the new artwork soon enough. As a result, the *development* version of DDL would then not see an official new release before 2014 since 2013-12 would match v2.5 and we have nothing to show now for a version 2013-09. The official development releases would then start again in 2014, probably with 2014-03 then 2014-06 if v3.0 is not out before the summer. Feel free to comment or express your feelings. -- Cheers, JM.
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