Distribution Release: PUD GNU/Linux Version 0.4.8.5

This is a development version of PUD but contains lots of experiments and new features so that we would like to make it a beta release, including installer, new package selection, enhanced livecd build kit, kernel patches, optimizations to speed up boot time, and better laptop/mobile device support.

• LiveCD: pud-0.4.8.5.iso (256MB)
• LiveUSB: pud-0.4.8.5-usb.zip (256MB)
• Build Kit: build-livecd-r164.tar.gz

This system is based on Ubuntu 8.04 so it may contain bugs

New Features

• New Package Selection:
  PUD comes with installer now! USB flash drive is bigger and cheaper so why don't we expand our feature sets? As a result, the OpenOffice.org and Printer support are built-in! (That's why the image size is 256MB). And we also move init/scripts to Initng and GDM. This is experimental and may be change in the future, so we're looking forward to your feedbacks. (More information: packages list)
• Enhanced LiveCD Build Kit:
  Thanks to the commits from Alex Lin, we're now able to add some major changes into build-livecd. The build log will be saved into a file, the setting file is now separated, the build dir structure is cleanup, and gpg keys and config-deb support, to make a Live CD can't be simpler than execute ./build-livecd.pl .
• Kernel Patches:
  We patched the kernel with Squashfs-LZMA compression and Aufs filesystem as usual, and also a patch called OpenLog to help trace the boot process. By the way, the TuxOnIce patch is in progress. All patches can be downloaded from here.
• Faster Booting Optimization:
  We introduce two optimize methods here, the first is called Sorted Layout, you can find some documents here in Chinese, the trace log dmesg.log and sort.log can also be download. The second method is called Boot Gear. In short, these optimizations can speed up the boot time 7%~26%. This is still in development stage, and more informations will be provided later.
• Better Mobile Device Support:
  PUD will now auto-detect if you're using a mobile device, and try to enable Laptop Mode Tool to save power, and uswsusp is added to support software suspend/hibernate, the battery and sound status plugins are added into the panel. Promised plate UI is also in progress, written in Clutter and Gtk to provide an easy to use mobile mode, hopeful to release in the next version.

Known Issues

• The load/save function is temporary disable
• There're no Opt-Get plugin available right now
• Installer contain a post-install bug in init script
• We will survey latest LXDE and try to integrated into PUD
• More documents will be provided later

Join Us

If you have any kind of suggestion/idea; find some bugs to report, please post on our Developers Forum, or you may contact me directly. Any kind of feedback is good feedback. :-)

Pin-Shiun Chen (penkia) <penkia@gmail.com>