Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Three Exciting Releases

There were three exciting open source releases  yesterday. They are proxmox 3.3, ffmpeg 2.4, and enlightenment 19.

First, let's talk about Proxmox. The new release is a big one and it was announced here. There are several big changes on this release, including:
  • Firewall support (new package pve-firewall)
  • Two-Factor Authentication (Yubico and OATH) 
  • noVNC console  (use HTML5)
  • new Proxmox VE Mobile, GUI for mobile devices 
  • ZFS Storage support
  • Updated to Qemu 2.1.0
  • pve-kernel-2.6.32-32-pve: 2.6.32-136  
  • pve-kernel-3.10.0-4-pve: 3.10.0-17 
  • based on Debian Wheezy 7.6  
Next is ffmpeg 2.4 which was announced here. It was released just 2 months after 2.3 release and it has a codename of "Fresnel". Please note that this release IS NOT ABI-compatible nor fully API-compatible with previous version. But on the other hand it is aligned with the Libav 11 release series, and will as a result probably end up being maintained for a long time. Don't get rush to upgrade if you have lots of applications that depends on earlier API version otherwise it will break.

FFmpeg 2.4 includes the following library versions:
        • libavutil      54.7.100
        • libavcodec     56.1.100
        • libavformat    56.4.101
        • libavdevice    56.0.100
        • libavfilter     5.1.100
        • libswscale      3.0.100
        • libswresample   1.1.100
        • libpostproc    53.0.100

Important API changes since 2.3:
        • The new field mime_type was added to AVProbeData, which can
          cause crashes, if it is not initialized.
        • Some deprecated functions were removed.
        • The avfilter_graph_parse function was made compatible with Libav.
        • The Matroska demuxer now outputs verbatim ASS packets.

Last, but not least, is enlightenment 0.19.0. Mike Blumenkrantz has announced on the mailing list and this release brings huge updates, including:

* greatly improved wayland support
    - E_WL_FORCE environment variable for forcing output types
* e_uuid_store: Add infrastructure to store window/surface properties.
* Add a tiling profile.
* per-screen desklock logo visibility config
* Tiling: Merge the tiling module rework..
* check udisks1 DevicePresentationHide flag
* ACTIVATE_EXCLUDE window active hint policy
* show video resolution in filepreview widget
* add fileman option to clamp video size for video previews
* handle xrandr backlight using a single, accurate handler
* blanking options for wakeup on events (urgent + notify)
* packagekit module for package manager integration
* ibar now optionaly triggers its menu on mouse in
* selective redirection toggling
* new focus option "raise on revert focus"
* add PIN-style desklock for lokker module
* make desklock hookable, break out current desklock into module, move pam stuff to separate file
* revive personal desklock passwords
* allow moveresize visuals to be replaced
* allow desk flip animations to be handled completely externally
* E16-style live pager returns!
* comp config is no longer a module
* E_FIRST_FRAME env variable
* new compositor API
* add E_MODULE_SRC_PATH for setting current module src path without needing to install modules
* use non-recursive makefiles for entire build system