Syllable Server change log
==========================

Kaj de Vos
14 December 2007
http://syllable.org


0.2, 14 December 2007
=====================

A number of fixes were made. Most notably, terminal initialisation and printing were fixed. GhostScript is included now. Some of the Syllable-specific initialisation scripts are executed now.

Many packages were updated, including GLibC, CoreUtils, BASh, ORCA and the printing packages.

Several new packages were added. IPTables is included, so Syllable Server can be used to build a firewall. The wireless tools are included for configuring wireless networks. The ALSA userspace library and tools were added to provide full access to the audio system, instead of relying on OSS emulation.

Organisation of packages in the system is greatly restructured. A new package pool was split off from the one in /usr/ and introduced under /system/resources/. The former pool retains its structure, but packages in the new system pool are versioned. This formalises the method of Syllable Desktop to ship older versions of libraries to retain compatibility with existing binary software, so we can also do this on Syllable Server in the future. Except for libraries, the versioned pool is not meant for installing multiple versions of the same package.

As a note about software management on Syllable: all separate binary packages for Server 0.1 are still valid on Server 0.2. Despite the heavy restructuring and upgrades to the base system, there are no known cases of binary packages failing due to the upgrade. On Syllable, both Desktop and Server, binary compatibility is maintained as much as possible, and the restructuring itself improves our ability to keep this up in the future.


0.1, 6 October 2007
===================

Initial public release.

This version has been a year in the making, all in all, and was already based on the build system of Syllable Desktop. It is a basic Linux system, enough to get it running plus the extra packages that are also included in Syllable Desktop, but without the native Syllable graphical environment. In addition, some goodies are included to make it a system that is already usable for some tasks. These include DirectFB and SDL subsystems for running some graphical applications, and QEmu and its accelerator kernel module for running other systems under virtualisation and emulation. Syllable Server itself is also a good target for running virtualised, due to its small size and complexity.