Another new release coming soon

[Kai Hendry]

Since 6.0 is naturally the next version, I was hoping to make sure
it's a good release.

If you have a few moments on a boring afternoon, please give these
images a whirl:

http://build.webconverger.org/webconverger.2010-01-02.5.6-usb.img
http://build.webconverger.org/webconverger.2010-01-02.5.6-iso.iso

With thanks!

[GMF]

Hi Kai,
I tried the usb-img with my test-pc.
Works fine.

It would be nice when in v6.x these Firefox-3.5-Bugs (non-persistently
change configuration settings in the about: URL and browse the local
filesystem) will be eliminated.

[Kai Hendry]

Yes, I agree. I have filed bugs though Mozilla do not seem very helpful. :(
http://webconverger.org/kiosk/

I would be overjoyed if someone could take up this work. I am blocked
on it myself.

Kind regards,

[Guttorm Flatabø]

I've also tried the usb-img on a Lenovo T60p. Had it running for about seven hours with three homepages, among them a Flickr slideshow and the Peacekeeper benchmarking application, and kioskresetstation=3. The machine would consistantly overheat with Windows but seems to have been running fine with Webconverger.

I did some benchmarking with Peacekeeper, SunSpider (and the V8 benchmarking suite) on various distros (Puppy, GNUSTEP, TinyCore and Slitaz and Ubuntu netbook remix) before Christmas. While Webconverger scored best (together with netbook remix) of the distros with Firefox, what was really noticeable is how extremely much faster Chromium is.

I have since installed Chromium all over the place, and it is a sheer joy to use, not only does it load JavaScript much faster, but the application itself if much more responsive. Changing to a Webkit or Chromium based browser is therefore probably the single thing that could improve performance the most. I don't think WebKit includes the V8 javascript engine used in Chromium, but benchmarks show that Safari can be just as good, so maybe the WebKit based minimalist browser you mentioned a while back would be equally good as Chromium.

For those who'd like to install Chromium on Ubuntu (and probably Debian):

https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/beta

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Webconverger Users" group.
To post to this group, send email to webc-...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to webc-users+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/webc-users?hl=en.

--
Guttorm Flatabø
Norway

[GMF]

Yes, I´ve seen your posts there.
Must be very frustrating posting some errors and never getting an
usefull answer.

On 4 Jan., 22:26, Kai Hendry <hen...@webconverger.com> wrote:
> Yes, I agree. I have filed bugs though Mozilla do not seem very helpful. :(http://webconverger.org/kiosk/

[Kai Hendry]

I agree Chromium is super fast. I use it on my slower machines (x61)
since it gives them a new lease of life. :)

I should spend some time figuring out if I achieve a "kiosk mode" with
Chromium, like I (kinda) did with http://webconverger.org/kiosk/ I
still have not figured out how to nicely embed PDF into Chromium, have
you?

Though if Webconverger used Chromium, there would less to
differentiate between Webconverger and ChromeOS. :/ Also, I think the
rendering with Firefox is slightly better.

I am still deadly surprised there doesn't seem to be ChromeOS CD/USB
images available to download like Webconverger does. You have no idea
how many sleepless nights I have had, thinking Google will wipe out
Webconverger is one fell swoop. :) Though I am little tired of waiting
and I am happy to push the idea of the open Web as the open desktop
for all.

I work on browser technologies in my day job.
http://surf.suckless.org/ and v8 is fast, though I think Chromium gets
a lot of it's snappy feeling from prefetching and other little hacks.
Google's C++ code base looks a bit monstrous really and I'd rather try
keep things simple.

Thanks for the testing! I've noticed a problem on your EEEPC900 that I
am trying to fix before the release.

[Guttorm Flatabø]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 11:46 PM, Kai Hendry <hen...@webconverger.com> wrote:

I should spend some time figuring out if I achieve a "kiosk mode" with
Chromium, like I (kinda) did with http://webconverger.org/kiosk/ I
still have not figured out how to nicely embed PDF into Chromium, have
you?

No, haven't looked into it. I think I read somewhere that the newest Tiny Core or Slitaz replaced the PDF reader with an online PDF reader, thus probably just forwarding the file to the likes of Google Docs (gPDF will do this). Probably not a good solution though, since printing depends on a local reader, at least for Google Docs, and then there are privacy issues. However, you could also use the same approach to open all the other file formats supported by Google Docs.

The Chromium project has a bug about it.

Though if Webconverger used Chromium, there would less to
differentiate between Webconverger and ChromeOS. :/ Also, I think the
rendering with Firefox is slightly better.

Sure, but for the user its not good if Webconverger differentiates itself by being slower....they usually wont care if it's Firefox or Chromium as long things work.... I haven't noticed Chromium rendering being worse than that of Firefox.

 

how many sleepless nights I have had, thinking Google will wipe out

Webconverger is one fell swoop. :) Though I am little tired of waiting

Never loose sleep over work or hobbies ;) 

http://surf.suckless.org/ and v8 is fast, though I think Chromium gets
a lot of it's snappy feeling from prefetching and other little hacks.

But does it matter for the user?

 

Thanks for the testing! I've noticed a problem on your EEEPC900 that I

am trying to fix before the release.

Oh, there was one problem that I have noticed several times with earlier versions too, but not reported because I never could reproduce it consistently.

Sometimes on first start up it looks like the browser will start up just before the network is completely ready and display an error message (probably about not being able to resolve the domain) instead of the homepage. Push "try again", and page will load, close the browser and it will reload without problems, and reboot and it will usually also load without problems. Has happened both on wired and wireless networks, both slow and fast broadband, and slower and faster machines.

-- 

Guttorm Flatabø
Norway

[Kai Hendry]

2010/1/4 Guttorm Flatabø <ditt...@gmail.com>:

> Sometimes on first start up it looks like the browser will start up just
> before the network is completely ready and display an error message
> (probably about not being able to resolve the domain) instead of the
> homepage. Push "try again", and page will load, close the browser and it
> will reload without problems, and reboot and it will usually also load
> without problems. Has happened both on wired and wireless networks, both
> slow and fast broadband, and slower and faster machines.

I have noticed the same from time to time, though thanks for posting about it.

I don't know why sometimes DHCPd seems slow to hand out an IP. I
really don't know why dhcp3-3.1.3 (both server and client tbh) is
almost 80k sloc of code.

[Kai Hendry]

I was keen to release something like
http://build.webconverger.org/webconverger.2010-01-06.5.6-usb.img
which is actually a 486 build. It's the only way I could get the EEEPC
900 working again.

Annoyingly there is a new 3.5.7 update which I need to backport.
http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.5.7/releasenotes/
http://packages.qa.debian.org/i/iceweasel.html