[HARMONIC] Harmonic Distribution 0.5 development release

[Aleksey Lim]

New development release of projects that conform Harmonic
Distribution[1] effort, Sweets Distribution[2] (packages with
base software) and Sugar Network[3] (content delivering/sharing
system).


== Sugar Network ==


* Improved Sugar Network integration in Sugar Shell.
It is possible to remove activities from local storage in
Home view and install .xo bundles from the Journal.

* After making Sugar Network activities local, related
MIME data will be properly installed.


== Sweets Distribution ==


* Canonical stopped supporting 10.10 release. Thus, Ubuntu-10.10
packages in Sweets Distribution repositories are also frozen and
won't be rebuilt on updates.

* Sugar upstream issue that prevents connecting to secured APs
Factory repository contains Sugar-0.94 which is highly depends
on Network Manager DBus API. On recent systems, there is no way
to connect to wireless Access Points that require authentication.

* Sweets Distribution wiki doesn't suggest installing "sweets-sugar"
package, "sweets-desktop" package should be installed in all cases.
But, it doesn't depend on Sugar Activities any more. All activities
are assumed to be used from Sugar Network or prefetched by
deployments.

* To Sugar Shell, that is being frovided from Sweets Distribution, were
added Shell plugins functionality:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sweets_Distribution/Features/Plugins
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sweets_Distribution/Factory/Features#Deployment_oriented
http://git.sugarlabs.org/desktop/sugar-example-plugin

it is useful way to distribute downstream code. For example, it is
possible to distribute another sugar-datastore implementation and
provide a handle to switch between implementations from CP.

* Added Internet proxy plugin to setup connection behind HTTP proxy.
This is 0.94 only solution. Newer sugar shells might have another
implementation.


== Deployment Platform ==


* Deployment wiki page was tuned to make it more clear what is the
purpose for Deployment oriented featreus, i.e., creating handy
platform for downstream usage:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Harmonic_Distribution/Deployment

* Was create Harmonic Distribution based reference XO distribution
to make it easy to create downstream implementation.

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Harmonic_Distribution/XO_reference_distribution

it is fully workable distribution with prebuilt XO images

http://download.sugarlabs.org/platform/reference-xo/


== Try the release ==


Follow regular Sweets Distribution instructions to setup Factory
repository and start using it on supported platforms[4]:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution#Installation
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution#Usage

Right after installation, Sugar Network integration will be disabled, to
enable it:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sweets_Distribution/Factory/Features#Sugar_Network_integration

In addition, there are prebuilt XO images.

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Harmonic_Distribution/XO_reference_distribution#Try_reference_implementation

See Sugar Network usage tutorial created by Thomas C Gilliard:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network/Tutorial

For features and possible issues, consult Sweets Distribution Factory pages:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sweets_Distribution/Factory/Issues
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sweets_Distribution/Factory/Features


== Credits ==


* Peruvian community that supports this work. Especially by exposing the real need
in such kind projects and help with making deployment (of Harmonic Distribution
based project[2]) possible.

* World wide community members who donated funds to make full time
working possible.

* People from mailing lists and IRC channels who are helping in
development process.


[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution
[2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution
[3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network
[4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution/Supported_platforms#Map