Apologies again for not updating the news feed. It’s been a busy summer, but the good news I’ll be able to develop and finish the userspace network stack by Christmas. More information about that to come!

Development has started on the new Whitix Thinkstorm site. You’ll be able to see the site progress throughout its development, and we hope to have a test version running soon.

In other news, work on the Linux driver layer is continuing; there’ll be a post to the development blog when the first packet is received using the layer. Keep your eyes peeled!

Owing to the recent disruptions in development, the current development plan has been revised to take into account the delay. You can find take a look at the newly revised release plan in the development wiki.

Also, the news and the development blog will be updated much more frequently; we hope to provide weekly development updates and newsletters soon.

Whitix now has a functioning USB stack that supports EHCI (USB 2.0) and UHCI (USB 1.1). It took about three weeks of development to create a USB stack that supports all kinds of USB hubs and mass storage devices (USB HID support is in planning). As a result, Whitix is now able to boot from a USB flash drive. This should increase the speed of development and testing on real PCs. The new USB stack will appear in 0.3. Happy holidays!

Apologies for the recent extended downtime over the last few days. To keep it brief, it involved a few financial issues and misunderstandings with 1and1.co.uk, which have been resolved now! Development of the next version of Whitix continues apace; current development is focusing on the USB stack so that Whitix can be booted from a USB stick or any other type of removable device.

The second (and hopefully the last) bugfix release in the 0.2 series has been released. For the past month or so, development has mainly concentrated on 0.2.1 and 0.3, including Xynth and the new network channels development. However, 0.2b contains the following useful fixes:

• mkfatfs and valid FAT32. mkfatfs now generates valid FAT32 filesystems in all cases.
• FAT32 and textinstaller fixes. Users reported textinstaller crashing in some circumstances; this has been fixed.
• Burn changes. Fixes to documentation, tab completion and usability are in 0.2b
• Large memory crashes. Hopefully we’ve fixed these crashes for good, reports from testing indicate this is the case. Sorry to anyone who had problems using 0.2a.
• Updated ports. All available ports now build with 0.2b

You can download the release from here. The source code is also available. (This will be the last release with two different ISOs, as 0.2.1 will include improvements to Xynth that will result in one unified ISO).

Help us by reporting any bugs you find in the bug tracker. Enjoy! (Note: a version with all the ports will be released soon).

It’s been about a year since I set up and started running whitix.org, and this little community started to grow. We’ve had several sucessful releases, with the people involved growing with each release. I’d like to say thanks to everyone involved for making working on Whitix an enjoyment and a pleasure.

If you’d like to keep up with Whitix development, you can follow us on RSS, by using the Trac RSS feed. This will show you all the reports, commits and milestones we make in Whitix development.

Cheers!

The first release candidate of 0.2b has been released. This release features extended FAT32 support, and fixes for the large memory issues, as well as updated ports available via the Whitix ports system. If all goes well, 0.2b will be released on 1st March.

You can download a Live CD of the release from here (the source code is also available). If you find a bug, let us know at the bug-tracker.

Whitix 0.2b, the last in the 0.2 bug fix series, will be released on the 1st March. It will include bug fixes for FAT32 support, large memory configurations and other bug fixes.

In other news, 0.2.1 and 0.3 development is going well. The Linux driver layer can almost receive packets in the pcnet32.ko driver, and development on graphics card drivers is about to start.

Fancy seeing what is currently happening in Whitix development (in 150 characters or less)? Feel free to relax; we’ve now got a Twitter feed running on twitter.com/whitix, maintained by Matthew Whitworth. We’ll make sure to keep it updated with the latest development news.