piCore-6.0 released

[bmarkus]

Team Tiny Core is pleased to announce the immediate availability of piCore-6.0:

http://tinycorelinux.net/6.x/armv6/releases/6.0/

The most important change is use of the official long term 3.12.y (3.12.36) kernel to offer more stable operation over experimental kernels and to get wider range of hardware supported, specially the audio devices.

fltk library has been updated to 1.3.3 to enable unicode. fltk-1.1 and 1.3 can be installed at the same time, and old apps using 1.1 will continue to work.

Size of SD card images reduced.

Boots in safe overclocking mode to shorten boot time by 20% with performance governor; switch to ondemand when startup finished.

Other changes:

* Core base synced to common 6.0 base
* Raspberry Pi firmware updated to January 19, 2015 version
* e2fsprogs updated to 1.42.12
* util-linux updated to 2.25.2
* BusyBox v1.20.2
* eglibc replaced with glibc, version 2.20
* kernel modules in base rearranged
* cmdline.txt simplified, dropped waitusb switch
* serial terminal started by default
* GCC updated to 4.9.2
* tcz repository updated

Images with preinstalled SSH for headless operation and with GUI also available.

Updating previous versions on Raspberry Pi without removing SD card

Download piCore-6.0-boot.tar.gz extract to a temporary folder and overwrite content of /mnt/mmcblk0p1 after mounting it. It will overwrite custom boot options. If you have customised cmdline.txt on config.txt in the old system, do it again. Do not reboot if using wireless remote connection, otherwise you will loose connection due to incompatible kernel modules!

Next download kernel module tcz's from the repo matching new kernel version and reboot. You must have a new, updated system working.

Please note, there may be kernel module extensions which are not yet available in the repo.

Before modifying mmcblk01 content, it is adviced to make backup to a persistent device.

For support visit http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/board,57.0.html

[Paul_123]

I did the inplace upgrade,   But that part looks good.

[Gerrelt]

Hi Béla,

  I am installing this right now.
Are you planning to add the mt7601 wifi adapter driver to this release to?

Greetings,
    Gerrelt.

[lykkedk]

Hi Bela'

Nice job  ...

When do you think, the kernel will freeze with this release?
Or is it 3.12.36, which will be used further on now?

I am asking, because i will build a bunch of special app. (Lirc etc.. Which uses some kernel modules)
I am just waiting for the kernel to settle 

Regards / Jesper

[bmarkus]

Are you planning to add the mt7601 wifi adapter driver to this release to?

Yes, next week

[bmarkus]

When do you think, the kernel will freeze with this release?
Or is it 3.12.36, which will be used further on now?

It is a final release, kernel frozen to 3.12.36 for a while. Are you sure that an update to for example 3.12.37 would brake your apps?

[lykkedk]

Hi

If i build eg. A special tcz, with the lirc-dev, etc... Then if kernel change, the modules will not load anymore.

Maybe i miss something?

Regards / Jesper

[meo]

Hi Béla!

Tried it out just now and the wifi works good. Downloaded go.tcz and compile-essentials like a greased lightning. Saw the dejavu fonts in the repo so I downloaded them too. Will try to figure out how to make them the default font since the default isn't so clearly visible watching a 32 inch monitor (a TV in other words). Very well done!!! 

Yours Sincerely,
meo

[meo]

Hi Béla!

I'm compiling the updated GO 1.4.1 sources now on piCore 6.0 and with the default font it's hard to read the tiny fonts in the terminal. Since I'm maintaining various computers and installations all from Win 8.1 to Plan 9 OS it's kind of hard to keep track of the configuring options (I'm also very easily distracted and have always been). I would be very grateful if you (or someone else) could help me to change the font to a bigger and more readable on my screen in the terminal. Thanks beforehand!

Kind greetings,
meo

PS I formatted a 16 GB USB memory to swap and it seems working OK DS

[bmarkus]

Text mode or X?

[meo]

Hi Béla!

Forgot it again. I'm notoroiously absintminded. I'm running X as usual. Not sure why really but that must be of habit from TC x86 i guess.

Yours Truly,
meo (Mats to you Béla)

[bmarkus]

Hi

in that case the solution would be using lxterminal, where you can specify character size and font freely. I will add it to the repo in next days, not there yet.

Béla

[meo]

Hi again Béla!

Thanks a lot! I'll look forward to it. Actually I was about to make an extension request on lxterminal since I like the config options on it. Thanks again!

Regards,
Mats

[meo]

Hi!

Just a notation about a test with swap. Had (as mentioned before) formatted a 16 GB USB memory as swap and turned it on (swapon /dev etc.) but while compiling the GO sources only 52 MB was used. It was at least not notably faster as I imagined. Curious, wonder why?

Greetings,
meo

CORRECTION: During the test cycle at the end of the compilation it's using c:a 130 MB of swap.

[meo]

Hi again!

Regarding SWAP again. The usage of swap went up to 158 MB tops during the ubiquitous test cycle compiling GO from source. At that point the RAM usage had dropped from like 400 MB to 220 MB so the OS was more responsive but the usage of memory (RAM only; or RAM + SWAP) didn't vary much. After finishing it took a long time to clear the RAM and that puzzles me since it in TC x86 clears almost immediately. If someone has some thoughts about this I would love to hear it. Having a bigger SWAP (16 GB) made the OS pretty responsive but it only used 1 % of the SWAP at most.

Kind greetings from a snowy Sweden,
meo