eComStation 2.0 RC6a available

December 06, 2008 by Joachim Benjamins

Serenity Systems International and Mensys BV are pleased to announce the
immediate availability of eComStation 2.0 Release Candidate 6a.

This release is available to customers with an active Software
Subscriptions Services subcription. It adds a few new features and contains
a lot of updated drivers and fixes.

More details can be found at http://www.ecomstation.com/subscription/

Note: eComStation 2.0 RC6 was released as The Warpstock Europe 2008
release, provided on DVD by Team OS/2 Trier and has not been released as a
download version to the public.

== WHATS NEW? ==

The most notable changes since RC5 are listed below.

New Features:

* It is now possible to install from an USB attached CD device, this
makes it more simple to install to an Eee PC for example.
* When ACPI is detected/supported the system will use the SMP
kernel immediately from phase 1. This should improve the ACPI
success rate.
* It should now be possible to properly install on computers with 4 GB
of memory.
* FAT32 support is enabled in phase 1. This makes it easier to read
USB memory sticks (for example registration key).
* Included SDL libraries by default.
* HDA audio support is now unified enabled for all detected chipsets.
* Beer battery widget will be auto-installed when applicable.
* Updated genmac.cmd to support installation of not-present hardware
* varloginstlog.zip will contain more relevant logfiles and will be
created in phase 1 for improved error reporting.
* Lots of updates to enable installation of DBCS versions of eComStation.
* New bootlogo and desktopbackground, reflecting "RC6a" status.
* New default desktop background image provided by eCoSoft.
* Desktop scheme can now be either 'blue' or 'orange', defaults to blue.

Updated Applications:

* Updated ACPI to version 3.14
* Updated DSSaver to version 2.0
* Updated OS2CSM and Memdisk to 2008.11.02
* Updated MPTS wrapper and CFCHECK to version 0.9.1.1
* Updated DejaVu font package to version 2.26
* Updated EPM resources
* Added ecenter battery widget (beerbattery) to ACPI zip sourcetree
* Updated Newview to version 2.19.4
* Updated EVFS (GUI) components to 1.2.
* Upgraded PIN.EXE to version from netlabs.
* Updated Java 1.4.2 timezone updater to 1.3.9-2008g
* Updated SED to version 4.05

== REPORTING ==

To increase the amount of user feedback we implemented a 'Feedback Wizard'
which will be invoked automatically when you installed or changed ACPI
configuration. Please use it to submit the required details to the
eComStation development team.

Of course, you are still encouraged to create a report at:

http://www.ecomstation.com/support/rc6report/

To report problems related to UniAud, please refer to
http://svn.netlabs.org/uniaud

When you create a new ticket, please do always attach logs. You can create
all the logs we need, by downloading this package:
ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/uniaud/UniInfo.zip
Please attach the Uniinfo.zip it creates to your ticket.

To report problems related to ACPI, please refer to http://svn.netlabs.org/acpi

Before entering a ticket, please read
http://ecomstation.ru/projects/acpitools/?action=logs Collect all the data
that applies to your issue and include it with the
ticket.

You are also welcome to join the TestTeam if you want to discuss this beta
and future developments. See http://ewiki.ecomstation.nl/TestTeam
for more details.

== DISTRIBUTION / CREATING CDS ==

This product is provided as a downloadable ISO file, this is a raw CD image
that you can burn on CD-R media. For instructions on burning the CD image
to CD please consult the PDF document howtoburncds.pdf in the same directory.

The file to download is: ecs20rc6a_cd1_en.zip

This version of eComStation 2.0 RC6a is also available as a zipfile on the
TeamTrier Collection #20 DVD Donation Edition.

== SOFTWARE SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES ==

Please note that although some subscriptions have expired by now, you are
not required to purchase a renewal to obtain the GA version of eComStation
2.0. If you want to try this RC5 release however, you are encouraged to
renew your Software Subscription Services contract.

More details can be found at http://www.ecomstation.com/subscription/

== ENJOY ==

We hope you will enjoy this new and improved version of eComStation 2.0 and
ask you to provide feedback via the Feedback Wizard or the Bugtracking system.

Best regards,

Serenity Systems International