[coLinux-devel] coLinux 0.5.3

[Dan A. <da...@gm...>]

Saturday again, time for a new release.

* Version 0.5.3 AKA "Valentine release"
  * Virtual CMOS system time is now passed to Linux, you no longer
    need to update the time using ntp on boot. Note that the virtual CMOS
    time is GMT, so the coLinux machine needs to set its own timezone.
  * cobd's devfs support was added to the Linux patch. Gentoo would work 
    now (based on a patch from Pat Erley). 
    A Gentoo root filesystem was created and released by Pat Erley.
  * Fixed an unwanted termination that was discovered when devfs was compiled
    in to the kernel.
  * Fixed an issue with mxml and the passage of boot parameters.
  * colinux-console: Fixed the CPU utilization issue.
  * colinux-console: Escape doesn't close the window now.
  * coLinux RAM is configurable, using a memory element in the XML under
    <colinux>, like: <memory size="64"></memory>. Minimum is 8MB, maximum is 192MB. 
    WARNING: high values might destabilize Windows, because the memory is
    allocated from the non-cached pool which has a maximum of 256MB system-wide,
    meaning there's less left for Windows drivers and subsystems.
  * bin/cobuild.sh: Thomas Fritzsche contributed this script which
    automates the creation of a cross compilation cygwin environment 
    on Linux.

NOTE:

I tested the configurable RAM option on my Windows machine, which
has 256MB of physical RAM. It worked with 64MB, and even 128MB, i.e,
half! Now that's cooperative. Of course, Windows' performance was 
affected because it had less crash. 

And KDE ran much faster.

I'm suspecting that Windows and its drivers aren't using much of that
memory pool (like 10MB or so), so you can freely use amounts like 128MB,
especially if your boxes have a lot of RAM to compensate.

-- 
Dan Aloni
da...@gm...