experimental-14.0

This is an experimental build for developers and testers. Regular users should get the latest released version instead.

experimental-13.2

This is an experimental build for developers and testers. Regular users should get the latest released version instead.

experimental-14.0-0.9.0

This is an experimental build for developers and testers. Regular users should get the latest released version instead.

experimental-13.2-0.9.0

This is an experimental build for developers and testers. Regular users should get the latest released version instead.

0.8.1

This maintenance release mainly addresses feedback from the DistroWatch 0.8.0 review by Jesse Smith.

Core system

• USB tethering of Android phones to use their WLAN and cellular connectivity with helloSystem now "just works"
• 5.1 audio systems, e.g., BOSE Companion 5 (USB) now work out of the box
• Swap is enabled by default on disks larger than 80 GB (can be disabled in the installer)
• Keyboard and Language choice are now persisted in UEFI NVRAM (fix for EFI based systems)

Bootloader

• Load the kernel and modules without showing text on screen
• Boot in verbose mode if the V key is pressed
• Boot in single user mode if the S key is pressed
• Show the FreeBSD bootloader menu if backspace is pressed (which allows to easily select Boot Environments)
• Adjust colors for verbose and single user boot

User Interface

• USB sound devices are now shown with their vendor and model in the Volume menu
• Handle already-running installations more gracefully when trying to install applications, thanks @CocoCR300
• Improved "About This Computer" dialog, thanks @CocoCR300
• "About This Computer" now also shows information about the Xorg GPU driver being used
• The "Install FreeBSD" utility is now called "Install helloSystem"
• The "Processes" utility now shows the total CPU and memory usage, uses application bundle names and icons
• On the Live system, there is now a link to the Install helloSystem utility on the desktop
• On the Live system, advise the user to install the system before downloading applications
• Menu now autocompletes paths beginning with ~ and /, thanks @jsm222

Applications

• The Users preferences application can now also create users without administrative rights, delete users, and enable and disable automatic login
• Improved usability of Create Live Media utility
• Under Construction: Started work on a Backup utility that uses ZFS send/receive to backup zpool/usr/home

Bugfixes

• Hardware Probe now succeeds uploading (fix)
• The list of sound devices is now updated when right-clicking the volume menu (e46cf70)
• The dialog to enter a password now shows the correct text following the SUDO_ASKPASS_TEXT conventions
• If the system is running on VirtualBox, do not show a message about virtualization

0.8.0

Core system

• helloSystem is now based on FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE
• The launch command, which is used troughout the system to launch applications, now uses a database of application bundles on the system (launch.db)
• VirtualBox Guest Additions are preinstalled and enabled, providing for seamless resizing of the screen, copy & paste, etc. when running in VirtualBox
• If the language cannot be inferred from the prev-lang:kbd EFI variable (which is set by Mac OS X) or from an attached Raspberry Pi Keyboard and Hub (which communicates its language to the system, as all keyboards should do but don't), then the user is asked to select a system language
• The Keyboard preferences application writes the selected keyboard layout to the EFI NVRAM variable prev-lang:kbd (where it persists across reboots and some operating systems)
• MIDI controllers (e.g., keyboards) attached to the computer via USB should now be made available to ALSA MIDI supporting applications automatically, thanks @hselasky for alsa-seq-server
• Initial support for launching (some) AppImage files using the launch command (requires the Debian Runtime to be installed)
• Updated initgfx, added support for GeForce RTX 3070 GPU
• Using drm-510-kmod to support recent Intel GPUs like Intel TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (as found in the Framework Laptop with 11th Gen Intel® Core™) NOTE: Does not work yet on the Framework Mainboard with a HDMI display attached over a USB-3 hub (that supports DP altmode)

User Interface

• Increased contrast of the startup screen
• Filer now shows application icons for AppImage files, thanks @clefebvre
• Menu now shows AppImage files (including thumbnails for icons if they exist)
• Search in Menu now also works for submenus, thanks @jsm222
• Menu search results are now shown with icons and shortcuts, thanks @jsm222
• The System menu now has Force Quit Application
• Menu now searches the local filesystem (if indexed by the Baloo engine, thanks @vHanda). Shift-click on search results to show them in Filer instead of opening them
• Filer now shows thumbnails for mp3 files, thanks @Marco98
• Menu now shows the name of applications while they are being launched (for applications launched through the launch command)
• Menu now shows the icon of the active application on the right-hand side and allows switching between applications from there (removes the need for a Dock). Shift-click when selecting a window from that menu to minimize all other windows
• Dock is no longer automatically started (you can still start it manually or add a symlink to it in /Applications/Autostart)
• Filer now shows EPUB e-book files with their cover image, thanks @marianosimone
• Launching an already-running application now brings all windows of that application to the front instead of starting another process
• Clicking on the time in the Menu shows detailed date including weekday and time including time zone
• Filer can now copy files to disk by dragging them to the disk on the desktop
• Filer can now put items into the Trash by dragging them to the Trash
• Filer can now eject disks by dragging them to the Trash
• Documents can now be opened by drag-and-drop on applications (or symlinks of applications) in Filer
• Menu now provides default File and Edit menus in case the application does not provide any menus
• Filer now has spring-loaded folders: Drag an object over a folder, wait for a short while, and the folder will open automatically
• Filer now shows emblems on folders that are under git version control

Desktop infrastructure

In preparation of supporting XDG specifications only as a fallback, new infrastructure for launching applications and opening files is being introduced. This is currently subject to frequent changes.

• launch.db keeps track of all applications the system encounters
• launch uses launch.db to find an application that can be launched when a full path is not supplied
• open uses launch.db to find an application to open a document with
• Applications are added to launch.db whenever Filer encounters them (implementation details might still change)
• Filer does not use network:// anymore. Instead, it uses launch Zeroconf
• Filer does not use computer:// anymore. Instead, it opens a window at /
• Filer does not use trash:// anymore. Instead, it opens a window at the actual location of the Trash
• Filer does not rely on gvfs anymore. As a result, helloDesktop now needs far fewer processes running
• Zeroconf.app now can use sshfs to connect to network shares via sftp
• Filer now creates shortcuts when URLs are dropped onto the desktop or onto the white area in a folder window
• Filer now prevents users from accidentally deleting essential system directories such as /System and /usr

Applications

• Now comes with the Trojitá e-mail application in the menu (needs to be downloaded prior to first use)
• GPU acceleration is now enabled for WebEngine based browsers such as Falkon, thanks @jsm222
• When documents are double-clicked for which an application can be downloaded (e.g., .docx, .stl,...), offer to download the application
• New Processes utility

Bugfixes

• Install Debian Runtime should now work properly (to be retested; may need sudo service linux stop ; sudo service debian start)
• Install Debian Runtime can now also be used on the Live ISO
• Improved reliability and performance of mounted archives (e.g., .zip) by using fuse-archive instead of archivemount
• Increased robustness of removing directories for mountpoints, thanks @vermaden
• Do not automount EFI System Partitions (ESP), thanks @vermaden
• Bootloader no longer very slow on some Mac models
• Menu no longer steals focus from applications, thanks @jsm222
• Menu can be invoked with Command+Space more reliably, thanks @jsm222
• Shortcuts can be used while a menu is open, thanks @jsm222
• Filer now raises the window to the foreground when "Show in Filer" is used (e.g., when Shift-clicking on a filesystem search result in the Search menu) and when one clicks, e.g., on the "Home" icon in the Dock while an application is in the foreground
• Applications launched through app-placeholder are not wrapped in 2 layers of launch anymore
• The 'Delete' key now works in zsh
• Improved stability of the Live ISO by not using unionfs -o below, thanks @michaeldexter
• Menu performance has been significantly improved by importing the menus coming from applications via D-Bus directly into the global menu, thanks @jsm222
• Installing the GIMP application no longer stalls at 100%

Infrastructure

• Cross-platform buildability can now be tested easily on FreeBSD in lightweight Alpine Linux chroot using the Linuxulator

Known Issues

• Volume keys and brightness keys don't work
• mp3 thumbnailer does not size down the thumbnails, resulting in large file sizes
• Command+Shift+3 does not make a screenshot
• USB SD card readers can make the system unbootable or can reboot a running system

Torrents:
https://fosstorrents.com/distributions/hello/#downloads

experimental-14.0-0.8.0_0H75

Crashes at guz_zstd_decompress
#389

This is an experimental build for developers and testers. Regular users should get the latest released version instead.

0.7.0

Core system

• helloSystem 0.7.0 is based on FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE
• Entirely new architecture for the live system
  • Boot time of the live system has been improved by a factor of 3
  • ISO size has been reduced to under 800 MB (fits a CD-ROM)
  • No more copying of the entire filesystem to RAM
  • No more initial ramdisk, no more reroot
  • Using uzip compressed ufs filesystem image instead of zfs for the live system
  • Starting the graphical desktop early in the boot process
• helloSystem is now Ventoy Compatible which means that it can be booted from an ISO file stored alongside other ISO files on disk using Ventoy, thanks @ventoy
• Developer files (including compilers, headers, object code files, developer documentation, etc.) are now a separate download
• Improved compatibility with older Nvidia graphics hardware by shipping multiple versions of Nvidia drivers
• The exFAT filesystem is now supported

User interface

• Friedlier boot experience (gray rather than black, native resolution)
• No text consoles by default
• Many applications, settings dialogs and utilities have been translated
• Chromium, Firefox, and Thunderbird (with global menu support and native window decorations) are available as browser choices in addition to the default Falkon browser thanks @jsm222, @mszoek, and @grahamperrin
• Keyboard shortcuts are now shown in menus with the Command key ⌘ symbol (no more "Ctrl")
• Selected menu items flash/blink
• No icons in context menus unless explicitly requested using action->setIconVisibleInMenu(true)
• Screen brightness can be controlled using the brightness keys on notebooks
• Volume can be controlled using the volume keys on notebooks
• Terminal: Command-C and Command-V work like in other applications (press Command-Shift-C or Ctrl-Command-C for POSIX Ctrl-C)
• System sounds in Filer and system-wide alert sounds for message dialog boxes, thanks larshenrikoern for some of the sounds
• If the desktop cannot be loaded within a certain amount of time, a "Failed to start the desktop" message appears, giving useful information, including a link to the hardware database

Filer

• Volumes are mounted at mount points reflecting their name ("volume label"), thanks @vermaden
• You now rename volumes (disks, partitions) just like you can rename files and folders
• Custom volume icons are now supported using .VolumeIcon.icns files (compatible to the Mac)
• Holding down Shift while doing Command-O, Command-Down, Command-Up in Spatial Mode closes the current window
• Disk images can be opened by double-clicking (even with multiple partitions), thanks @vermaden

Command line tools

• New sudo diskutil rename command line tool for renaming volumes ("volume label")
• makeimg command line tool to create disk images from folders

Utilities

• New Format Disk utility, can be invoked from the context menus of disks on the desktop
• Create Live Media can now also write local .iso and .img files to USB media
• Create Live Media now offers to write Ventoy Live ISOs from its menu
• The Remote Assistance utility now shows a code in spelling alphabet that can easily be communicated with the person providing assistance over the phone
• The Sticky Notes utility is no longer autostarted
• There is now an equalizer for sound devices, allowing users to set bass and treble from the Sound preferences application

Under Construction

The "Developer Preview" folder has been renamed "Under Construction". Your feedback and code contributions are especially welcome for those applications and utilities, so that they can be moved out of "Under Construction" in due time. Have a look at the source code by right-clicking their icon in Filer and choosing "Show Contents" .

• New Update utility to apply FreeBSD patches without any questions asked, and to update all packages without any questions asked
• New Burn Optical Disc utility
• New Download Applications utility to download additional application bundles
• New Install Debian Runtime utility to prepare the system for running Linux applications

Bugfixes

• Minimum system requirements have been lowered from 4 GB to 2 GB
• The Create Live Media utility no longer runs into a timeout when trying to download from GitHub
• Backlight on Intel GPUs can now be controlled using the backlight command, thanks @evadot

Infrastructure

• Everyone can help translate helloSystem now thanks to Hosted Weblate. An "Automatic suggestions" button suggests automatic translations from multiple translation providers, and from various open source projects. This reduces the work to picking the most appropriate translation in many cases
• Python-based applications are now localized without the need for compiling .ts strings to .qm files. This allows strings to be edited locally just as easily as Python source code itself
• Experimental infrastructure is in place to generate application bundles from FreeBSD packages
• The new Monkey Patching facility allows developers to make changes to all aspects of an existing Live ISO without having to re-create it, dramatically improving the development-test cycle
• Application bundles for software such as Firefox (with uBlock Origin), Thunderbird, Chrome, and others are available for download

Known issues

• /etc/os-release helloSystem-specific entries are not applied
• Firewall workstation configuration is present, thanks RoboNuggie, but not enabled by default in order to not interfere with services like Zeroconf and other network device discovery protocols

r0.6.0

0.6.0

• Windows are now resizable at all edges
• Windows snap to certain sizes when dragged to the edge of the screen, similar to "Aero Snap"
• Resize icon in the bottom right
• Properly centered window titles
• Drop shadow rendering that does not appear before the rest of the window
• Animations on window resize
• Animation when minimizing and un-minimizing windows
• Animated overview of all open windows by moving the mouse in the upper-left corner
• Stacked initial window placement Cascade = staircase-by-title (while respecting centered Application splash screens)
• Rounded corners at the top and sharp corners at the bottom
• Rounded corners at the top disappear if windows are maximized or snapped to the top
• Tuned kernel configuration for optimized sound, thanks @mekanix
• open command now supports -e to open files in the FeatherPad text editor. This is useful, e.g., when editing scripts
• Hover over a window title with the mouse that was collapsed with Windowshading to temporarily unshade it
• "Open" command in File menu; Command-O and Command-ArrowDown to open files and folders in Filer
• Command-Backspace to put files and folders into the Trash
• Simplified user interface for Desktop Settings; changes are now applied immediately
• Filer: Windows have been simplified, fewer unneeded pixels on the screen
• Filer: "Thumbnail View" has been removed
• Desktop: The wallpaper now can be set to "Transparent"
• Filer: The --desktop option has been deprecated (to restart Filer, press Command+Ctrl+Esc, click on the desktop or a Filer window, and simply launch Filer again, e.g., from the Dock)
• Filer: The file operation dialog (e.g., for copying) has been simplified
• Filer: Duplicate menu item, Command-D
• Filer: Command+Shift+Backspace for deleting immediately (without using Trash)
• Filer: An Empty Trash menu item was added to the Edit menu and to the context menu of the Trash icon on the Desktop
• Desktop: The wallpaper is now shown earlier (before constructing the icons on the Desktop)
• Filer: Simplified "Get Info" dialog
• Filer: Implements the org.freedesktop.FileManager1 D-Bus API which allows applications to highlight files in the file manager, thanks @mszoek
• Filer: "Show Contents" for Application Bundles
• Filer: Remove tabs to simplify user interface
• Developer Preview: New Battery applet for the Menu to show the battery fill level, thanks @linuxkettle

Bugfixes

• Applications in .app bundles that have paths with whitespaces can now be pinned to the Dock
• launch Filer --set-wallpaper /some.jpg no longer garbles icons
• Certain Filer menu items are now disabled when no files or folders have been selected
• Filer: Do not attempt to copy or move items in the filesystem if source and destination paths are identical
• Filer: Fix "Ambiguous shortcut overload" errors, make shortcuts work properly
• Filer: Make file operation progress dialog appear only after any question/error dialogs
• Filer: "Move to Trash" is now correctly labeled in the menu
• Filer: The Trash icon on the Desktop no longer has a "Move to Trash" context menu item
• Developer Preview: Network can now connect to encrypted and open wireless networks, thanks @linuxkettle and @jsm222

To be verified

• Non-networked HP printers should now work out of the box thanks to the hplip package

Infrastructure

• Switched from Openbox to the KWin window manager
• Crudely worked around many Plasma desktop specific dependencies of the KWin window manager

Upstreaming efforts

helloDesktop is the desktop environment used in helloSystem. We would like to get it ported to FreeBSD.

• Experimental helloDesktop ports and packages for FreeBSD are available for testing
  • amd64: Instructions, thanks jsm222
  • aarch64: Instructions, thanks s199pwa1k9r

Known issues

• We are currently using latest rather than quarterly packages in the hope that Kf5 dependencies will be fewer there (to be revisited and likely reverted in the future)
• Mouse cursor is too small when the mouse hovers over KWin window decorations on HiDPI screens
• Live mode boot slow, needs 4GB+ RAM (Details)

Download Torrent:

https://fosstorrents.com/distributions/hello/#downloads
Thanks FOSS Torrents for providing Torrents of Free and Open Source Software.

r0.5.0

• This release is based on FreeBSD 12.2
• The download size of the ISO has been significantly decreased
• The System menu is now updated automatically (e.g., when (sub)folders or applications are added, moved, or deleted), thanks @PreyK
• Variants of keyboard layouts can now be selected in the Keyboard preferences application, feature request by @nonetrix
• QHexEdit application by @Simsys comes preinstalled in /Applications/Developer
• Updated initgfx, more GPUs such as the AMD Radeon HD 6630M/6650M/6750M/7670M/7690M (Whistler/Turks) family GPUs found in 2011 Macs might now be supported (pending verification), thanks @mrclksr and @crees
• Inital spatial mode option for Filer (each folder opens in its own window), thanks @moochris
• "Go to..." menu in Filer, Command+Shift+G
• Go up to parent folder in Filer using Command+Up
• Get Info in Filer using Command+I
• Filer brings already-open windows to the front rather than opening multiple windows for the same folder, thanks @moochris
• Android File Transfer (MTP) utility
• Windowshading: Double-click title bar to hide all but the title bar, thanks Bruce Tognazzini for popularizing the idea
• It is now possible to save (persist across reboots) custom keyboard preferences
• Non-root users now can run truss for debugging, thanks @crees
• Placeholder .app bundles (and thereby menu entries) are automatically created for applications installed with pkg
• Audio Volume can now be set from the global menu bar (right-click to change the audio device for newly started applications)
• Closing the notebook lid triggers ACPI S3 sleep by default
• The Create Live Media utility now only shows release versions by default
• Documentation added for adding user-defined context menus in Filer
• Context menu in Filer for opening text files and folders as root
• Context menu for ejecting volumes
• Filer now shows volumes on the desktop, thanks @moochris
• Filer now shows the correct names for volumes ("volume labels")
• Adjusted icon grid size in Filer
• Filer now shows volumes first in the sidebar
• Menus are now available if only the desktop is showing and no Filer windows are open, thanks @moochris
• Theme has been slightly improved. Further improvements welcome!
• Filer now shows alternating row colors in detail view
• Added open command

Bugfixes

• Fix Turkish name of "Turkish", thanks @bitigchi, fix Japanese name of "Japanese", thanks @jatin-cbs
• Fix 100% CPU usage in Zeroconf application, thanks @PreyK
• Add license for xubuntu-icon-theme, thanks @mbullington
• Fix typos in welcome wizard, thanks @KaiTheCEO
• Fix Menu and desktop on multi-monitor setups, thanks @PreyK
• Fix missing tabs in Terminal application, thanks @grahamperrin
• Notifications are now styled correctly
• Autostart is now working
• Startup Disk size is now correctly shown in the About This Computer dialog, thanks @LouiIPSW
• .app bundles within mounted archives are now recognized in Filer
• sudo su works now, thanks @crees
• Symlinked .app and .AppDir bundles are now recognized by Filer, Menu, and the launch command
• Touchpad continues to work smoothly after ACPI S3 sleep
• Clicking on the Trash in the Dock works
• Terminal can now handle drag-and-drop of paths with spaces in them
• FAT media (MS-DOS volumes) are now accessible and files on them can be executed by everyone
• Filer now shows filename extensions for files with long names
• The Logs utility now also shows /var/log/messages (also known as dmesg output), thanks @grahamperrin
• Fix wrong font sizes, especially in virtual machines
• The global menu now respects the vertical size of menu items as set by the Qt theme

Infrastructure

• The ISO build system can now use private packages, such as to provide a workaround for the broken Intel graphics driver in FreeBSD 12.2, thanks @crees
• It is now possible to translate helloSystem components into different languages, thanks weblate.org (pending verification)
• All helloDesktop core components build on Linux now (although not all functionality may be present on that platform)
• helloDesktop can now be used with KWin instead of Openbox (although the user needs to set this up manually for now)

Known issues

• Installation to removable devices is currently disabled due to #200
• We currrently need to use quarterly rather than release_X packages because
  • On 12.2 installation fails with release_2 packages
  • On 12.2 releasing the mouse over a menu does not work release_2 packages
  • appmenu-gtk-module is not available in release_2 packages and installation from GH Releases can fail with SSH Authentication Error
    Using quarterly packages is not ideal because unlike the name suggests, they can change and even disappear throughout the quarter, preventing builds from succeeding. As soon as release_3 packages are available, we should switch to those

Download Torrent:
https://fosstorrents.com/distributions/hello/#downloads
Thanks FOSS Torrents for providing Torrents of Free and Open Source Software.