Alpha testing

Known issues with current alpha build:
Mouse pointer - whilst a hardware mouse pointer protocol is being developed, the mouse pointer appears not quite to reach the edge of the screen and will leave a trail behind itself whilst dragging things around the desktop.

Screen resolution - at present RISC OS will only operate in 1920x1080 at 16M colours and is downscaled by the GPU to match the monitor being used. If the monitor has a very different native resolution, the image may appear downgraded. Internal settings for display resolution are currently ignored.

Audio - sound support is not yet included. Applications that expect a working sound system will either work silently or degrade less gracefully.

Most configuration options may be set in the desktop and implemented on the nect start up. Many of these have already been setup to suit the majority os Pi users - for example DHCP networking. A very few options need to be set 'externally' (in earlier models CMOS RAM was provided) - presently these are set to sensible defaults when RISC OS starts up. Mostly these will be appropriate (for example the filing system where !Boot is to be found is set to SDFS) but the ability to 'UNPLUG' selected modules in ROM is not yet available.CMOS settings now functioning as at 16 July 2012.

When shutting down RISC OS the option to 'restart' is currently ignored. A software reset is being worked on.

There is no hardware real time clock. RISC OS will set the time correctly once it finds a time server on the internet but the initial stages of the boot will be carried out with the date and time set to 1970. A more sensible initial date is being worked on - possibly restoring the last shutdown time (so that certification software is not confused) and/or asking the user to input or confirm the time and date if no network time server is found.

On a more arcane front, the distribution image on the SD card contains a RISC OS partition plus a FAT partition. On a Windows or Linux machine the FAT partition will be recognised but the RISC OS partition will be seen as empty space at the start of the card. This is not a problem unless you try to re-partition or format the card in which case the RISC OS data could be wiped without warning.The new format of image since 13 July 2012 marks the RISC OS partition as type 'filecore' and thus 'in use'.

None of these issues (which should be solved in the next few weeks!) should affect testing as it is important that we find any other issues that might be found troublesome by users.

This distro is a near-final image with an updated ROM dated 24th July 2012. Recent improvements include:

Updating the disc image

The 24th July 2012 distro replaces all earlier distros. It is nearing completion and will soon be subjected to beta testing.

Updates will be announced here.