Release notes

You will find on this page a list of the main modifications achieved between the different DoudouLinux versions. If you need more information on all changes, particularly those that cannot be seen because of, or concerning DoudouLinux build tools, you may consider visiting the DoudouLinux project. You may be particularly interested in the global view of our activities (Gantt chart).

Official releases

DoudouLinux Hyperborea update 1

Published in early December 2013, this is the release 2.1. Here is the list of changes:

• official support for Punjabi
• translations have been updated
• embedded PDF documentation has been updated
• new application to monitor the computer use
• new application to show links to our website and support our project (manifest, contribute,donate, buy)
• addition of links in the web browser homepage to support our project (contribute,donate, buy)
• administration rights have been fixed in the Live system as well as the installed one
• support for ad-hoc WiFi networks, aka hotspots
• the latest printer drivers from openprinting.org are now included to support the newest printers
• the application launcher notification is now able to show the icon of the application being launched
• fixed Pysycache showing squares instead of Chinese characters
• fixed Childsplay menu not customized per activity anymore
• fixed missing flags in keyboard layout indicator
• fixed missing zip packages to open/create Zip archives
• fixed missing Gvfs packages to handle audio CDROM’s
• fixed Chinese input software

The complete list of changes can be found in our roadmap for Hyperborea 2.1.

DoudouLinux Hyperborea

Published in early June 2013, the release 2.0 — DoudouLinux Hyperborea, is a major evolution of DoudouLinux Gondwana, and is now based on Debian Squeeze. The interface of the more advanced activities has been deeply redesigned. We also have included new tools to aid administrators to make DoudouLinux better fit their needs: language variants, keyboard layout, adjust date and time, etc. Moreover, DoudouLinux is now shipping with a completely new installer, that is able to make a real installation onto a hard disk, as long as you have at least 4 GB of disk space, while at the same time fine tuning the localization parameters.

In short, the most visible, principal changes are the following:

• more than 30 new applications for a total around 80 applications
• official support for 43 languages (instead of 28 previously)
• new tools for system localization and fine tuning
• the most advanced activities have been deeply redesigned
  • improved look & feel, nearly independent of screen resolution
  • double (or more) launches of applications are now inhibited
  • a notification box is now displayed while an application is being launched
  • most applications are launched with their window maximized
• the default homepage of Epiphany, the web browser, now shows a portal to access websites with a philosophy similar to those of the project DoudouLinux (Wikipedia, Open Clipart Library, OpenStreetMap, etc.)
• improved user privacy on the web
  • DuckDuckGo is now the default search engine
  • ads and popup windows are blocked by default
  • user tracking code is blocked
• internal hard disks are all, now mounted read-only at boot, which really prevents children from writing on them, and even from reading them using the file explorer PCManfm
• new playlists for music and video online using contents from archive.org (browse directories in Whole DoudouLinux)
• automatic management of hot-plugging for MIDI piano keyboards, external audio output devices, external monitor/screens, removable disks (the file manager is shown)
• autologin can be activated by selecting only one activity in the activities menu
• a real installer, that does not need an additional media anymore, the running live system is sufficient
• an installed DoudouLinux can now synchronize its clock with Internet time servers (NTP)
• USB disk images are abandoned since we have added a patch that allows a DoudouLinux ISO file to be launched from a USB key. :)

The complete list of changes can be found in our roadmap for Hyperborea 2.0.

DoudouLinux Gondwana update 2

Published in early July 2012, it is also known as the release 1.2. This was the last release based on Debian Lenny, the release after are not based on Debian Lenny anymore. Here is the list of changes:

• official support for Finnish, Galician, Norwegian (Nynorsk)
• the size of launcher icons in advanced activities is now computed using screen resolution (see LxLauncher: automatic icon size for a nicer interface)
• internal disks partitions of the computer are now mounted read-only at boot, to avoid children curiosity and… mistakes!
• translations have been updated
• embedded PDF documentation has been updated

The complete list of changes can be found in our roadmap for Gondwana update 2.

DoudouLinux Gondwana update 1

Published in late September 2011, it is also known as the release 1.1. Here is the list of changes:

• official support for Czesh, Danish, German, Hungarian, Latvian, Malay, Norwegian (Bokmål), Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal) and Telugu
• new small tool to change the user’s name on the local network
• Songwrite is now in its latest version to solve language issues
• translation issues with Stopmotion and Vkeybd (the piano keyboard) have been solved
• missing translation messages on Transifex have been provided for several applications
• translation of boot and shutdown texts in splash images have also been solved
• a basic video driver is forced on recent Poulsbo hardware to avoid a black screen
• annoying print dialogs for all the advanced activities have been discarded
• embedded PDF documentation has been updated
• fixed Russian PDF documentation
• added the Russian version of the song Brother John.

The complete list of changes can be found in our roadmap for Gondwana update 1.

DoudouLinux Gondwana

Published by the beginning of June 2011, it is also known as the release 2011-05. Here is the list of changes:

• official support for Greek and Persian
• new application, Songwrite, a simple application to write and play songs
• new application, Stopmotion, another simple application to make animation movies from series of photos
• new launcher, Jukebox, to play the music now shipping with DoudouLinux
• included several MIDI files to play music, accompanied with their Songwrite and PDF scores (Classical music and French children’s songs right now)
• graphical and musical boot and shutdown
• first audio messages (for low battery and to remove the CD at shutdown)
• redesigned the menu of activities, which now handles languages written from right to left
• better hardware support (network, wifi, webcams, tablets, touchscreens)
• replaced the network manager tool to easily handle Wifi authentication
• audio output selection is now a system wide setting
• added a shortcut Alt+F5 to restart the panel when it is not correctly drawn
• added adblock and popup blocking to the web browser Epiphany
• fixed minor issues with DansGuardian

The complete list of changes can be found in our roadmap for version 2011-05.

Version being developed

Current release

The current release is the second official stable release named DoudouLinux Hyperborea – see above. No work has started yet for the next release in development. However we can already tell that it will be based on Debian Wheezy instead of Debian Squeeze, which will probably imply small changes in the DoudouLinux application set. On the other hand, we are not considering introducing major changes to the interface because we want to publish the successor of Hyperborea in a quite near future. This way we will provide better hardware support and high-performance DoudouLinux ARM™ ports.

Previous releases

• Version 2011-08 (out in late August 2011!)
  • this is the very first version build on top of Debian Squeeze instead of Debian Lenny
  • only supported for English, French, Russian and Spanish
  • refer to the special section Development version to know more about this release

• Version 2011-02 (out in late February 2011!)
  • official support for Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Polish and Swedish
  • new CD’s in the incubator section: Indonesian and Greek
  • new tool to set the activities available from the main screen (see The menu of activities)
  • two new activities for schools, that are not shown by default, use the tool to set the menu of activities!
  • a special activity is available to set the sound volume when no advanced activity is available, not shown by default either
  • switched Gamine to its latest version thanks to his author Gnunux, this solves the translation issue of this application (see https://gna.org/bugs/?16895) and brings new features (screenshots and keyboard character output)
  • KDE applications are being translated
  • the virtual piano is now translatable
  • files from other activities are now accessible from any activity, especially the directory “Pictures” now contains the TuxPaint draws of all activities
  • users can now always switch keyboard layout to Azerty, Qwerty or Qwertz using Shift+Alt
  • DoudouLinux is now able to use a previous video configuration when hardware is identical
  • video driver is now forced to “intel” or “nv” (nVidia) when it make sense!
  • minor fixes and improvements…
• Version 2010-11 (out in late November 2010, hum…)
  • official support for Romanian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian
  • many applications have been better translated
  • new CD’s in the incubator section: Dutch, Italian, Polish, Turkish…
  • added web filtering for parental controls with DansGuardian, this is alpha version for Arabic, Romanian, Serbian and Ukrainian
  • graphical interface improvement for the mouse setting tool and the sound output setting tool
  • replaced window menu button with a window shade button
  • suppressed boot hanging on DHCP messages when network cable is not plugged
  • fixed boot crash when a Linux system is installed on an ext4 partition
  • fixed bugs in tools liveusb-write and doudou-installer
  • under the hood: project is now registered on the online translation platform TransiFex, many translation files have been ported to PO files to ease the translation process and translation files have been separated from source code
  • translation for a new language can now start as soon as you have an account on TransiFex
• Version 2010-08 (out in late august 2010!)
  • added a tool to install DoudouLinux
  • added documentation in PDF format
  • added German, Portuguese, Romanian and Russian versions in the incubator
  • added a download page for language file packs
  • USB Live: no more waiting for pressing the Enter key before computer shutdown
  • Arabic version: keyboard now defaults to Arabic alphabet, Alt+Shift toggles to Latin, and panel is now left aligned in mini/all DoudouLinux activities
• Version 2010-05 (out in late may 2010 !)
  • first version released to launch the project