⑴ geexbox是一個什麼樣的軟體

GeeXboX 0.98.7 : Digital Edition (11/11/2005) ...
This may be the first time that a GeeXboX release has been made without a player update... but hey, the enhancements were significant enough and so we bring you the new, fresh, version 0.98.7. GeeXboX now enters the "digital era" with a feature that many users have been waiting for : the DVB cards support. Basically you're now able to use any kind (PCI or USB) DVB device (either Cable, Terrestrial or Satellite) that is support under Linux (see website for more info) with this release of GeeXboX. Due to the i802.11 official stack inclusion in Linux 2.6.14, we've also decided to bring you better WiFi chipset support with the introction of Prism54G and Centrino drivers.

Unfortunately, many of the DVB devices and WiFi chips require those nasty proprietary firmwares in order to work correctly. That is of no concern however, as GeeXboX now comes with its own brand new firmware auto-loader. You're even able to use the FLTK generator to grab them from the web for you and build an ISO that fits your needs. You can also use it to grab some more fonts or non-free codecs.
There's also some bad news that will soon be a major problem. For various reasons, InTouch, our current sponsor that provides us a virtual server with free hosting services, will certainly have to discontinue this offer after the 1st of January. As a result, we're currently looking for anybody that can help with mirroring solutions and/or grant us a new hosting service. After this date, we'll probably lose our server and won't be able to provide you with GeeXboX anymore. Our only solution will then be to buy a new dedicated server and host it with some provider. So, if you're able to help us by providing a server or hosting for free, please contact us.

Last, but not least (and to end on a positive note), we've added the latest trend in network sharing protocols that is being supported in many new consumer devices : UPnP. With its support, the GeeXboX is now able to auto-discover UPnP Media Server devices on your Home Network and play media content from them. So, while waiting for the next MPlayer release, just sit back in your seats and enjoy the digital show ;-)

Detailed Changelog (relative to 0.98.6 release) :

System :
- Linux updated to 2.6.14 version.
- Updated uClibc to 0.9.28.
- Support for FUSE (Filesystem In Userland) 2.4.1
- Support for driver firmware auto-loading. You can now use drivers that require an external proprietary firmware.
- Updated Syslinux to v3.11.
- Support for DVB cards.
- Added a DVB Free-To-Air channel scanner (at boot time for LiveCD, or when using installator).

Toolchain :
- New DEVTOOLS option at compilation, that adds many useful debugging tools for easier development.
- New UPNP option at compilation time to enable/disable building UPnP support.

Audio :
- Updated ALSA libraries and utilities to 1.0.10rc2.
- Fixes some PPC sound issues.

Video :
- Support for VESA with Intel i855 chips.
- Updated EM8300 (DXR3) drivers to v0.15.1.

Drivers :
- Added support for WiFi Prism54G cards (requires proprietary firmware).
- Added support for Centrino (ipw2x00) WiFi chipsets (requires proprietary firmware).
- Support for PCI and USB DVB cards (Satellite, Cable, Terrestrial) based on BT8x8 / CX88 / SAA7136 (AV7110) chipsets (some may require proprietary firmware).

Networking :
- Updated Samba to 3.0.20b.
- Added auto-discovery of UPnP A/V Media Server compliant devices.
- Added djmount 0.31 that uses FUSE to mount UPnP Media Server contents filesystem.

Generator :
- New MacOSX generator binary.
- Generator is now able to download extra firmwares/fonts/codecs for you (with MD5 sum check).
- Added an option to enable/disable UPnP support.

Miscellaneous :
- Updated LIRC to 0.7.3pre1.
- GeeXboX uShare UPnP A/V Media Server (for Linux only) is available to share content to GeeXboX through UPnP.
- Support for multiple gateways and DNS servers in network configuration file.
- Add sleep timer to automatically shutdown GeeXboX after a specified time.

GeeXboX 0.98.7 is available here and right now!
GeeXboX Wiki Documentation Base (11/01/2005) ...
Neither a major feature nor a revolution, but the GeeXboX team now provides you a wiki (collaborative documentation web space) in order to help you using the GeeXboX distribution. The overall goal of this Wiki is to provide to the newcomers the necessary help to start dealing with GeeXboX. There you can find many tips for optimizing your GeeXboX system or even some special configuration needed for reluctant hardware stuff.

The GeeXboX Wiki also features a developer section that will help everyone who intend to add new packages to the distribution, explaining how to create patches and help the core team with development issues.

As every wiki in the world, it depends on user feedback to be fullfilled. Save and share your knowledge.
Waiting for next official release ... ;-)
GeeXboX 0.98.6 : Bigger, Longer, Uncut ... (08/15/2005) ...
Long time folks since latest release, but now, things will change a bit. Today, the GeeXboX team is proud to introce you its new release : the 0.98.6 edition. Even if it looks the same, the changes are numerous (see the list above). This release also introces the opening to new architectures, with the first support of GeeXboX for PowerPC architecture. Yes, you've read well, you're now able to use GeeXboX on both your PC and Macintosh. This latest is still in beta stages so we need you all to test it.

A lot of work still need to be done on GeeXboX on we're working hard each days to compete with the best proprietary solutions to give you the most we can. Interested developers and translators are fully welcomed to help us with this task. Anyhow, spoken enough, lets show you what this 0.98.6 edition features :

Detailled Changelog (relative to 0.98.5 release) :

System :
- Support for the PowerPC (MAC) architecture.
- Linux updated to 2.6.12.3 version.
- Use of UDEV to automatically populate the /dev directory.
- Remove of the now useless SuperMount patch.
- Use IDE CD driver instead of the old ide-scsi emulation layer.
- Support for CPU frequency scaling for supported CPU (generally laptops) to minimize power consumption.
- Use LZMA algorithm instead of gZip for compressing iso (far slighter).
- New HotPlug script : hot autodiscovery and mount/removal of external devices.
- Rece CD drives spin to 8x each time a disc is inserted in (previous versions did it for boot media only).

Toolchain :
- Complete rework of the sources tree (splitted init.d scripts and patches now are in package's directory, allowing a successfull build of old versions).
- Toolchain can now build distribution for different architectures.
- Toolchain can now optimize distribution compilation for specific CPU.

Player :
- Updated MPlayer to 1.0pre7 (support for H.264 video and AAC audio codecs).
- Can play IFO files from disk to read complete DVD structure.
- Keep current path in OSD after the end of a file (no more need to do a complete browse each time you play a file).
- Use cvidix video output mode instead of vesa:vidix by default.
- Support for radio cards.
- Support for FLAC files.
- Support for MusePack codec (.mpc files).
- Avoid some crashes when pausing/resuming a movie with remote control.

Audio :
- ALSA drivers ported to 1.0.9b
- Fix some SPDIF configuration problems.
- No more need to force sound rate for reluctant sound cards.
- Can choose which soundcard to use (default is #0), output mode (SPDIF or Analog) and AC3/DTS decompression method (Hardware or Software) through the ISO generator.
- Added drivers for Emu10k1X chipsets, SB Audigy LS and SB Live! 24bit cards.
- Fix some ALSA bug with Nforce2 chipsets.
- Support for Intel High Definition Audio (Azalia) chipsets.

Video :
- Removed buggy Savage vidix driver (works fine using VESA).
- Fix vidix support for some Rage128 / Radeon cards.
- More chipsets supported by atitvout : Mobile M3, Radeon Mobility, Radeon Mobility 9000, RV200.

Drivers :
- Support for QStor SATA controllers.
- Use GPL'd RT2500 driver instead of Ralink one.
- Support for CX88 analog TV chipsets (BT8xx successor).
- Support for in-built multi-LUN X-in-1 card readers.
- Support for XboX gamepads.

Networking :
- Security fix : FTP / Telnet / HTTP services (anonymous root) are closed by default : use generator to open requested ones.
- Support for the CIFS protocol.
- Can setup network and Samba configuration directly through installator.
- Samba updated to 3.0.14a.
- Can manually set DNS server to use.
- Faster Samba shares mount (parallelize mount processes for multiple servers).

Internationalization :
- Use TrueType fonts for subtitles.
- Use UTF-8 as default charset.
- Support for different charsets for menu and subtitles.

Miscellaneous :
- LIRC updated to 0.7.2.
- Support for the DigiMatrix remote controller.
- New FLTK graphical ISO generator for both Win32 and Linux.
- Added analog TV channels scanner in installator.
- Added HTTP server for remote Web management of GeeXboX : web designers are fully welcomed to build the Web interface ;-).
- Non-free codecs package is now directly available on our server.

GeeXboX 0.98.6 is available here and right now.

GeeXboX 0.98.5 (12/29/2004) ...
Ho ho ho ... here comes a new GeeXboX release. As a tradition, many free software projects have decided to release on Christmas, so do we (with a little bit delay, just to be original :-). So, here's our gift to you to end up with 2004 : GeeXboX 0.98.5 !! Hum what ... you've said 0.98.5 ? Man ... where's 0.99 ?

As we said before, the 0.99 release will come with a completely new interface (you can have a look at our Work in progress page ), which is not yet completely finished. But 4 monthes have last since last release and many work has been done from this date. You probably won't notice any big differences in terms of functionnalities by comparison to the old 0.98 release. The reason of it is quite simple : we did a major rewrite of our code, build toolkit and all major packages and there were that much deep changes that we needed to make some new release before adding the new interface.

We really want to thank Amir Shalem who officially took his place to the GeeXboX development team few monthes ago and who made a huge part of this rewrite of GeeXboX. Many thanks to him.

So, please use our last GeeXboX. Do not consider it as a revolution, it isn't. Please see it as an up-to-date release of the old 0.98 : coming with its new kernel, updated player and codecs, with a better support for video cards and better handling of fonts and languages and with an easier than ever way to install it on disk.

We hope you'll be enjoyed by this release, wish you an happy new year and hope you'll keep using GeeXboX in 2005 :-)

Detailled Changelog (relative to 0.98 release) :

System :
- Switch to Linux kernel 2.6.9 (say goodbye to 2.4 series).
- Switch from Linux Progress Patch to BootSplash as a splash screen.
- Switch to uClibc CVS.
- Switch to Samba 3.0.10

Player :
- Switch to the new MPlayer 1.0pre6 (thanks for the Xmas present guys) : see its complete ChangeLog for more details.
- Support for video Post Processing : features horizontal and vertical deblocking, deringing effects and auto luminance (disabled by default).
- Use of a 24 bits per pixel display depth.
- Playback speed increased with certain hardware (fewer CPU needed).

Drivers :
- Switch to the latest ALSA 1.0.7 drivers and librairies.
- Fix bugs with some audio chipsets (the output sound rate is now automatically adjusted to its best value).
- Increased VESA compliance (hey we now supports 3Dfx and Intel i845/855/865 cards too !!)
- Vidix support for EPIA MII boards (CLE266 revision) and S3 Savage chipsets.
- Removed useless DirectFB drivers (as they were only used by 3Dfx cards, which are now supported in VESA mode).
- Added WiFi drivers for RaLink rt25xx chipsets.
- Removed drivers for ACX100 chipsets (need proprietary firmware to work).
- Support for more ISA network adapters.

Internationalization :
- Better menu fonts and subtitle fonts handling.
- Support for asian fonts.

Miscellaneous :
- Support for TV-Out on Intel i810/i815 cards.
- Added new options to our win32 generator (even easier to use now).
- Complete rewrite of the installator : it now uses GRUB as the main bootloader. It also has support for both FAT16/32 and EXT2/3 partitions to install GeeXboX to. Besides, there's no more need to install GeeXboX on first primary partition. And, to end up with this, it features an autodetection of other installed OS and installs a multiboot if requested.
- Complete rewrite of the build toolkit (you should now be able to build GeeXboX from sources on every kind of GNU/Linux distro or from FreeBSD). It also features more optimization and an easier way to add new packages to the distro, following the toolkit rules.

GeeXboX 0.98.5 is available here and right now.

Help with GeeXboX development : try devel releases (10/17/2004) ...
Almost 2 months have passed since GeeXboX 0.98 was released. Lots of work has been done since then. For example, we're now supporting the Linux 2.6 kernel series and many improvements have been made to the video output. It now fully supports the VESA 3.0 specification, adding a new support for all 3Dfx and Intel i845/i855/i865 cards and chipsets. Also, pictures are now rendered using 24 bit depth.

We're now almost finished with the architecture changes we've planned to do for 0.99 release, and we can finally start to work on a complete rework of the menu interface. To give you a taste of the future of GeeXboX, you can simply have a look at our Work In Progress page . Currently it's only a snapshot of the coming 0.99 and to provide you with such a perfect release as soon as possible, we need you to test our development release and report to us as many bugs as possible.

We'll try to release as many development versions as we can. In each re