We're starting on a few long overdue site updates in the next few days, starting with a new front page.

I hope everyone likes the new theme; I've tried to make it render on all major browsers, even ones with horribly broken CSS support like Internet Explorer. We've also tossed out the new blog engine and replaced it with a new front end that leverages the forum engine; this basically just means that all of the front page news items also become forum posts and you can use the forum to comment on them or track them.

Have news you'd like to share?
Write to us at openwrt-devel(at)openwrt.org

The latest release is (still) RC5; We're overdue for a new version very soon, but I probably should point out some major changes to the roadmap that are slowing things down:

- The WhiteRussian branch is getting stale
- The next WhiteRussian release will be RC6, and it will kick off 0.9 (not 1.0)
- The development branch, Kamikaze is getting a major overhaul called builroot-ng
- Parts of Kamikaze (including buildroot-ng) will then be merged into WhiteRussian for 1.0

RSS for news has gone. Will it come back?

It uses the forum's rss -
http://forum.openwrt.org/rss.php?cid=6

(I just added the rss tag to the front page)

First impression: openwrt switched to the dark side of life. Looks a little "ugly".

No offense
-mathias

i like it

I guess no one won the logo contest then?  <g>

Hmmm I liked the old design better. Can I have it (the old one) for my Wordpress? *g*

I like the new design.

I must say I don't like it either. The possibility to change colors dosen't make it better. My first action was to check if I mistyped the url, I had the feeling I ended on some domain robot site or such.

What does openwrt have to do with a city? Dont tell me openwrt routers are used in the city, I won't buy it. Will this be final, or temporary? Whats the take on the so-called logo contest, any decisions on that?

(Last edited by xFallenAngel on 28 Jun 2006, 18:35)

I'm really sorry, but this design... is not really good looking.

I kind of like the city scape at the bottom (although I have to agree with fallen) but the top part with the 'radiowaves' (thought you didn't want these, mbm ) and the colors aren't that great.
In fact, I think the borders are to thick (1 px would be enough) and the black is... well ... too black. Probably you could change it to a dark blue or something.
Also the default background color is too blue in my opinion. The very right background color is better (at the color picker). Maybe you could use that and then add a little blue to the background color!?

But well, these are only my 2 cents.
Anyways, what happened to the logo contest?

(Last edited by cyphem on 28 Jun 2006, 18:33)

i like the new design, although cyphem is right concerning the background: the very right color from the color-picker makes it look much better!

You'll notice that the waves aren't part of the logo. *grin*

Surprised nobody has noticed this yet --
The default color depends on the time of day; you can override it by picking one of the colored boxes on the front page (the left most box sets it back to automatic); your color preference will be used on all the pages.

*hehe* Touché.

Will that be the 'logo' then?

Nevertheless I'd suggest to change the color to a permanent one or adjust the colors so that they harmonize more. I'd really like to help you on this but my time is currently very limited.

Looks like a view from a wrong neighborhood! Perhaps, the person who made these changes was having a nightmare! It really really really really really looks UGLY! My advice, either go to take some web-design courses and come back to redesign the page or else put back the old page.

Awesome! I love the new look. I hope the web interface has a similar look.

I also love that the news posts are integrated into the forum. Now everyone can give their two cents; unfortunately, nay sayers always speak/write the loudest.

I am glad to hear that you are still looking towards a 1.0 release, I eagerly await it.

Thank you for all of your effort.

PS. Can I beg that you include avahi by default so that ssh, telnet, and http servers are automatically listed in my ZeroConf browser.

May I point you guys to a screenshot I just made? It's on http://wolfgang.lonien.de/?p=114 - and shows the results of bookmarking and displaying your new RSS feed in Firefox (On Gnome. On Debian. On Linux).

You can right-click the image in Firefox, and then select <View Image> to display it bigger...

cheers,
wjl

(Last edited by wjl on 29 Jun 2006, 12:12)

> Awesome! I love the new look. I hope the web interface has a similar look.

Oh god please no. Don't do that! Aside from the fact that I don't like the design, webif needs something more simple and functional as a default.

Is there a place to post suggestions what to include into RC6 or 7 ? (string and webstr iptables matches are top on my wish list... hint hint)

Well, seems you can't make everyone happy.

If anyone has any suggestions for improvements I'll listen, but please, no more of this "Oh god please no." -- post something constructive.

When will we see the final released version instead of RC6, RC7, RC8, RC9, RC10, RC11, and on and on? If we keep on releasing the RCx, may be two years from now it will still be RCx.

pap2boy -
This probably isn't the answer you want to hear, but it's important to explain a few things:

Well, the plan was to be past 1.0 by now, the problem really is that WhiteRussian basically forked off and hasn't kept up to date with development and Kamikaze branch got much further ahead. Apart from the occasional bug fix, not much work has been done on WhiteRussian; most of the developers are running Kamikaze. To make matters worse, several issues were found in the Kamikaze build environment which triggered a rewrite called "buildroot-ng" which fixes the build issues but completely changes the build environment, breaking compatibility and requiring new documentation.

The whole mess basically means that WhiteRussian isn't maintained and is quickly falling behind and is arguably already pretty stale. Releasing a stale branch with missing features as an overhyped 1.0 release would be a big mistake, so that leaves us with the task of bringing it back into sync as soon as possible so work can be shared between the branches and get the WhiteRussian branch maintained again. So, that leaves us with the task of merging the newer code from Kamikaze back into WhiteRussian, but that creates another set of problems --

Kamikaze doesn't use nvram for configuration, it uses a new config format[1] which means that webif can't simply be ported, it will have to be rewritten. As a result, that makes it really hard to justify spending much time on the current webif code since now a dead end (which explains why several webif patches have gone ignored). Similar problems exists elsewhere in the WhiteRussian branch.

So, as explained above, the schedule is:
There will be one more release of the current WhiteRussian code called rc6; if that proves stable then it will just be renamed to 0.9. Then work begins on the overhaul, merging the Buildroot-ng environment back into Kamikaze (all that's left is documenting Buildroot-ng and porting over the packages) and we start merging Kamikaze back into the WhiteRussian branch, this will become the basis for 1.0. We plan to take advantage of a few improvements provided by Buildroot-ng and move packages out of the release and update them much more frequently, at the same time we will enable automatic snapshot builds for those that want to keep up with development.

As always, we're looking for help with the project. At this point everything is basically run by 3-6 developers working in their spare time to write code, documentation, maintain the website and provide support and answer trouble tickets. So, progress is understandably slow.

Hrmn. It's been a while since I've visited openwrt.org, so I don't recall the old design. But I kind of like what it looks like now. Clean, simple, and easy to read. Nice. Haven't yet decided how I feel about the colour changing thing. It's a neat idea, but I'm wondering how much it impacts usability, not to mention caching issues.

I'd be curious to hear where you sourced the city skyline image. I'm fairly sure it's based on a photo I took, at http://hardy.dropbear.id.au/gumpf/cityscape.jpg . I don't have a problem with others using my work, but you should know it's under a Creative Commons attribution licence.

The color change is all done client side with javascript, no caching issues.

I really don't remember where the source image for the background came from other than it was found via google. All that's left of the original image is a generic profile of Sydney which should not require any attribution.

Apparently the link got lost in transmission - could you please point us to docs?

As webif is incomplete anyway (and probably will ever be, given the dynamic nature of OpenWrt - unless you want to bloat it like webmin) I don't mind...

For WhiteRussian vs Kamikaze:
while it may make sense to have a WR RC6 (0.9), and to port buildroot-ng to Kamikaze, is it realistic to backport all the new features of Kamikaze to WR?
Shouldn't Kamikaze gradually forget about its origins? Users switching from WR to Kami will have to reconfigure in any case (as configuration in NVRAM
is no longer used)... it's not about denying one's own roots at all.

Wow.  New layout looks really classy.

I've been using OpenWRT for a while now.  It's a great product which perfectly suits a large number of people, by unlocking the hardware they've rightfully purchased and allowing them to use it to its potential.

Of course, the reason that's possible is because of the wonderful GPL.  It has some drawbacks of course, but when the GPL forces a company to release the sourcecode for its firmware (as Linksys did), it allows hackers and hobbyists to get on with what they do best, makes Linksys a fortune (because we all want their hardware to run OpenWRT), and improves things for everyone involved.

...which is why I am absolutely shocked at the response to the guy who says his photo is on the front page.  If you look at his homepage, you can see that he is obviously a hacker and involved Linux user, who believing in the same principles which have given us the wonders of the WRT, has made his image publically available, free of watermarks or copyright notices, on the one piddly little condition that it be mentioned who made the image in the first place.

The fact that it was edited and the license terms broken by somebody else don't change the fact that the original is obviously his and the license is clear.  That it now looks much more 'generic' is quite true, but also true is that derivative or not, the image on the front page wouldn't exist if he hadn't made the original.

Is it that hard to put a little credit and maybe a link to the license somewhere?  These types of license specifically indemnify you from any possible claims of damages or copyright violation as long as you credit the author appropriately.

If people treated the GPL the way we've just treated this guy's Creative Commons, OpenWRT wouldn't even exist.