The promised first "alpha" or "pre" ISO image of yaVDR 0.4 is finally out, bearing the name yavdr64-0.4.0-pre1.iso. The members of the yaVDR team are proud that the public can now join in with testing, improving and extending what we have been working on hard since October 2010.

This is not a stable or polished or feature-complete release. Brave testers or developers who fear no risks may download it via our download page and test it. Inexperienced users should stick with yaVDR 0.3 until the stable release of yaVDR 0.4 is out.

We already tried to answer some basic questions regarding what will be new in yaVDR 0.4 within the blog posting It's time to talk about yaVDR 0.4. Please read this posting first if you haven't done so yet. Especially if you haven't heard yet about our switch-over to 64 bit.

Testers, please file any bug reports at https://bugs.yavdr.com/projects in English language (yes, it's that dodgy site with a SSL certificate that makes the browser complain). Please check the already existing bug reports before you create duplicates.

Of course, a lot of questions remain open at this stage. We will try to answer them as our time permits and hopfully get around to create a "Known Issues" document. If you can't wait, please consider to post questions regarding the new features and concepts at VDR Portal.

Some basic information regarding this release

• All (pre-)releases of yaVDR 0.4 are based on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) 64 bit. The ISO image is called yavdr64-0.4.0-pre1.iso to indicate that.
• Installation: As always, this is not a Live CD. As always, the text based alternative installer of Ubuntu is being re-used by yaVDR. You can also install any yaVDR release in a virtual machine for testing purposes.
• Upgrade: There is no way to upgrade from yaVDR 0.3 to a (pre-) release of yaVDR 0.4. But it should be possible to update from one yaVDR 0.4 pre-release to the next (by doing apt-get update / apt-get dist-upgrade) and from a pre-release to the final version of yaVDR 0.4. If not, we will inform you.
• Underlying package repositories (Launchpad PPAs): yavdr64-0.4.0-pre1.iso contains Natty packages from those PPAs having testing in their name (testing-vdr, testing-yavdr, testing-xbmc) and also from the new PPA called main. Package updates will also be pulled from these PPAs (and of course as always from Ubuntu's official standard repos). All further pre-releases will also use the testing PPAs. But a future final release of yaVDR 0.4 will then use the stable PPAs instead of the testing PPAs. As always, packages containing our latest development changes (that may contain big problems!) are being built and tested in our unstable PPAs, separated from the testing and stable PPAs. We can copy packages from any of our PPAs to another. The order will always be: From unstable to testing, from testing to stable.
• to be continued

Known Issues

• Issues with keyboard layout selection in Ubuntu alternative installer: https://bugs.yavdr.com/issues/402, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/656777
• Current development versions of PVR-enabled XBMC branches don't allow to install any XBMC addons any more. A workaround that we decided not to introduce to our packages is explained here.

If you understand some German: There is a German language announce thread regarding this pre1-release on VDR Portal. We will take care that all important information will also be made available in English.

Have fun!