Hi all!

We'd like to announce the release of Sxmo 1.5.0. This release has considerable
improvements and more commits than ever, thanks to all our contributors!

If you are running postmarketOS edge or stable v21.06 you can upgrade with a
simple apk update && apk upgrade -a .  For postmarketOS edge this should work
right away, the updates for the postmarketOS stable release (v21.0.6.1) are
expected to land in the coming week.

If you are still running postmarketOS v21.03, then you need to upgrade to v21.06 first (they recommended reflashing the image).
New images with Sxmo 1.5.0 will be provided by postmarketOS as part of v21.06.1.

There are also new packaging efforts by our contributors for Arch Linux, so we
expect these packages to follow shortly too.

If you have any custom hooks, make sure to run the new sxmo_migrate.sh after
you upgrade to check them against the defaults (it won't make any changes
unless you explicitly say so).

Some of the highlights:

* The screenlock system got reworked completely and is now handled by a shellscript
  rather than a daemon.
* The contact menu has been improved
* There's a new default wallpaper
* Parsing phone numbers is now mediated by a small tool called pn. We also try to handle
  incoming phone numbers for which the modem reports no prefix.
* All Sxmo menus should be ssh compatible, so you can run the menus also from your ssh session, and
  you get vis-menu rather than dmenu there.
* We now have default hooks for the user hooks, if a user hook is not present, the supplied default
  hook is run automatically. Sxmo comes with a migration script sxmo_migrate.sh that allows
  you to quickly check your hooks against the defaults.
* We now have a unified input handler that takes its input from either lisgd (gestures) or dwm (hardware buttons).
  There is more support for context-aware gestures in general.
* The incoming call and pickup behaviour has been reworked to be more easy to use and to work nicely
  with the new screenlock system. There has also been considerable improvement to the handling of missed and
  discarded calls.
* There is a proximity lock for automatically locking/unlocking based on the proximity sensor (useful for phones in pockets)
* We now have device profiles for other devices than just the pinephone, some work has already been done on the Librem 5, Wileyfox Swift and Nexus 5.
  We want to move sxmo to be usable on multiple devices, it has even been successfully used on a Kobo e-reader already!
* The virtual keyboard (svkbd) now has a less rigid grid layout and a more natural keyboard layout that reduced the chance for typos. We also added
  some spacing between the keys re-arranged the keyboard layout a bit. There's also an extra layer with less/bigger keys.
* The hide menu gesture (a swipe onto the top of the screen) now also doubles as a gesture to hide notifications
* The battery percentage is back in the status bar
* You can configure a wifi hotspot from the Network menu now
* There is a new networkmonitor that monitors when network connectivity goes up or down and then calls hooks
* The modemmonitor will reset the modem in situations where the modem 'gets lost', often after a long sleep
  We are unfortunately still experiencing issues with ModemManager and suspension that are beyond our control, such
  as SMSes that don't get picked up. You can also reset the modem from the menu, which will trigger the SMSes to arrive after all.
* The new screenlock system uses cron if the user wants to execute commands whilst sleeping (rtcwake). These cronjobs need to
  be mediated by sxmo_rtcwake.sh, the system will briefly wake up for the cron job and then return to sleep.
* The wifi can be disabled from the menu now (unloads the kernel module). This saves battery life if you don't need wifi or bluetooth.
* Phone shutdown and reboot can now be done without password
* File selection dialogs should now fit the screen (for Gtk3 at least)

Aside from all of the above, there have been numerous fixes in many areas,
please consult the git log for the full details.

The new release consists of:
* sxmo-utils 1.5.0.1
* sxmo-dwm 6.2.13
* sxmo-st 0.8.4
* sxmo-xdm-config 0.3.2
* svkbd 0.4
* lisgd 0.31
* mnc 0.3
* pn

Note that Sxmo also has a website these days: https://sxmo.org , you can
find all the documentation there too. You can always join us on #sxmo on
OFTC.net if you have any questions or comments.

Once again, thanks to all our contributors for making this release possible!

--

Maarten van Gompel

proycon@anaproy.nl
https://proycon.anaproy.nl
https://github.com/proycon

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