Mainsail Update 01-2024
Added 2024-01-14 10:44:20 +0000 UTCWe hope you have started well into the new year.
As you have probably noticed, I have worked a lot on bugfixes in the last month and also released the bugfix release v2.9.1. Furthermore, there are already a few minor bug fixes, and a contributor has made a performance PR for the G-Code files list. There will likely be a minor v2.9.2 update before we continue working on features.
There is also some good news. In the last two months, we have received support from vendors. Prusa Research started at the end of November. Multec GmbH joined us in December, and Wanhao at the beginning of this year. I am happy that companies that use our software also appreciate our hobby project and support the project financially. I want to reduce my daily work hours and develop Mainsail during the day, not just in my free time.
I am currently working with KwadFan on the MainsailOS workflow to make it more stable and flexible at the same time. With the next release, it should also be possible to flash non-Raspberry Pi images via the RPI imager. This release will also be the last Debian Bullseye release. After that, we will only focus on Debian Bookworm.
I am currently also thinking about the other images of MainsailOS. We currently support three other OrangePi devices besides the Raspberry Pi images. I have just calculated the ratio of raspberry pi downloads to orange pi downloads again. There are 143930 downloads of MainsailOS for the Raspberry Pi and 3383 for Orange Pi devices. Purely in terms of the ratio (97.7 vs 2.3), it would no longer be advantageous to continue doing this or to add more devices. How do you see it? Or do we have the wrong devices at the moment? Please write me your opinion in the comments or on our Discord server in the #onlysails channel.
Finally, I would like to "forewarn" you that a Klipper update is coming, where you will have to reflash every MCU running an accelerator. This is this PR: https://github.com/Klipper3d/klipper/pull/6437. If the PR is merged, I will post about it on Discord and in the GitHub discussions.
Best regards,
Stefan (meteyou)
