<p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>
-<p>Last Web page update: 1/26/2016</p>
+<p>Last Web page update: 3/4/2017</p>
<p>This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!</p>
<ul>
+<li><b>0.10.5 (3/4/2017)</b>—This version includes a number of
+ modest changes, most of which will be of interest to relatively few
+ people:
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>The touch/tablet support has been improved and so may work with
+ a few more systems.</li>
+
+ <li>The <tt>refind-install</tt> script has been updated to work better
+ with disks other than those whose names take the form
+ <tt>/dev/sd?</tt> and <tt>/dev/hd?</tt> (in Linux).</li>
+
+ <li>For the benefit of new Apple laptops that lack physical Esc and
+ function keys, additional keybindings have been added: Backspace
+ (Delete on most Mac keyboards) now works the same as Esc, and Tab
+ now works the same as F2/Insert/<tt>+</tt>.</li>
+
+ <li>The Linux initial RAM disk detection code has been expanded so that,
+ if two initial RAM disk files are found for a kernel, the one with
+ more characters after the version string that match the equivalent
+ characters in the kernel filename will be used. For instance,
+ suppose the kernel filename is <tt>vmlinuz-4.8.0-32-standard</tt>,
+ and two initial RAM disk files are
+ <tt>initrd-4.8.0-32-standard</tt> and
+ <tt>initrd-4.8.0-32-debug</tt>. The first of those files has nine
+ matching characters after the version string (<tt>-standard</tt>),
+ vs. just one matching character (<tt>-</tt>) for the second. Thus,
+ the first file will be used.</li>
+
+ <li>A second change to Linux initial RAM disk detection is that you can
+ now specify the kernel version string with the string <tt>%v</tt> in
+ the <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> file's options field. Thus, if your
+ distribution provides two initial RAM disk files per kernel, and
+ also provides numbered kernels, you can create a
+ <tt>refind_linux.conf</tt> file that enables you to boot with either
+ (or both) of the initial RAM disk files that match a specific
+ kernel.</li>
+
+ <li>I've done some minor code optimization in the functions that search
+ for boot loaders. This had no noticeable effect on speed for me, and
+ is likely to be more than offset by the more complex initial RAM
+ disk processing noted above; but it might help a little bit on
+ systems with many boot loaders or kernels.</li>
+
+ </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li><b>0.10.4 (10/9/2016)</b>—The number of changes in this
+ version is modest, but some features are important to some people:
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>Thanks to code submitted by an anonymous contributor, rEFInd now
+ supports <i>some</i> touch screens. This feature relies on support
+ in the firmware itself, though, and even some tablets lack this
+ support, so this feature does not work on all tablets.</li>
+
+ <li>Martin Whitaker has contributed updates to the ext4fs driver to make
+ it compatible with filesystems created with 64-bit pointers. As a
+ practical matter, this is important because 64-bit pointers are now
+ being used by default in some distributions. In theory, this feature
+ may enable use on over-16TiB filesystems, but this is untested at
+ the moment.</li>
+
+ <li>GNU-EFI version 3.0.3 or 3.0.4 has made changes that caused rEFInd's
+ drivers to fail to compile. This version addresses those compilation
+ problems.</li>
+
+ <li>A rEFInd coding error manifested with previous versions of rEFInd
+ when compiled with GNU-EFI starting at version 3.0.3 or 3.0.4,
+ causing the main rEFInd binary to crash. This problem has been
+ fixed. To the best of my knowledge, this bug has never manifested
+ with earlier versions of GNU-EFI or Tianocore builds.</li>
+
+ <li>The <tt>refind-install</tt> script now does a better job of
+ detecting disks that have exotic names—those other than
+ <tt>/dev/sd?</tt> or <tt>/dev/hd?</tt>.</li>
+
+ </ul>
+
+</li>
+
+<li><b>0.10.3 (4/24/2016)</b>—This version features mostly modest changes and additions:
+
+ <ul>
+
+ <li>A new Linux script, <tt>refind-mkdefault</tt>, simplifies the task of resetting rEFInd as the default boot program. It's documented <a href="refind-mkdefault.html">here.</a> I've also written a new <a href="bootcoup.html">documentation page on the problem generally,</a> which covers how to handle the problem in multiple OSes.</li>
+
+ <li>I've modified the SIP/CSR rotation code so that the SIP/CSR rotation tool will appear more reliably on Apple computers.</li>
+
+ <li>The NTFS driver has been improved to reduce the chances of it hanging randomly.</li>
+
+ <li>The code that excludes shell binaries from appearing in the main boot list has been altered to reduce the odds of an incorrect exclusion from occurring.</li>
+
+ <li>rEFInd now recognizes the <tt>fwupx64.efi</tt> program as a special case: If detected, this program is presented as a second-row option rather than as a regular boot loader. (This tool is used to update firmware on some computers.)</li>
+
+ <li>BIOS/CSM/legacy-mode OSes all now include the string <tt>Legacy</tt> in their descriptions on Macs.</li>
+
+ </ul>
+
+</li>
+
<li><b>0.10.2 (1/26/2016)</b>—Changes to this version are relatively modest and focus on bug fixes:
<ul>
<hr />
-<p>copyright © 2012–2016 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
+<p>copyright © 2012–2017 by Roderick W. Smith</p>
<p>This document is licensed under the terms of the <a href="FDL-1.3.txt">GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.</a></p>