Add the July 2024 report

content/news/this-month-240731.md

@@ -14,15 +14,115 @@ If you would like to support Redox, please consider donating or buying some merc
 - [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/redox_os)
 - [Merch](https://redox-os.creator-spring.com/)
 
+## Massive Performance Improvements
+
+4lDO2 reduced the time to make a context switch by 60-70% !
+
+Redox is becoming faster than Linux in some workloads (with all exploit mitigations disabled), more exciting optimizations are coming.
+
+## POSIX Signals
+
+4lDO2 started to move the POSIX signals implementation from the kernel to userspace.
+
+You can read his post about the work on [this](https://www.redox-os.org/news/kernel-11/) link.
+
+## Web Servers
+
+We successfully compiled and executed the first web server on Redox!
+
+[Simple HTTP Server](https://github.com/TheWaWaR/simple-http-server) is an advanced HTTP web server written in Rust, the contributor lgh-127001 successfully served a website.
+
+He is also improving the Apache HTTP Server port.
+
+## Self-Hosting Update
+
+We finally successfully built Rust, C and C++ Hello World programs!
+
+4lDO2 also fixed Cargo and built a Hello World program from it.
+
+It's a first step to test the compilation of more complex programs.
+
+## Kernel Improvements
+
+- Andrey Turkin improved the ARM64 code on the kernel.
+- Andrey Turkin fixed the debug code of the kernel.
+
+## UEFI Improvements
+
+bjorn3 fixed a violation of the UEFI specification (calling runtime services with interrupts enabled) and added workarounds for buggy firmware.
+
+These changes will allow more computers to boot Redox.
+
+## Userspace Improvements
+
+- bjorn3 updated most system daemons to use the new scheme format.
+
+## Driver Improvements
+
+- bjorn3 fixed an undefined bahvior bug on the ps2d driver's vmmouse implementation.
+- 4lDO2 fixed a panic on the inputd driver and updated the dependencies of all drivers.
+- The contributor Ramla Ijaz fixed some bugs.
+- bjorn3 updated most drivers to use the new scheme format.
+- bjorn3 improved the driver development by adding a symbolic link on the `drivers-initfs` recipe configuration to use the source code of the `drivers` recipe, now developers will have less problems to test their changes inside of Redox.
+- bjorn3 did a cleanup of the graphics subsystem and ran `rustfmt` on the entire code.
+
+## Relibc Improvements
+
+- 4lDO2 moved the POSIX singals implementation from the kernel to relibc and added stubs for the `setresuid` and `setresgid` functions.
+- The contributor Derick Eddington fixed four incorrectness bugs on relibc.
+- The contributor plimkilde refactored the `rand48` functions to reduce unsafe code.
+- plimkilde improved the `random_bool()` function by adding the missing modulo.
+
+## Programs
+
+wget is finally working thanks to 4lDO2 and Ribbon!
+
+- 4lDO2 fixed most bugs on the COSMIC programs
+- Ron Williams fixed the Helix text editor.
+- bjorn3 converted the Orbital recipes to TOML, fixing the "desktop-minimal" variant.
+- Ribbon converted more recipes to TOML to remove obsolete and broken code from our package system.
+
+More exciting Rust programs were packaged as usual.
+
+## Orbital Improvements
+
+Ribbon configured Orbital to launch the FFMPEG media player (ffplay) when video and audio files are opened from graphical programs.
+
+## Build System Improvements
+
+- bjorn3 updated the system configuration on the filesystem configuration to use the new scheme format.
+- bjorn3 converted the standalone Orbital recipes to TOML.
+- Ribbon improved the `dev.toml` filesystem configuration to improve our tests inside of Redox, like self-hosting compilation.
+- Ribbon renamed the `vga` and `efi` QEMU options to `gpu` and `uefi`, it avoid confusion with the VGA interface (the `vga` option on QEMU select the video type) and the old UEFI revision (the final revision of EFI is called UEFI)
+- Ribbon enabled the `shell` data type to easily change the default terminal shell before boot.
+- Ribbon updated the GCC and LLVM package versions for the MacOSX target, GCC was updated from versions 4.9/7.x to 14.x and LLVM from 16 to 18.
+
+## Other Improvements
+
+- The contributor ids1024 fixed the strace compilation without the "advanced" feature flag.
+- Andrey Turkin fixed the warnings on the redox_liner crate.
+
 ## Documentation
 
-A list of the Ribbon's improvements this month:
+A list of the improvements this month:
 
+- The contributor Deft Punk improved the wording and grammar of the book.
+- Now the book recommend the [Gentoo](https://gentoo.org) package documentation for dependency configuration on recipes and [FreeBSD](https://freebsd.org) to find C/C++ feature flags easily, the Gentoo dependency classification helps a lot with not/badly documented C/C++ programs and libraries.
 - The "Weekly Images" section was renamed "Daily Images" on the "Running Redox in a virtual machine" and "Running Redox on real hardware" pages, it was called "weekly" because breaking changes stopped the image update for weeks, but they are configured to be created daily.
-- Some sections of the website FAQ to the book, it improved the reading and information distribution (more easy to find).
+- Some sections of the website FAQ were copied to the book, it improved the reading and information distribution (more easy to find).
 - The "Scripts" section on the "Build System" page was improved, he added a command to sort in alpahbetical order the output of the include-recipes.sh script, it will save time from packagers adding recipes to the package build server configuration.
 - Now the website and book READMEs recommend the [lychee](https://lychee.cli.rs/) tool to verify broken links
 - Now the website READMEs has instructions to install [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/)
+- Ribbon added explanation comments on most configuration files of the build system.
+- Wildan Murdock copied the instructions to build a recipe with relibc on the relibc README.
+- Ribbon did a big cleanup of the comments on the configuration files of the build system.
+- Ribbon updated the screenshots of the `redox` repository README.
+
+## Website Improvements
+
+- Now the Home page is clear that we aim to be a complete Linux/BSD alternative.
+- The RedoxFS section context on the FAQ was fixed.
+- Some sections of the FAQ were improved.
 
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