March Release and Dev Update

Note: Updated the release on 3/27 for a patch fix when using animated gifs.

The March release is here. I'll update the pinned post with the code (you'll always find the latest there). This is a 'code only' update so if you don't have a base image laid down, you'll want to start with that, and then apply this code.

The code for march is: pi2024Mar-fb-33f1cf3. This code goes into the 'store' page. Please see the pinned post for full instructions, the original base image, and links to the docs.

What's new:
This is a performance and stability update. We've been chasing down memory leaks and performance issues for a while, and Lou (again) found a whole goldmine of bad decisions and code as he dug through work we had done early on in the project and hadn't touched. Finding a ton of bad issues is a great start, but getting them all fixed and then getting things stable takes time and work. He's been hard at work for the past two months doing releases, and the alpha and beta teams have been amazing on discord coming back with feedback and finding issues. After what I believe was 2 months of development, Lou all of the sudden sent an image to Qwk and I simply labeled..'Plan B'. And almost as if by magic all of the issues we were hitting went away, and things were rock solid...but he managed to keep the memory and performance wins!

I don't know if we'll ever understand what PlanB was, but after 2 months of fighting to get to stable and release, I don't know if I care. We're here, the release has had great feedback from our amazing testers, and we're excited to share it with you.

What's next:
- WebUI update - This is on track to go into Alpha in early April. I was hoping for late March, but after that 2 month grind we're going to take a week.
- Pi5 support - We now have pi5s on the team and are tackling this as well. I'll keep you updated on progress....it's been...challenging.
- Bookworm support - I thought this and pi5 were the same, but I'm finding that we will likely be able to support bookworm before pi5. Please keep in mind that the release we do for bookworm (the latest raspberry pi os) will require a clean install. We can't code update that one.

Thankyou for your patience and support on this release. This will be most noticable for those that are using images that are over 1080p, or that are heavily using overlays. The performance and memory usage should be solid.

Thanks,

Joe on behalf of the Dynaframe team