NetbookInstaller 0.8.5pre is now officially released. There will not be a final release of NBI 0.8.4. This is a preview / prerelease of the changes in store for 0.8.5, there are bound to be numerous bugs. Once bugs reported to Meklort are worked out + features finalized, he will release a 0.8.5 RC and go from there.

This version is very experimental and will most likely break things that are working. There are a few major changes in this version that have not been very well tested, so there may be regressions issues. The main highlights include that NetbookInstaller and NetbookBootMaker have been merged into one application. As far as Meklort can tell, there shouldnt be any issues with this.

The next major change is that NetbookInstaller nolonger patches the graphics and wireless kexts, this is done in the bootloader instead.  What this means is that NBI no longer has to run after a major update to patch the operating system. It still does for now due to a bug with the Apple hda driver. The kext patching feature is experimental in the bootloader and may fail if the struction of a kernel extension changes after an update. In the event that this happens, the worse case scenario is that you will no longer have either wifi, QE, or both. In either case, Meklort will make sure that there is an update to fix the problem if he haven’t already released one. Do note that this change will cause the boot up process to take a longer time until the spinner, however it should be slightly shorter after that.

Lastly, Meklort has been focusing on supporting the Dell mini 1012 in this release, and support should be on par with the Dell Mini 1011 with the exception of hardware acceleration. The GMA3150 frambuffer kernel extension is patched in the boot loader, however the hardware acceleration kext is not yet.

via Meklorts Blog.