Holy baloney!
I just downloaded the iso of the 3.15 original release candidate, burned it, and installed it...and that one works!! Well...it got passed the 'Installing devices' at least. The first time, it sort of got stuck later on, while showing the window 'registering'. It didn't freeze up, though (mouse still worked), but it sat there for ages, doing nothing.
However, I recalled from earlier testing, where I had a similar problem, that maybe I shouldn't have localised it with my language, keyboardlayout and time. So the second time, I went with the default US setting. And lo and behold, now it went through, and everything works. (apart from the automatic driver instalments, which didn't amount to any succes. Which is strange, in fact, since I recall that at least my ethernetcard worked and was supported; wasn't that driver added to the 3.15, so it could auto-install it correctly?
But anyway: since that one works, and the latest in trunk doesn't (61142 borks on my real HW), it DOES seem indeed that there is some kind of regression.
Edit: Further testing; driver for ethernetcard (realtek RTL8139C) does not seem to auto-install, even though it's supposed to be a supported card (and I got it to work in the 3.14 testing). I tried to download it, place it on usb and via that way get it on ROS, but it seems ROS, even in the 3.15 version, does not recognise USB.
Tried it to place it on a CD, but - apart from being unstable and sometimes recognising there is a CD-RW in it, and other times not, it had some difficulties finding stuff that wasn't explicitly burned onto it, and even then the instalment of the realtec drivers didn't go as planned.I had an exe which installed it, and that seemed to work as it should, but even after a reboot, I still don't get netwerkconnection. And...it STILL does not seem possible to reinstall a driver?? When I go to 'system', 'hardware', in Windows, you have the possibility to reinstall, but not in ROS. You can't even delete it, and then do a successful search for new hardware, as one can in Windows. I've noted this before, and I repeat this is a seriously annoying thing for real hardware-testing. And it only needs a trivial (for a coder) amount in recoding this; one just has to provide a button that re-enacts the window you get when first installing ROS, where it DOES ask for (to search for) a driver. So it doesn't need some grand recoding, just something that relaunches that particular code (which already exists in ROS). Can't a developer *please* look at this? Pretty please?
Also: tried out FF12; still borks, just as in 3.14. Tried out installing FF3.6; still works, just as with 3.14.
Anyway, it seems, if I want netwerkconnection, I *still* have to do it the long and tedious way of reinstalling ROS, and then search for the right driver that I now burned on a disc when ROS starts up for the first time. It's *really* annoying to have to do a complete reinstall everytime you want to test out a driver on real HW, guys.
Edit2:re-installed ROS, manually selected the driver from my CD, reinstalled FF3.6, and... it worked! Have networkconnection. Installed old version of standalone flash (otherwise, FF didn't perform all to well when visualising things) Started up FF again, and am currently downloading Ur-Quan masters (though this time the HD version), to redo the exact things I tested with 3.14.