Quirky 8.1.6 x86_64 released

This new Quirky is codenamed "SlaQ" and is built from Slackware 14.2 binary packages.

The background, announcement and release notes are here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/slaq-8.1.6/release-slaq-8.1.6.htm

A very brief announcement blurb:

Quirky Linux 8.1.6 x86_64 is codenamed "SlaQ" and is built using the woofQ Quirky Linux build system, using Slackware 14.2 binary packages. Thus, SlaQ has compatibility with all of the Slackware repositories, including "slacky" and "salix".
Quirky is a fork of Puppy Linux, and is mainly differentiated by being a "full installation" only, with special snapshot and recovery features, and Service Pack upgrades.

Instructions to install are here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/slaq-8.1.6/howto-install.htm

Quoting from the above link:

SlaQ is provided as a 8GB USB Flash stick image, or for an SD-card. This file may be written to an 8GB or greater Flash stick. In the latter case, at first bootup there will be an offer to increase the filesystem to fill the drive.

Very easy install instructions for Windows users. The above link explains how to install from the commandline in Linux, though I intend to develop a simple GUI.

For those who still want one, there is also a live-CD ISO file.

Download
The primary download host is Ibiblio:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/slaq-8.1.6/

There are faster mirrors, such as NLUUG:
http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/quirky/quirky6/amd64/releases/slaq-8.1.6/

You will notice that the Flash-stick image file is 398MB. The reason it is so large (by Puppy standards) is because it is gzip compressed. The same file xz-compressed is only 238MB.
Gzip compression is used as that is understood by many Windows image-writer applications. The *.img.gz file is very easy to install for Windows users.

The live-CD ISO is 304MB. It is smaller because internally it uses xz compression.

Issues
There are some known issues.

1. There is Bluetooth support, but it needs work.
2. SeaMonkey has a few problems. It is stuck on DuckDuckGo for starters.
3. Paste into a terminal, does not wrap.

Also, the build does not have Samba. Nor python, but v2.7 is in the "devx" PET.

Regarding SeaMonkey, it is version 2.46. The SM developers released 2.40 in March 2016, then nothing until 2.46 was released at the end of December 2016. Perhaps they were under pressure to get something out. Whatever, 2.46 has multiple issues, mostly annoyances.

Tags: quirky, linux