site  contact  subhomenews

The return of Pyro64

October 23, 2017 — BarryK

Every now and again, I get frustrated by the bloatedness and weirdness of Ubuntu and Debian DEBs, that I am using in Quirky and Easy builds. I did play with Pyro64, packages compiled from source in OpenEmbedded, but only briefly.

But have just completed a compile in OE, for the x86_64 architecture (not x32), and built a new Pyro64, and it sure is looking good.

The difference in size of deployed distro is incredible. Quirky Pyro64 (now at version 0.3.3) is 274MB, and that includes LibreOffice, whereas Quirky Xerus 8.3 is 331MB. These have about the same functionality. Furthermore, I will probably be able to reduce the size of the Pyro64 build, as this is an early pre-alpha build.

If Pyro64 is so good, why did I previously go back to building with Ubuntu DEBs?

Well, there were some issues at the time, for example with the video. However, I have tackled some of these, and things are looking very good.

Then there is the Ubuntu DEB repository. I guess that is the big thing, so convenient. With Pyro64, everything has to be compiled. Almost, there is a small repo of packages that I compiled, and we can add to it.

So, 'oe-qky-src' is active again:

https://github.com/bkauler/oe-qky-src/commits/master

Oh, one other thing. SeaMonkey is running without spitting out heaps of complaints to stderr -- that is very reassuring. I am wondering if I am just imagining things, but everything seems faster, including SeaMonkey.

The Pyro64 binary packages can be used for building Quirky and Easy. I am thinking, will bring out another Quirky, and if testers like it, might go the same way for Easy.

Tags: oe