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EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.4.5

July 29, 2026 — BarryK

Important fixes since 7.4.4, and new graphical installer:

Have dropped gtk2-ng, back on Debian's gtk2 packages. Have reported a bug to the gtk2-ng project site:

https://git.devuan.org/Daemonratte/gtk2-ng/issues/27

The graphical installer, "Easy Installer", is a beta-release. Testers are most welcome, but probably best if you test on a computer that you don't mind if something goes wrong. Well, it may be 100% OK, but at this stage cannot make any guarantees. Well, can never make a guarantee of 100% infallibility.

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.4.5/

Newcomers to EasyOS are recommended to read the version 7.4 announcement, as it has more details:

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=174637#p174637

Have fun!   

Tags: easy

Xdialog displays date incorrectly

July 29, 2026 — BarryK

If you click on the clock icon in the tray, there is a menu, one entry being "Set date and time". This ends up running /usr/sbin/set-time-for-puppy, which runs this:

# Xdialog --stdout --title "$TITLE" --calendar "$(gettext 'Please set the date...')" 0 0 0 0 0

However, as was reported to me recently, the date is displayed incorrectly. Today is Wednesday 29th July:

img1

Xdialog is a gtk2 application, it relies upon getting locale and date information via gtk2.

Xdialog calendar has worked for us for "forever", right back from the early Puppy days. So, what has gone wrong?

I tested in Easy Scarthgap, calendar is OK. used the Scarthgap Xdialog utility in Excalibur, get the wrong date. This is looking suspiciously like something wrong with gtk2. Unfortunately, that means gtk2-ng. WoofQ2 has a configuration file, woofq2/configure/x86_64/build-choices (/root/.packages/build-choices in a runnging EasyOS), with these lines:

#20260602 yes or anything else for no...
BUILD_X_XLIBRE='no'
#20260608
BUILD_GTK2_NG='yes'

...I had already abandoned Xlibre, as it causes the Xorg nouveau driver to crash Xorg, reported awhile back but still not fixed. All that they have done is deprecate the nouveau driver, to use modesetting drive instead.

Now it is looking like will have to abandon gtk2-ng also. Yes, I also checked an EasyOS Excalibur version before using gtk2-ng, and the Xdialog calendar is OK.    

Tags: easy

New desktop icon sets

July 28, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member nilsonmorales has created these, see forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=174371#p174371

I have packaged these into PET packages and uploaded to the "noarch" repository:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/noarch/packages/pet/pet_packages-noarch/

The new packages are:

desk_icon_theme_3dfluency-20260728.pet
desk_icon_theme_arcade-20260728.pet
desk_icon_theme_color_glass-20260728.pet
desk_icon_theme_stickers-20260728.pet
desk_icon_theme_w11byicond8-20260728.pet

These will be available via the PKGget package manager in the next release of EasyOS. You can of course download them directly now, if you want to try them immediately.     

Tags: easy

YouTube video icon-free desktop

July 28, 2026 — BarryK

This video shows how to switch between the default icons-on-desktop and icon-free -desktop, and usage while in icon-free desktop:

"EasyOS Part23: Icon-free desktop"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btg2MAdS36I    

Tags: easy

Tray power-applet now beeps when low

July 26, 2026 — BarryK

Someone requested this recently, and I was reminded when my laptop suddenly died today.

The battery level indicator in the tray does start to flash when very low; however, I didn't notice it. The sudden death is not graceful; my Zenbook loses its date setting and I have to reset it. Logging into gmail, have to revalidate with a message to my phone.

So, have modified the source of 'powerapplet_tray' in woofQ2, so that now it beeps every 15 seconds. The file is /usr/share/audio/error.wav. The new source is:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/source/alphabetical/p/powerapplet_tray-3.1.tar.gz

That one has been on the back-burner for a very long time.    

Tags: easy

EasyClone copy user-installed kernel modules

July 26, 2026 — BarryK

EasyClone was discussed somewhere in the forum. Ah, yes, recall, it was in relation to the graphical installer:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=17171

If the person has booted up Easy from a usb-stick, got it all setup nicely, used it for awhile, then decides would like to install to internal drive of the computer, EasyClone is optionally used to copy selectively the setup of the currently-running Easy to the new installation. Like for example, browser configuration, history, bookmarks.

The EasyClone GUI has a checkbox to select the kernel modules setup. The "Kernel modules (blacklist, etc.)" checkbox can be seen here:

https://easyos.org/install/how-to-clone-a-easyos-installation.html

However, one thing is missed. The person may have installed the Broadcom wifi wl.ko module, which is available as a PET package. if that particular checkbox is ticked, then any user-installed kernel modules should also be cloned.

I have added a lines to /usr/local/easy_install/easyclone script:

if [ "$EXC8" == "true" ];then #kernel modules
 mkdir -p /mnt/${WKG_DEV}/EASYCLONE/.session/session1/etc/rc.d
 cp -a -f /mnt/wkg/.session/session1/etc/modprobe.d* /mnt/${WKG_DEV}/EASYCLONE/.session/session1/etc/ 2>/dev/null
 cp -a -f /mnt/wkg/.session/session1/etc/rc.d/MODULESCONFIG /mnt/${WKG_DEV}/EASYCLONE/.session/session1/etc/rc.d/ 2>/dev/null
 #20260725 user may have installed the broadcom wl.ko pet package...
 if [ -d /mnt/${WKG_DEV}/${WKG_DIR}.session/session1/usr/lib/modules/${KERNVER} ];then
  cd /mnt/${WKG_DEV}/${WKG_DIR}.session/session1
  find usr/lib/modules/${KERNVER} -mindepth 2 -type f -name '*.ko' -exec cp --parents {} /mnt/${WKG_DEV}/EASYCLONE/.session/session1/ \;
  cd /
 fi
fi

Note, the Broadcom module is provided as a PET package, not builtin to 'easy.sfs', as it is a proprietary closed source driver, and conflicts with the open-source drivers provided with the kernel; these are bcma, b43, brcmsmac, ssb -- these may have to be blacklisted to be able to use the Broadcom wl.ko module. The wl module is preferred by some people as has superior performance.       

Tags: easy

YouTube EasyOS Part22 installer continued

July 25, 2026 — BarryK

The latest post is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKZHwp_Qqgg

This introduces installing to an entire drive.   

Tags: easy

OpenShot video editor issues

July 24, 2026 — BarryK

As I am now creating videos for YouTube, need to learn how to use a video editor. YouTube has an online editor, that allows some very limited operations on a video after it has been uploaded. For example, can cut out sections. It is not allowed to edit the uploaded video offline then re-upload.

The first major problem with OpenShot is that videos I am recording on my Zenbook laptop are 1728x1080 pixels. Searching online, there are instructions that there is a button to set a custom video resolution; however, it doesn't exist. Maybe that was in an earlier version of OpenShot?

Eventually, found that had to create a file in the home folder. In my case, as running OpenShot as user "openshot", the path to the file is /home/openshot/.openshot_qt/profiles and I named the file 'custom_1728x1080' with this content:

description=Custom 1728x1080
frame_rate_num=24
frame_rate_den=1
width=1728
height=1080
progressive=1
sample_aspect_num=1
sample_aspect_den=1
display_aspect_num=1
display_aspect_den=1
colorspace=709

It then showed up in the list of resolutions in OpenShot.

I have had a brief look at ShotCut, and I would like to comment that ShotCut has a big tick, as has a simple setting, to set the project to same resolution as the imported video.

Then, the next issue is that the video is distorted in the preview window:

img1

But, worse to come, when exported, just got a black window with audio only. My video has stock-standard h264 video and aac audio, so that shouldn't be a problem. After some online searching, found advice to update to a later version. I was using the OpenShot package from the Debian repository, version 3.1.1.

So, downloaded the latest AppImage, version 3.5.1, and now exports video and audio OK. Also, correct video resolution, despite the distortion in the preview window.

I have updated Appi, the AppImage package manager in EasyOS, to OpenShot 3.5.1.

If you want to read more about OpenShot:

https://www.openshot.org/

So, what do I reckon about OpenShot. Chose it because Google AI stated that it is the easiest to use. Yes, the user interface is nice. However, have played with ShotCut briefly, well, only 10-15 minutes, and have the impression it is a step-up from OpenShot. next up, going to have a good look at ShotCut.  

Tags: easy