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YouTube tutorial kernel rollback

November 15, 2026 — BarryK

I posted to this blog recently about kernel rollback:

Have now recorded a tutorial on YouTube:

"EasyOS Part25: Kernel rollback"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpPZJxdwQDY

Been awhile since recorded a tutorial. Have in mind to do more, but not sure when.   

Tags: easy

Detect builtin wl.ko when EasyOS update

November 15, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member retiredt00 contributed a fix for updating the broadcom .pet package, that has the wl.ko kernel module, when there is a version update of EasyOS:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=165617#p165617

Recent discussion about this topic:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=179914#p179914

A complication now, is that wl.ko may be builtin, not as a separate .pet package. In script /usr/local/easy_version/easy-update, I have added a wrapper around retiredt00's code:

#20260306 retiredt00 ref: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=165617#p165617
# Download the broadcom wireless driver if used and there is a kernel update
#20261115 determine if wl.ko builtin...
WLbuiltin=0
if [ -e /mnt/.easy_ro/linux-kernel-old/usr/lib/modules/${KERNVER}/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wl.ko ];then
 WLbuiltin=1
#elif [ -e /mnt/.easy_ro/easy_sfs/usr/lib/modules/${KERNVER}/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wl.ko ];then
# WLbuiltin=1
else
 unsquashfs -l "$MNTPT2"/easyos/easy.sfs | grep -q -F '/wl.ko'
 [ $? -eq 0 ] && WLbuiltin=1
fi
if [ $WLbuiltin -eq 0 ];then
 ...retiredt00 code...
fi

So, if one of the rollback kernel SFSs is loaded, with wl.ko in it, then no need to update the broadcom .pet.

Or, if decide in some future easy.sfs to have wl.ko builtin, again, no need for a broadcom .pet

The logic seems OK.  

Tags: easy

EasyOS Excalibur-series 7.5.3 released

November 13, 2026 — BarryK

Changes since 7.5.1:

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/7.5.3/

Feedback welcome:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=179832#p179832

Have fun!   

Tags: easy

Yradio 1.9.6-1

November 11, 2026 — BarryK

fredx181 has bumped version, see here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=179701#p179701

...great!   

Tags: easy

Fix for Osmo has no close box

November 11, 2026 — BarryK

I posted about a workaround fix:

...not elegant.

This is a better fix, I have edited the source:

img1

...a message in the titlebar. The patched source will be in next upload of woofQ2.    

Tags: easy

EasyOS logo

November 10, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member pp4mnk asked what is the EasyOS logo.

It is shown in various places, as png images, but here are the original SVG files:

img1

Green:

img2

Blue:

img3

Orange:

img7

Look left, orange:

img4

Logo look right, orange:

img6

There are some more, for example, red:

img8

These replaced an earlier logo used in EasyOS, not sure what year.   

Tags: easy

Simplification of version update

November 10, 2026 — BarryK

When you click the "update" icon on the desktop, there is a check to see if there is a later version of EasyOS online. If yes, then there is a check to see if there is a delta file, which looks like "easy-7.5-amd64.img___easy-7.5.1-amd64.img.delta"; if so, then the delta file is downloaded, instead of the full "easy-7.5.1-amd64.img", which is about 1.1GB.

However, ibiblio.org has an rsync server, and rsync has the ability to generate a delta-difference between an online file and a local file. This will do it:

rsync --progress -av rsync.ibiblio.org::easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/7.5.2/easy-7.5.2-amd64.img ./easy-7.5.1-amd64.img

rsync is very clever, it will figure out a delta difference and only download that, so instead of 1.1Gb, the download will be considerably smaller, say about 200MB, depending on how different the online and local files are.

Doing away with delta files and using rsync results in a huge simplification of the download scripts. This is part of /usr/local/easy_version/easy-update:

#20261110
#find out if any .img, delete any others...
LASTIMG="$(ls -1 easy-*.img 2>/dev/null | sort -V -t "-" -k 2,2 | tail -n 1)"
if [ -n "$LASTIMG" ];then
 mv -f ${LASTIMG} XXX${LASTIMG}
 rm -f easy-*.img 2>/dev/null #get rid of any others.
 rm -f ${DISTRO_NAME_SHORT,,}-*.img 2>/dev/null #20230305
 sync
 mv -f XXX${LASTIMG} ${LASTIMG}
else
 #create a temporary img file...
 echo
 echo -en '\033[1;35m' #bright magenta
 echo "$(gettext 'Creating a temporary .img file...')"
 echo -en '\033[0;39m' #reset.
 /usr/local/easy_version/create-temp-img
 #...creates /mnt/wkg/easy-temp.img
 LASTIMG='easy-temp.img'
fi

#20261110 now use rsync to download...
echo
echo -en '\033[1;35m' #bright magenta
echo "$(gettext 'Downloading') ${DISTRO_NAME_SHORT,,}-${latestVER}-${DISTRO_TARGETARCH}.img ..."
echo -en '\033[0;39m' #reset.
rsync --progress -av rsync.ibiblio.org::easyos/${DISTRO_TARGETARCH}/releases/excalibur/${DISTRO_VERSION}/easy-${latestVER}-${DISTRO_TARGETARCH}.img ./${LASTIMG}
if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
 mv -f ${LASTIMG} easy-${latestVER}-${DISTRO_TARGETARCH}.img
else
 #fail.
 echo
 echo -en '\033[1;31m' #bright red.
 echo "$(gettext 'Something went wrong with the download. Aborting')"
 echo -en '\033[0;39m' #reset.
 rm -rf ./.cache 2>/dev/null
 echo -e "\033[1;31m${MSGexit}\033[0;39m"
 exit 9
fi

There is also /usr/local/easy_version/easy-update-devx that does the same thing.

Notice in the above code, there is a call to /usr/local/easy_version/create-temp-img. This is a new script that will create a .img file, by grabbing vmlinuz, initrd and easy*.sfs, so initially it won't matter if you haven't got a .img file at /mnt/wkg, one will be created. Then rsync will do the delta thing to create the .img of the latest version.

It is a real neat mechanism, very simple. From the user's point of view, there is less to think about, you don't even need to keep a /mnt/wkg/easy-<version>-amd64.img, as it will get auto-generated if not there.    

Tags: easy

EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.5.1 released

November 09, 2026 — BarryK

Hot on the heels of 7.5, various improvements:

Download from:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.5.1/

Or the mirrors:

https://mirror.lug.umbc.edu/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.5.1/

https://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.5.1/

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.5.1/

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=179540#p179540

Have fun!  

Tags: easy