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Linux 6.6.75 kernel compiled

February 05, 2025 — BarryK

EasyOS Scarthgap and Daedalus series have used the 6.6.x kernel, up until recently. Scarthgap 6.6 has the 6.12.11 kernel and 6.6.1 has the 6.12.12 kernel.

It has put me in a quandary, as the AVS audio driver does not work (it loaded on my Acer Aspire 1 but no sound, whereas legacy driver works), and the 6.12 kernel has removed many legacy audio drivers, forcing us to in some cases use AVS. Which is bad if the fallback legacy driver is no longer there.

I would like to rollback to a LTS kernel before 6.12, but unfortunately that is 6.6. The inbetween, 6.8, 6.9, 6.11, are all EOL.

But there is good news. Although kernels after 6.6 have improvements for the Intel Core Ultra 7 and Ark GPU, I have compiled 6.6.75 and video and sound now both work on my Asus Zenbook S13. This is using the i915 video driver and legacy audio driver.

So, going to stay with the 6.6.x kernel for Scarthgap, and probably Daedalus also. For now anyway.

Although I want EasyOS to work on recent laptops, the main focus is that Easy will work on older computers, right back to the very first with 64-bit CPU. I want all the legacy drivers.   

Tags: easy

Fix unmute when boot different audio hw

February 04, 2025 — BarryK

I was reminded of this problem when testing booting Easy Scarthgap 6.6.1 from USB-stick on my collection of computers.

At the very first bootup, script /usr/bin/delayedrun unmutes the audio and sets a level of 80%. That's good, but then bootup on other computers and the audio icon in the tray shows as muted, with level 8%, then requires manual unmute and set level.

This is now fixed. Bootup on a different computer for the first time, and audio is unmuted and set to 80%. See commit:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/805604c9e9cffcaedbe923fae25e21fdb8f4eede   

Tags: easy

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.6.1 released

February 04, 2025 — BarryK

Version 6.6 was release on January 29, 2025:

And the Daedalus-series version 6.5.7 also on January 29:

Here are the highlights of Scarthgap 6.6.1, relative to 6.6:

The 6.12.12 kernel with completely disabled audio AVS and video Xe drivers, is an experiment. OK on my computers, except for my Zenbook laptop Xorg did not start, and had to run 'xorgwizard'; chose "modesetting" driver and let Xorg choose the resolution, then Xorg worked. Don't know why didn't work first go, whereas the 6.12.11 kernel did.

Then there is AVS. In the 6.12 kernel apparently some legacy audio drivers have been removed, intended to be replaced by AVS. Let me know if audio fails on your computer.

Download:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2025/6.6.1/

...which also has release notes and getting-started readme.

Fast mirror in Europe:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2025/

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=141926#p141926

have fun!    

Tags: easy

Global IP TV Panel updated to 2024MK10

February 03, 2025 — BarryK

Forum member ETP created and maintains this, see forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=689

He has to update often, as the URLs change. I am grateful for the time he puts into doing this, as I sometimes watch a streaming TV channel. It is good to have a selection of different political viewpoints, such as CGTN (Chinese English news) and Sky News (Western right-wing). Ha ha, "Western right-wing" is an understatement.        

Tags: easy

Lockdown and disable drives fix

February 03, 2025 — BarryK

EasyOS has the capability of booting up running totally in RAM with the drives disabled. There are actually two types; not actually disabled, just all unmounted, and secondly truly disabled. There is an introductory webpage:

"Ultra-secure web browsing"
https://easyos.org/user/ultra-secure-web-browsing.html

Alfons reported a problem with lockdown, that turned out to not be a problem; however, while testing lockdown I noticed something else -- the "save" icon was missing from the desktop. The original "update" icon was there, but it was supposed to be replaced by a "save" icon.

Booting up in lockdown mode, there is an information window, and the "save" icon should be there, like this:

img1

Testing on my Lenovo Ideacentre which has 32GB RAM. That free space of 45.3GB is due to running in /dev/zram0 in RAM, which has a compressed ext2 filesystem.

I fixed it, so the "save" icon is back:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/ee7f748794756f72e22a789f27f66859bf39bd72

Hmmm, this bug has been there since usr-merge was implemented in Easy. I wonder how many people tried EasyOS lockdown mode, it didn't work properly and they just moved on, without reporting it. Or maybe lockdown mode hasn't attracted any attention.

Changing the subject, when there is a change of kernel, some files in /usr/lib/modules get left behind. Just a tidyup, removing them:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/dd70ac336358c6cc4e44b9d67c4064c2e5d613d5   

Tags: easy

Linux kernel 6.12.12 configured without AVS and Xe

February 03, 2025 — BarryK

I have compiled the 6.12.12 kernel with these disabled:

Device Drivers -> Sound card support -> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture -> ALSA for SoC audio support
    < > Intel AVS driver (CONFIG_SND_SOC_INTEL_AVS, snd_soc_avs.ko)
Device Drivers -> Graphics support -> Direct rendering manager
    < > Intel Xe graphics (CONFIG_DRM_XE, xe.ko)

This is a retrograde direction, so I need to justify it...

The 6.12 kernel has (apparently) dropped support for some legacy audio drivers, replaced with the AVS driver. However, AVS is still immature and doesn't work for me. See blog post yesterday:

By removing some legacy drivers, the kernel developers are trying to force us to use AVS (which doesn't work). This is most unfortunate, but testing on a wide range of computers, so far they work fine without AVS. So, decided to go with that, remove AVS from the kernel.

This avoids conflict, so that audio will work "out of the box", without the user having to mess around, such as blacklist the snd_soc_avs module.

Then there is Xe; I can't get that to work either. The xe.ko kernel driver is supposed to be the replacement for i915.ko; however, i915.ko is still being developed, and still, apparently, works with recent Intel GPUs -- confirmed for me on my Asus Zenbook S13 with Ultra 7 CPU and GPU. Probably the time will come when i915 falls behind and we will be forced to use xe.ko, but for now, decided to disable Xe.

Intend that the next release of Easy Scarthgap will have this kernel, and I invite everyone to test, boot it from USB-stick on your collection of computers, report back any failure of audio or video.

just thinking... would be nice if someone could figure out a patch to restore the removed legacy audio drivers.    

Tags: easy

Intel sound avs driver still too immature

February 02, 2025 — BarryK

Easy Scarthgap version 6.6 has the 6.12.11 kernel. Forum member anilraj reported that sound does not work on his laptop, see this thread, page-1:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=13731

Yes, Intel developers have been working on a replacement for the legacy sound drivers, named "Audio Voice Speech" (AVS). It has been under development for many years; however, now in the 6.12 kernel it is being forced upon us, see Phoronix post:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.12-Sound-Drivers

I found one computer, my Acer Aspire 1 laptop, that hits the same sound problem that anilraj has reported. This is interesting, as I tested on my collection of seven laptop and desktop computers with Intel chipsets, and running with the 6.12.11 kernel they all load the legacy sound driver and sound works -- except one, the Aspire 1.

My Aspire 1 attempts to load the kernel 'snd_soc_avs.ko' kernel module, but "dmesg" shows that some firmware is missing. There is relevant firmware at /usr/lib/firmware/intel/avs in the "linux-firmware" package, but incomplete. However, I found the missing firmware here:

https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-intel-sound

But now it is very frustrating, as the snd_soc_avs module loads and dmesg reports all required firmware loaded, and the pulseaudio mixer shows the audio interface exists ...but there is no sound.

So, as was suggested in the forum thread, snd_soc_avs can be blacklisted. You can do this in the BootManager, that you can run by clicking on the deskup "setup" icon, then choose the "EasyOS" tab, then click on the "Bootup" button.

Or, you can do it directly. Open /etc/rc.d/MODULESCONFIG and edit the "SKIPLIST" variable -- make sure there is a trailing space. Reboot, saving the session.

If this is done, my Aspire 1 falls back to loading the "snd_hda_intel" kernel module, and sound works. Interesting, because according to the Phoronix article, a lot of legacy sound drivers have been removed. Yet, they are still there in all seven of my computers. The Aspire 1 has an Intel Broxton chipset, and from online reading I thought that this is one of the legacy drivers that has been removed.

Here is some more information about audio changes in 6.12:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/87wmje9oav.wl-tiwai@suse.de/

So, a solution is to blacklist "snd_soc_avs". Yes, could do that; however, given that all my computers still work with the legace sound drivers, same thing from tests in the forum thread and other online reports, I am tempted to recompile the kernel with AVS disabled. At least until the Intel developers get their act together.   

Tags: easy

More Russian translations

January 31, 2025 — BarryK

I don't always announce language translation contributions on this blog. Today received more ru translations from Dmitry (forum member Maybe). See github:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/8ce1e0ebb1343553af1f36738571bad71b83cba5

Right now, French, German and Russian translations are the most complete, followed by Turkish.

For anyone who would like to contribute, see the tutorial here:

https://easyos.org/dev/translate-easyos-to-your-language.html

And see this forum thread:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8070   

Tags: easy