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EasyCast screen recorder fixed

June 10, 2026 — BarryK

Finally, after so many years, thinking of making some videos about EasyOS, for posting on YouTube. I used EasyCast a couple of years ago, and it worked. But now it is broken.

Some missing icons, which caused a crash. Fixed that, but then found it was not correctly detecting the microphone input. Also, underlying utility, 'recordmydesktop', is designed for ALSA. Fixed both of those. The PET has been bumped from version 2.0 to 2.1.

A bit of history; EasyCast was originally created by Argolance in the old forum, in 2009, then SFR worked on it in 2015, and me in 2022.

In 2022, posted to the blog:

https://bkhome.org/news/202203/easycast-20-screen-recording.html

...remarked on a lapel microphone having high background hum. Yes, a microphone does need electronic noise-cancelling. I have a Creative HS-230 headset, with boom microphone -- background noise quite low.




Tags: easy

DropboxGUI file manager fixed

June 10, 2026 — BarryK

You will find this in the "Internet" category of the menu. Google-AI summary:

Dropbox is a secure cloud storage platform that lets you store, sync, and share files across all your devices.
Founded in 2007, it operates by creating a dedicated folder on your computer that automatically backs up and updates your content to the cloud.Core
FeaturesCloud Storage & Syncing: Access your documents, photos, and videos from anywhere using a computer, phone, or tablet.
File Sharing & Collaboration: Send large files easily to anyone, even if they don’t have a Dropbox account, by simply sharing a link.
Smart Sync: Save hard drive space by accessing cloud files directly from your desktop without downloading them locally.
Version History: Accidentally deleted or ruined a file? You can easily review and restore older drafts

Dropbox website:

https://www.dropbox.com/dropbox

DropboxGUI is a really nice file-manager like interface to your Dropbox storage. However, our PET, created by mikeb, no longer works, due to an API change. fredx181 has fixed it:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=17004

That's great, I have updated the PET.    

Tags: easy

FlatOrange desktop icon theme updated

June 10, 2026 — BarryK

The FlatOrange desktop icon theme is at /usr/local/lib/X11/themes/FlatOrange. It is builtin in woofQ2. It was created a very long time ago, in the very early Puppy Linux days, and was lacking some icons now required in EasyOS. Forum member retiredt00 has fixed that:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=169653#p169653

We do have a lot of old PET packages that are in the same boat, see "desk_icon_theme*" packages:

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

...look at the dates, see how old some of them are.   

Tags: easy

gtk2-ng introspection compile fix

June 09, 2026 — BarryK

Easy 7.3.9 has gtk-ng, compiled with "--introspection=no". This was raised as an issue:

https://git.devuan.org/Daemonratte/gtk2-ng/issues/21

Great, now fixed.

We have been discussing gtk2-ng in the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16898  

Tags: easy

EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.3.9 released

June 09, 2026 — BarryK

This is a release-candidate for 7.4, marking a fundamental commitment to a "legacy" architecture, embracing Xlibre and gtk2-ng. And, finally successful, supporting Sound Open Firmware (SOF), so audio will work on very modern computers.

Changes since 7.3.8:

Note, not built with excalibur-backports repository (as is version 7.3.8).

ROX-Filer is one of our fantastic gtk2-based apps, and we have been on a roll enhancing it; the latest feature is video-thumbnails. We intend that a lot of other excellent but neglected gtk2-based apps will find their way into EasyOS.

Release notes, showing details of past releases:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3.9/release-notes.htm

Download the drive image file:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3.9/

If you are a newcomer to EasyOS, please read the version 7.3 announcement, as it has more getting-started information:

Also, an overview of how and why EasyOS is unique:

https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.html

The change to an SOF-enabled kernel brings with it some trepidation, given past troubles. Let me know if you experience any audio issues, like no sound or some input or output channels being wrong.

Hopefully, we will just fix and tweak a few things, then with great fanfare release version 7.4!

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=171787#p171787

Have fun!   

Tags: easy

EasyOS built with gtk2-ng

June 08, 2026 — BarryK

Posted a couple of days ago, the next release of EasyOS will be built with Xlibre, replacing Devuan's X11 packages. GTK version 2 has also been revived, the project is named "gtk2-ng", here:

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

I have compiled it in woofQ2; however had to configure with "--enable-introspection=no". Raised an issue:

https://git.devuan.org/Daemonratte/gtk2-ng/issues/21

...undefined symbols, looks like a header file is missing somewhere.

Anyway, going ahead with putting this into the next release of Easy, without the gobject introspection; currently no gtk2-based apps need it, none being builtin to Easy anyway. There are some python-based apps that need introspection, but they are using gtk3.   

Tags: easy

ROX-Filer video thumbnails

June 08, 2026 — BarryK

I recently received an email from Rick, reminding me that he would very much like if ROX supports video thumbnails. I vaguely recall, someone else on the forum also made this request. Personally, I had no interest, so let it slide, until now.

How to do it is described in the original ROX User Manual:

https://rox.sourceforge.net/Manual/Manual/Manual.html#id2504872

However, we found that it doesn't work. We have discussed the problem in the forum, and we found that the Jun7 fork of ROX does work, but the original source, the woof-CE source, and my own fork of ROX in woofQ2, do not. Forum member Burunduk found the reason, that the .png thumbnails need metadata:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16991

Excellent, but I found that my fork used in EasyOS still doesn't work; which narrowed down to a particular source patch. Took out the patch, and now works. We will examine that patch sometime in the future. Anyway, now working in EasyOS:

img1

ROX looks for scripts in /etc/xdg/rox.sourceforge.net/MIME-thumb to generate the thumbnails.

img2

For example, script 'video_mp4':

#!/bin/sh
# $1-path to source, $2-path to output, $3-pixel size 
exec ffmpegthumbnailer -i "${1}" -s ${3} -t 10 -q 8 -a -m -o ${2}

...ffmpegthumbnailer is a little binary executable, available via PKGget. All of this will be in the next release of Easy.

This is a nice feature to have. We are on a roll recently, improving ROX, so this is one more.   

Tags: easy

Kernel 6.12.92 compiled with SOF enabled

June 07, 2026 — BarryK

Yes, having another go! Here is blog post about the previous attempt:

Forum member NNI has compiled the kernel and reports success:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=171595#p171595

I have used basically the same kernel config, except disabled some "Kernel hacking" debug features. I doubt that Sound Open Firmware would require them, and one of them, CONFIG_LOCKDEV, caused the Broadcom "wl" module compile to fail, with "GPL only symbol: lockdep_init_map_type"

Interesting, in a previous blog post I reported using a script from the SOF project site, to determine what to enable in the '.config' file, and it enabled lots of kernel debugging features. Which I have now disabled. But, very odd, the script failed to enable what NNI found to be essential for SOF to work; CONFIG_SND_SOC_INTEL_SOUNDWIRE_LINK_BASELINE.

The '.config' file will be in woofQ2 when I next upload it, also uploaded separately here, with false ".gz" appended.    

Tags: easy