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Download Chrome browser in menu

December 15, 2023 — BarryK

The latest release of EasyOS has Chromium browser builtin, with menu entries to download Firefox or Vivaldi, for those who would prefer not to use Chromium.

For the next release of EasyOS, I am thinking of going back to Firefox builtin, as have resolved some problems with it.

So, for those who would prefer Chrome or a Chromium-based browser, I intended to have more choices in the menu. To start the ball rolling, have created 'chrome-skel-ask-20231215.pet', a package that will create "Download latest Chrome" in the menu, as shown:

img1

...choosing that, will probe online for the latest version of Chrome available, and either perform a new install or offer to update an existing installation. After install, the entry "Chrome web browser" will appear in the menu.

The user can choose "Download latest Chrome" at any time, to check if there is a later version, and if so, download it. I decided to do it this way, manually via the menu, for consistency with the other browsers. Consequently, updating has been disabled from within the browser.

Chrome, like the others, runs as its own user; "chrome", with home /home/chrome.

I will probably add one more, a Chromium-based browser, maybe Brave.    

Tags: easy

Yocto 4.0.14 release recompile

December 15, 2023 — BarryK

Have done a complete recompile based on the Yocto/OpenEmbedded 4.0.14 kirkstone-series release. This is "revision-6" build, and here are the changed packages since 4.0.12 (revision-5):

firefox           119.0     120.0.1
libstd-rs 1.72.0 1.73.0
libxpm 1_3.5.16 1_3.5.17
linux-firmware 20230625 20230804
mbedtls 2.28.2 2.28.5
ntfs-3g-ntfsprogs 2022.5.17 2022.10.3
openldap 2.5.12 2.5.16
openssl 3.0.10 3.0.12
php 8.1.16 8.1.22
python3 3.10.12 3.10.13
python3-aiohttp 3.8.1 3.8.5
python3-git 3.1.32 3.1.37
python3-urllib3 1.26.9 1.26.17
sudo 1.9.13p3 1.9.15p2
tar 1.34 1.35
vim 9.0.1592 9.0.2068

Commits to 'oe-qky-kirkstone' project:

https://github.com/bkauler/oe-qky-kirkstone/commit/e5e624e3feaff5ea7f862744b229d8be18e8e09b

https://github.com/bkauler/oe-qky-kirkstone/commit/819925e2d12c54b6149f52bab3d04ee6e62e478a   

Tags: easy

Fix some .desktop files getting deleted

December 14, 2023 — BarryK

I updated one of the EasyOS installations, and Firefox disappeared from the menu. The /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop file had reverted to containing "NoDisplay=true".

There are other possible situations where a .desktop file might get inappropriately deleted.

I have studied the code and made improvements. See commit:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/edc72720126c133405c5923849774843688483d8

...which seems like it will improve the situation.    

Tags: easy

Fix Firefox second instance will not start

December 13, 2023 — BarryK

I posted about this problem to the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=103201#p103201

The error popup states "Firefox is already running, but is not responding".

I discovered that dbus is the problem, as reported here:

https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/how-does-firefox-discover-a-running-instance-to-connect-to/109957

EasyOS is unique, in that it runs each app as its own user; or rather, that is an option. The choice is made for each browser to run as its own user, so Firefox runs as user "firefox". Same for appimage and flatpak apps, and there was a problem with dbus, that was solved awhile back:

https://bkhome.org/news/202304/preventing-proliferation-of-dbus-daemon-instances.html

In the case of Firefox, /usr/bin/firefox is a script, that, amongst other things, logs in as user "firefox", then runs /usr/bin/firefox.bin. Here is the latter:

#!/bin/sh
export $(dbus-launch) #if app needs to access dbus.
/usr/bin/firefox.bin0 $@
kill $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID

...the problem with this, and it seems only to break Firefox, Chromium is ok, is that running this a second time, when FF is already running, starts a second 'dbus-daemon'.

The solution is to run 'dbus-daemon' once-only. The script needs to detect if dbus-daemon is already running for that user. If already running, it still needs to export variables DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS and DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID, to satisfy some appimage and/or flatpak apps.

The fixed script is here:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/aab112c551ed2b633348d16d096780dbafe798f6

And here:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/d4e05f85bf85cc7dca6b518738feb24f581e71bc

Actually, FF is starting to look good again.    

Tags: easy

EasyOS Kirkstone-series version 5.6.5 released

December 06, 2023 — BarryK

Version 5.6.4 was released on November 27, see blog announcement:

https://bkhome.org/news/202311/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-564-released.html

Release notes for 5.6.5:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.6.5/release-notes.htm

The highlights:

Download, courtesy of ibiblio:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.6.5/

Fast mirror in Europe, courtesy of NLUUG:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/

If you don't know what to do with a drive-image file, this page explains how to write it to a USB flash-drive:

https://easyos.org/install/how-to-write-easyos-to-a-flash-drive.html

Or, if you want to install direct to an internal hard drive:

https://easyos.org/install/easy-frugal-installation.html

Of course, if you already have EasyOS running, just click on the "update" icon on the desktop. Updating from 5.6.4 is only a 6.6MB download.

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=105245#p105245    

Tags: easy

Global IP TV Panel 2023MK7

December 05, 2023 — BarryK

I updated to MK6 just a few days ago. Now bumped to MK7. See forum:

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

Tags: easy

p7zip compiled in OE

December 05, 2023 — BarryK

7-zip is a compressed file archive format, and p7zip is the Linux port. 7-zip homepage:

https://www.7-zip.org/

The guys are discussing implementing p7zip in Easy:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=10049

I have compiled p7zip in OpenEmbedded, and added it to the EasyOS package-list, so it will be builtin. I also fixed the mime-handling, so if click on a .7z file it will open in Xarchive, or right-click on a .7z file then Xarchive will be offered in the menu. Rox will also display .7z files with a suitable icon.

Here are the woofQ github commits:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/837b633428279780d6f32282f3597247a31ccb5f

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/b133b1e94ea0f48bcb1a76a323f36ffda3ea63ed

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/e0b0d43d4ae5d2ae88622188fa74f0c0899869a5    

Tags: easy

download_file rewritten

December 05, 2023 — BarryK

This has been on the to-do list for a very long time, and is going to please a lot of people.

PKGget, and other scripts, call /usr/bin/download_file to download a file from the Internet. The complaint is that the download window is in all virtual desktops, and is always on-top of other windows. This makes it difficult to do other work while a download is in progress.

The download_file script goes back a long way. It started life in 2010 and had input from various people, and has remained essentially the same up to now. I was curious about it's status in woof-CE:

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/blob/testing/woof-code/rootfs-skeleton/usr/sbin/download_file

Looking at the changes committed over the years; just details, it has remained essentially the same as my original version. Here are the woof-CE commits:

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/commits/testing/woof-code/rootfs-skeleton/usr/sbin/download_file

Essentially the same; there has been some deviation. I added an abort button in 2015; that was two years after leaving managing the Puppy project, so that button is not in the woof-CE version.

I have now rewritten it so that it is now a normal window, that does not force itself to always be "on top", nor does it appear in all virtual desktops:

img1

...notice also, the progress-bar, instead of rows of dots.

Here is the commit to woofQ on github:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/3144062d29cb95bbbcf1cfe04729a0077161fd11

So many changes; it might be more meaningful to view the complete new file:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/blob/main/easyos/easy-code/rootfs-skeleton/usr/bin/download_file

This could also be used in woof-CE, except that I have dropped all of the PUPMODE handling code. Which would be easy to add back in if required. It does require gtkdialog be compiled with vte (virtual terminal) support, which may not be the case with some pups.       

Tags: easy