EasyOS version 3.1.9 released

I have decided to pull this version off the Internet, due to Firefox behaving very badly on my Acer Aspire 1 laptop, see forum thread: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=4424 Will do more testing on different computers.

EasyOS version 3.1.10 has been released, see blog post: https://bkhome.org/news/202111/easyos-version-3110-released.html

Version 3.1 in the Dunfell-series was released on October 24, see blog post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202110/easyos-version-31-released.html

Two very significant changes this time: firstly, both SeaMonkey and Firefox in the build, and secondly, have moved from an ALSA-only system to Pulseaudio, with Pipewire included in the build (but Pulseaudio set as the default).

I would have liked to bump the version to 3.2, but the move to Pulseaudio is bound to have issues that I have not yet discovered. So, we need one or two releases to find and fix these.

Well, there are other significant changes, not just those two. The kernel is now 5.10.77 and has been compiled with the 'wireguard' module, and the 'wireguard-tools' package is in the build.

Firefox can be run on the main desktop or in a container -- you will find "www" icons on the desktop for both of these. They are both very secure, as on the main desktop Firefox runs as user 'firefox' in its own sandbox.

Firefox supports automatic updating, but I have set it to ask first. You can do it manually: if you go to "Settings" and scroll down, there is a button to update.
A very curious thing: Firefox running on the main desktop, requires the "Restart to update Firefox" button to be clicked-on twice -- after the first restart, scroll down in "Settings" and you have to click that button again.
However, running in a container, the restart button only has to be clicked-on once. Very odd.

You will get the opportunity to update straight away, as the build has FF 93.0 and the latest available is 94.0.1.

It is great news that users can keep up with the latest version of Firefox.

Release notes:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/dunfell/3.1.9/release-notes.htm

Download English, German and French builds:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/dunfell/3.1.9/

Note that Firefox is English-only, as I didn't figure out how to include translations into the de and fr builds.

Interesting the download file is 593MB, up from 523MB for EasyOS 3.1. That extra size, 70MB, is mostly due to the inclusion of Firefox.

If you need help with how to write the image file to a USB-stick, read this:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/dunfell/3.1.9/readme.htm

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewforum.php?f=63

Have fun!

Extra notes

If you are going to update an existing installation of EasyOS, before clicking on "update" on the desktop, if you have Firefox installed, get rid of it. Either roll back to an earlier snapshot before FF was installed, or...

If FF SFS is running on the main desktop:
Menu -> Filesystem -> Easy Boot Manager -> untick the FF checkbox
Delete /home/firefox, /usr/bin/firefox*, /root/.mozilla/firefox

If FF SFS is running in a container:
Menu -> Filesystem -> Easy Container Management -> select firefox container and click "Delete & exit" button.

You can also delete the SFS in /mnt/wkg/sfs/easyos/oe/dunfell

Ideally, the above potential conflicts should be handled automatically, but this situation is a one-off, so I haven't written the code to do that.

Interesting to see what is now in the /home folder:

Gradually, I intend to add more apps that are connected to the Internet to run as their own user. For now, just 'firefox' and 'seamonkey'. User 'spot' hails from Puppy Linux days, and is deprecated. 'rover' and 'zeus' are earlier experiments, not sure about their future.

The two "www" icons in the above photo will launch Firefox. I posted earlier how you can create an icon on the desktop for any of these clients:

https://bkhome.org/news/202110/firefox-930-sfs-created.html

...though, that example is for Firefox, and you don't really need to create a desktop icon, since "www" already launches it.     

Tags: easy