EasyOS .img file now not compressed

Up until now, EasyOS has been available as a compressed image file, named 'easy-<version>[-<lang>]-<architecture>.img.gz', for example 'easy-3.4.7-amd64.img.gz'.

Internally, it consists of a 1M gap, then a 639M vfat partition, then a 640M ext4 partition, plus another gap on the end, total file size 1281M uncompressed.

Note, these days we have the term "MiB" to denote binary megabytes, 1048576 bytes (1024x1024), instead of 1,000,000 bytes. So, by "M" I actually mean MiB.

A problem has arisen with 'easy.sfs' when building Easy Bookworm; it is too big to fit into the vfat partition. So, I have increased the size of the vfat partition to 767M. Also, have decreased the ext4 partition to only 4M.

A note about that ext4 partition: it is the working-partition, and at first bootup gets expanded to fill the drive. So it can be small to start with. 4M is too small for a journal, so now the journal is enabled after the partition is resized.

So, the image file is now 1M + 767M + 4M + 1M, a total file size of 773M. Most of that is taken up by 'easy.sfs', which is already compressed. Which raises the question, why bother to compress the .img file?

Having the .img file uncompressed online, makes it so much simpler for new users. The uncompress step is removed. Running any Linux, a user can download the .img file and then use 'dd' to write it to a usb-stick. Utilities such as Etcher can happily handle an uncompressed .img file.

Running Easy, the "update" icon on the desktop can be clicked to update to the latest version. I have modified the script, /usr/local/easy_version/easy-update, to work with uncompressed .img files.

I have also modified the online URL path to include the year, for example https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/bookworm/2022/3.5/. The update script now expects this path. That URL example doesn't exist! -- I will upload the first Easy Bookworm soon.    

Tags: easy