EasyOS Dunfell-series version 4.2.2 released

June 28, 2022 — BarryK

Significant improvements with 4.2, needed some tweaks to get right, released an interim test build, 4.2.1, looking good, so now have released 4.2.2. If you want to update an existing installation, please read this:

Important notice

Easy 4.2+ has a new update mechanism, and new locations for the 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs' files.
The "update" icon will not work for versions prior to 4.2, and it is recommended to do a fresh install.
However, for versions prior to 4.2, update can be made to work, but with some pain.
For all versions prior to 4.2.2, it is required to download the scripts 'mount-img' and 'easy-update', that can be found here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6240

Copy these files to these locations, replacing the originals:

/usr/sbin/mount-img
/usr/local/easy_version/easy-update

Then right-click on them, choose "Properties..." and tick the three "Exec" checkboxes.

You may then click "update" on the desktop.

There are two structural changes that you need to know about:

'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs' are in the working-partition
This is described here:
https://easyos.org/user/how-to-update-easyos.html
Older installations may have 'vmlinuz' and 'initrd' elsewhere, and you will need to manually update those.
No longer 'BOOT_SPECS' file inside 'initrd'
You need to insert "wkg_uuid" and "wkg_dir" parameters into the kernel commandline in the boot manager.
This is explained here:
https://bkhome.org/news/202206/complete-separation-between-boot-manager-and-easyos.html

For a recommended fresh install, download English, French and German builds here:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/dunfell/2022/4.2.2/

Release notes:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/dunfell/2022/4.2.2/release-notes.htm

The download is 825MiB, very large; however, future updates will be small downloads, "difference files", as explained here:

https://easyos.org/user/how-to-update-easyos.html

And here:

https://bkhome.org/news/202206/update-delta-files-for-smaller-downloads.html

Note that the difference-file for 4.2-to-4.2.2 and 4.2.1-to-4.2.2 is 285MB, rather large. This is due to dropping FreeOffice, replacing with LibreOffice. LibreOffice and its dependencies are enormous. Normally, expect a difference-file to be much smaller.

Note also, there is a difference-file online 4.1-to-4.2.2 and that is only 87MB. Reason is, both have LibreOffice.

The image file, that you would normally write to a USB flash-stick, is now structured exactly like you would see it in a "frugal" install to internal drive partition:

https://bkhome.org/news/202206/complete-separation-between-boot-manager-and-easyos.html

It is now conceptually very simple to see how to do a frugal install to internal drive. In fact, you could do so directly, without writing the image file to a USB flash-stick.

A lot of the documentation at easyos.org needs to be rewritten. Next up, I intend to rewrite the "how to install EasyOS to internal drive pages" -- hopefully that will happen within a few days.

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6240

EDIT 2022-07-04:
Easy 4.2.3 has been released:

https://bkhome.org/news/202207/easyos-dunfell-series-version-423-released.html

Tags: easy