Considering future directions for EasyOS

I have decided to release EasyOS 4.4.1 in a day or two, as contemplating major changes that may break things.

One major change is a move away from running as the root user. Remember "fido"?

Well, you would have to be a Puppy Linux old-timer to recall that experiment. It was introduced in 2011:

https://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201104/introducing-39fido39.html

And also mentioned here:

https://bkhome.org/archive/puppylinux/technical/root.htm

User 'fido' never got any traction, and has just about been forgotten. I am considering bringing back user fido, but doing it differently. This proposed fido will (maybe) have root privileges -- if go for giving fido full root access, it will be just like before, except apps that object to running as root will no longer complain.

And, fido may have some restrictions, that you can decide on in a menu in the initrd at bootup. In other words, may back off from full root privileges.

OK, that is one change that may have unforeseen consequences. Another possible change is that I might revisit this:

https://bkhome.org/news/202108/debian-noroot-works-great-on-new-alldocube-7-inch-tablet.html

...that was on a very low-spec tablet. Now that I have a much more powerful table on order, plan to revisit running Linux. This is what is on its way, a HEADWOLF HPad 1:

https://bkhome.org/news/202210/headwolf-hpad-1-tablet-ordered.html

Plan is to revisit the various techniques of running Linux within Android, without rooting Android, and assess whether any of them are practical/viable. If so, I might have a go at getting EasyOS working on the tablet.

This would be a very cut-down derivative of EasyOS, and I might give it a different name.

This is just speculation, don't know if either of the above two proposals will end up being implemented. But decided to post this to give an indication of the current thinking.    

Tags: easy