EasyOS Kirkstone-series version 5.4 released

June 10, 2023 — BarryK

EasyOS 5.0 was announced on distrowatch.com on February 26, 2023. Development has continued at the usual feverish pace and we now have 5.4, that is also expected to be announced on Distrowatch.

Since 5.0, there have been a huge number of changes, listed in the release notes page:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.4/release-notes.htm

Here is a brief announcement, attempting to summarize the changes down to a few paragraphs:

EasyOS Kirkstone-series version 5.4 has undergone many changes since 5.0.
There are now four package managers: PKGget, SFSget, Flapi and Appi -- the latter two are for installing and managing Flatpaks and AppImages. Each app runs as its own user; for example, Kdenlive video editor runs as user 'kdenlive', providing isolation from other apps.
The packages in EasyOS are compiled from source, now at the OpenEmbedded/Yocto Kirkstone 4.0.10 release.
Greatly improved international language support for French, Spanish and Russian.
The default built-in browser is Chromium; however, menu entries are provided to download Firefox and Vivaldi, and also update them. They also run as their own user!
Lots of fixes, improvements and package updates/changes. Some of these: gnupg signed pair created at first bootup, change root password at first bootup, Limine bootloader updated, Multiple Sound Card Wizard (MSCW) improved, improved language choice at early bootup, toggle touchpad on and off, setting up permissions under /files to enhance security, ext4 fscrypt changed from v1 to v2.
New apps include gWaveEdit, Hexchat, EasyJWM, EasySetup and EasyApps. The Easy* apps provide simple GUI management of all aspects of using and managing EasyOS.
Vmware/vmwgfx support now builtin, providing enhanced video acceleration for QEMU and VirtualBox.

Read more about the four file managers here:

https://easyos.org/user/package-manager-concepts.html

It is planned to write a tutorial on VMs; for now here is a blog post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202306/run-qemu-vm-in-easyos.html

Snapshot of the desktop, showing menu and OpenShot Flatpak installed (800x600 screen, which is the minimum acceptable resolution):

Download the 'easy-5.4-amd64.img' file here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.4/

There is a fast mirror in Europe, courtesy of NLUUG:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.4/

if you don't know how to write a drive-image file to a USB-stick, read here:

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

Easy can be easily installed to an internal drive, read here:

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

If you already have an earlier version of Easy running, it can be updated by clicking on the "update" icon on the desktop. However, version 5.3 changed ext4 folder encryption from fscrypt v1 to v2, and if you are running prior to 5.3, it is vital to read this blog post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202305/support-easyos-update-beyond-524.html

...after updating with the new 'easy-update' script, at reboot if there is dropout to a shell at early bootup (in the initrd), just type "exit" to continue bootup.

To read about how and why Easy differs from other Linux distributions, read here:

https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.html

We welcome feedback in the EasyOS section of the Puppy Forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8903

For anyone who wants to know the indepth technical details how EasyOS is created, there are two projects on github:

oe-qky-kirkstone is the project that compiles all the source packages:
https://github.com/bkauler/oe-qky-kirkstone

woofQ builds EasyOS from provided binary packages:
https://github.com/bkauler/woofq

EDIT 2023-06-13:
Printing is broken in 5.4! A really sneaky little bug. Download 5.4.1 which has fixed printing:

https://bkhome.org/news/202306/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-541-released.html

No problem if you have already installed 5.4: just click on the "update" icon; the update to 5.4.1 is just 929KB.

EDIT 2023-06-30:
Latest release, at June 30, 2023, is version 5.4.5:

https://bkhome.org/news/202306/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-545.html

EDIT 2023-07-06:
Latest release, at July 6, 2023, is version 5.4.6:

https://bkhome.org/news/202307/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-546-released.html

EDIT 2023-07-13:
Latest release, at July 13, 2023, is version 5.4.7:

https://bkhome.org/news/202307/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-547-released.html

EDIT 2023-07-18:
Latest release, at July 18, 2023, is version 5.4.8:

https://bkhome.org/news/202307/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-548-released.html

EDIT 2023-08-08:
Latest release, at August 8, 2023, is version 5.4.10:

https://bkhome.org/news/202308/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-5410-released.html

EDIT 2023-09-22:
Latest release, at September 22, 2023, is version 5.5.2:

https://bkhome.org/news/202309/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-552-released.html

I won't post any more links from here. Go to the history page to find the latest release:

https://bkhome.org/news/all_posts.html

Tags: easy