EasyOS Kirkstone-series version 5.8 released

WITHDRAWN
The Linux 5.15.157 kernel causes a black screen with at least one AMD GPU. The 5.15.148 kernel, as used in Easy 5.7, is OK. Have to find out latest kernel can roll back to. Might take a day or two. See forum report: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=118455#p118455

Version 5.7 was released on February 4, 2024. If you are new to EasyOS, it is recommended to read the 5.7 announcement:

https://bkhome.org/news/202402/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-57-released.html

Recently, my attention has been on another experimental Linux distribution, named "QV". Now back onto developing Easy. Various fixes and improvements have accumulated. Also, I have done a complete recompile, based on OpenEmbedded Kirkstone release 4.0.17. Also, compiled the 5.15.157 Linux kernel.

See more detailed release notes here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2024/5.8/release-notes.htm

Download the drive-image file from here, courtesy of ibiblio:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2024/5.8/

If you live in Europe, a fast mirror courtesy of NLUUG:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2024/

Firefox 125.0.2 is builtin; however, if you want to keep up-to-date with the latest version, there is a menu entry to update:

...click on "Download latest Firefox", it will detect 125.0.2 already installed:

...which I have done, running 125.0.3 right now.

The same applies to Chrome and Vivaldi; you can install, then at any time in the future, click on the "Download latest..." button to update. Updating from within these browsers is disabled; you have to do it from the menu.

EasyApps and the menu have some entries with "orange ball" icons. This is a convenience thing; the app is not installed, but click on the menu entry and it will be installed. These are native apps, installable via PKGget; however, users might not be aware of their existence, hence putting them up-front in the menu.

Easy 5.7 has some, such as OBS-Studio. I have now added VLC media player and VYM mind mapper. For example:

Right now, I'm running Easy installed on my Lenovo desktop, and successfully updated from 5.7. Normally, an update is a fairly small "difference file"; however, in this case, the difference-file 5.7 to 5.8 is 687MB, almost as big as the full 'easy-5.8-amd64.img' drive-image file (857MB). This is due to the complete recompile of packages in OE, as well as the kernel version bump.

Feedback is welcome at the forum, here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=11398

Have fun!   

Tags: easy