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newsQV version 20240419 pre-alpha released
QV is a new very experimental Linux distribution, under development and still evolving. To read about what has happened so far, follow the blog posts with the "quirky" tag:
https://bkhome.org/news/tag_quirky.html
In a nutshell, QV has many features of EasyOS, except does not have a layered filesystem, nor SFS files. It is a "frugal full" installation, built from Void Linux packages using the XBPS package manager. It also has some EasyOS Kirkstone .tar.xz and PET packages. Another very significant feature is that QV is installed in a btrfs filesystem, with support for compression and snapshots.
I have been playing with a logo; this is the latest:
The letters "QV" may mean "Quirky Void", as this is a very quirky distribution compared with Void Linux. Or, it may mean "Quantum Vis", which is Latin for "has everything that you need".
Download from here:
https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/void/
You can write the drive-image file to a USB Flash drive and boot that. Or, it can be installed directly to an internal HDD or SSD; with some caveats. See forum post for details:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=11292
If you look at the 'qv-installer' script, also at 'limine.cfg' in the drive-image file, you will see that "BOOT_UUID" and "BOOT_DIR" kernel parameters are now required, as well as WKG_UUID and WKG_DIR. The reason for this is that 'vmlinuz' and 'initrd' may be in a different partition than the working-partition, and an "update" operation will need to know where they are.
As there are no longer SFS files, the "devx" is now a PET package. It can be installed via PKGget, or downloaded directly from here:
https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/packages/pet/pet_packages-void/
In the latter case, right-click on it and choose "petget" from
the menu.
'devx-240419.pet' is a "meta package". What that means is that it doesn't contain any packages, just a 'pinstall.sh' script that will install everything required to setup a development environment. I suggest, take a snapshot first, before installing it, with an appropriate name, like "devx development evironment". Then, before doing any actual compiling, take a snapshot of the snapshot, to retain a pristine devx environment.
I'm not sure, but I think best to run "xbps-install -S" first, before installing the devx PET, to sync with the remote repositories.
XBPS will download 624 packages, a total of 592MB, so be prepared for it to take awhile.
After install has finished, delete /etc/profile.d/gawk.csh and /etc/profile.d/gawk.sh -- these are broken.
If you want to install with "new2dir make install", the 'installwatch' package is required. Download it from here:
...download, right-click and choose "petget" to install it.
You will notice that there is no longer an "update" icon on the desktop. This is because updating will mostly be done via XBPS. It is intended that there will also be a kernel PET and an update PET that will have fixes.
This update strategy has yet to be implemented. It will mean that you only have to download the big .img file once, and there-after rely on XBPS to update packages, and kernel and patch PETs.
Feedback welcome at the forum.
EDIT 2024-04-23
Superceded by version 240423, see announcement:
https://bkhome.org/news/202404/qv-version-20240423-pre-alpha-released.html
Tags: quirky