EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.0 released

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.0 is released. This is the first of the Scarthgap-series; a whole new ball game! There is also a new desktop theme:

...the wallpaper is a photo taken with my phone, south of Perth in Western Australia.

The packages in 6.0 were compiled in OpenEmbedded (OE) Scarthgap-release, with my "meta-quirky" layer. The Scarthgap release of OE/Yocto is a new LTS series, supported until April 2028. See their announcement.

My meta-quirky layer adds an additional approximately 240 package build recipes, not in the official OE/Yocto project, as well as many patches for the official build recipes.

EasyOS 6.0 continues the practice of including a very large number of packages built-in, including Celluloid, Chromium, Dia, Flowblade, Geany, Gimp, Gparted, Grisbi, Inkscape, LibreOffice, NoteCase, Osmo, Planner, SolveSpace, Symphytum, as well as myriad smaller applications and utilites.

A complete list of built-in packages is here.

As this is a new series, the base packages are all recent versions. This includes gcc 13.2.0, glibc 2.39, llvm/clang 18.1.5, mesa 24.0.3 and python 3.12.3. The Linux kernel is 6.6.32, 6.6 being LTS.

Release notes for 6.0:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.0/release-notes.htm

The EasyOS Kirkstone-series will continue to receive maintenance updates, though I can't say for how long; probably until end of 2024.

If you have a Kirkstone installation, this may be updated to the Scarthgap-series. However, not via the "update" desktop icon, as that is only for updating within the same series. Instead, there is a simple manual method to jump to a dfferent series. See HOWTO here.

Easy 6.0 is available as a drive-image file. Download courtesy of ibiblio.org:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.0/

Also, there is a fast mirror in Europe, kindly hosted by NLUUG:

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

If you are new to EasyOS and unfamiliar with how to install a drive-image file; in a nutshell, it can be written to a USB flash drive and booted from that, or opened up and the files copied out for a direct install to internal drive. Some HOWTOs are here, here and here.

And if you have stumbled upon this announcement and haven't got a clue what EasyOS is all about, read the "How and why EasyOS is different" page, here.

For those interested in the development side of things:

The kernel is 6.6.32. Source, patches and build scripts here.

The online repository for "oe-qky-scarthgap" based on OE, here.

The online repository for woofQ, the build system for EasyOS, here.

You are most welcome to be involved in our forum discussion, in this thread for Scarthgap 6.0:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=11766

Have fun!

EDIT 2024-06-24:
Version 6.0.2 released, important bug fixes. Announcement:

https://bkhome.org/news/202406/easyos-scarthgap-series-version-602-released.html 

EDIT 2024-07-07:
Version 6.0.4 released, important fixes, improvements, new packages:

https://bkhome.org/news/202407/easyos-scarthgap-series-version-604-released.html

Later releases links will not be appended here; please read the latest blog posts for news of any future releases.      

Tags: easy