More buglets fixed in EasyOS 6.0

June 22, 2024 — BarryK

This is what happens when there is a major new release version; we get it out there with lots of users, and discover bugs. I posted a couple of days ago about a XKB Configuration Manager bug:

XKB Configuration Manager bug — June 19, 2024

Here are some more...

1. clang
With the devx SFS loaded, clang seemed to be broken. Wasn't sure what was wrong; anyway, compiled llvm/clang 18.1.5 in a running EasyOS 6.0 and created a PET package. This will be in the next devx, instead of the package compiled in OE.

Thanks to the Linux From Scratch guys for guidance how to compile llvm/clang:

https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/general/llvm.html

2. Grisbi
In the "Business" category of the menu, the icon for "Grisbi finance management" is missing. Fixed.

3. Chrome and Ungoogle Chromium
I have removed these from Appi and Flapi. Reason is, they are in the menu "Internet" category, and it is much better to install them this way. One advantage is they can be updated from the menu (see snapshot below) and the latest official package is downloaded so don't have to wait on AppImage and Flatpak updates.

4. Firefox
There is also "Download latest Firefox" in the menu:

Rick sent me an email, reporting that after installing Firefox via "Download latest Firefox", there was no menu entry. I have fixed that and you can see above "Firefox web browser" entry.

You can update Firefox at any time, just by choosing "Download latest Firefox". Ditto for the other browsers. Because of that, I have disabled updating from within Firefox. There is now this file, at /usr/lib/firefox/distribution/policies.json:

{
	"policies":
	{
		"DisableAppUpdate":true,
		"DontCheckDefaultBrowser":true,
		"ExtensionUpdate":false,
		"HardwareAcceleration":false
	}
}

...this overrides user setup choices.

For example, the user cannot enable hardware acceleration; would have to edit that 'policies.json' file and delete that line.

The reason I have disabled hardware acceleration is that with it enabled Firefox behaves very badly on some hardware -- weird glitches when rendering. I want the best out-of-the-box experience for all users.

I don't recall why I also put in to disable extension updating. Anyway, if you want to discuss this, please do so at the forum, here.

5. German locale
If the German (de) locale is chosen, there is a black screen at the third bootup. Thanks to Federico and Caramel who chased this bug down, see here. I have not yet implemented the fix.

Notice in the above snapshot, there is no "Download latest Chromium". The reason for this is that Chromium is built-in to easy.sfs and was compiled by me. I compiled it with support for extra video codecs, whereas the official packages from Google do not support "proprietary codecs" and won't play many YouTube videos.

The downside is that you to update Chromium you have to wait until I compile it and include it in a future release of EasyOS. If you want more frequent updates, consider Ungoogled Chromium.

Tags: easy