site  contact  subhomenews

EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.3 released

April 26, 2026 — BarryK

Version 7.3 is a "milestone" release. A huge amount of development since 7.2, with many 7.2.x minor-number releases. A lot has happened, and as usual it is too difficult to summarize in a few paragraphs.

To start, here are significant changes since version 7.2.99:

The online release notes document all changes since 7.0:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3/release-notes.htm

For newcomers to EasyOS, I recommend a quick read of this page, that itemizes how and why EasyOS is different from any other Linux operating system:

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

Also, a short introductory blurb, extracted from the 7.0 release announcement:

Compared with prior releases of EasyOS, the Excalibur-series is a "whole new ball game". All prior EasyOSs were built with woofQ; Easy Excalibur is built with woofQ2, that is a redesign of woofQ based on Debian's APT underpinning all package management. Easy has PKGget, a package manager GUI, that is able to install all kinds of packages, such as .deb, .txz, .rpm and .pet; that chameleon-like ability is retained, but now PKGget is a wrapper on top of APT. So now PKGget and APT talk to each other, and even if utilities such as 'apt' and 'apt-get' are used in a terminal, it will automatically sync in PKGget.

Easy Excalibur is built with Devuan Excalibur packages, equivalent to Debian 13 Trixie, but without systemd. Instead, EasyOS uses the simple busybox init, enhanced with pup_event service management.

EasyOS has inbuilt containers support, known as "Easy Containers" and this is taken to the next level. In particular, there is now a pre-created container named "devx" that has everything for a compiler/development environment. Like all Easy Containers, "devx" runs just by clicking a desktop icon, and the user can flip between any of them with single clicks.

Easy Excalibur is big, the download is around 1GB; and it takes EasyOS's habit of "including the kitchen sink" to the next level. Not just the Chromium browser, also the SeaMonkey browser suite is included, builtin. And of course all the usual guys, such as Celluloid, Inkscape, Gimp, SolveSpace, LibreOffice, HomeBank, StreamTuner2, Osmo, NoteCase and Audacious. As well, lots of utility and support apps, such as GParted, Blueman, NetworkManager, gFTP, YouTubeDL, and dozens that are found only in the Puppy-family or exclusively in EasyOS.

EasyOS ships as a drive-image file, not as an ISO. Download from here, courtesy of ibiblio.org:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3/

A mirror in the USA, courtesy of Linux User Group at UMBC (thanks to amerrym1, see forum):

https://mirror.lug.umbc.edu/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3/

Fast mirror in Europe courtesy of NLUUG:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3/

Australia, courtesy of aarnet:

https://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3/

If you know about ISO files, not drive-image files, they are quite easy to install. Either write to a USB-stick and boot that, or open it up and copy the files into an internal drive. There are tutorials that explain these choices, such as this one to install to an internal drive:

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

Or, to a USB-stick (or any complete drive):

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

Easy since 7.0 has had basically the same muted bluish theme, with nature-scenes wallpaper. Was getting a bit bored with it, so dreamed up something totally different for 7.3. You might find this a bit less restful on the eyes than muted-blue:

img1

High-resolution, 1680x1050 pixels, is here.

The wallpaper was created by Australian Aboriginal artist Sarah Levett, see here.

Might end up going back to a more muted theme, especially as will be taking lots of photos soon in the Australian countryside, that will be likely wallpapers. But for now, this orange-brown-red theme is OK.

Feedback welcome at the forum. Any issues encountered, there are guys keen to help:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16803

Have fun!    

Tags: easy