EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.3.8

Major changes this time!

Release notes since version 7.3.7:

• Custom desktop icons lost after version update — June 03, 2026
• Limine Installer tested — June 03, 2026
• EasyOS built with Xlibre — June 02, 2026
• EcoTube media player — May 31, 2026
• Global IP TV Panel bumped to 2026MK9 — May 31, 2026
• Overhaul of optical drive detection — May 30, 2026
• unifont package removed — May 29, 2026
• Chromium 148.0.7778.215
• Built with excalibur-backports repository
  

As Easy is positioned as a "retro" distribution, it would seem a good idea to replace Xorg/X11 with Xlibre. That is done, but there is one downside; there are less xserver-xorg-video-* drivers, which may be an issue on very old hardware. Will see how it goes; if anyone running on an old PC reports video problems... well, I suppose will go back to Debian Xorg.

One requirement of Xlibre is that it requires some packages from the Debian "excalibur-backports" repository. I went the whole way, and gave that repository the highest priority, so Easy got built with all packages in excalibur-backports getting preference. Upside is later package versions, downside is not as well tested as the stable repository. Again, we shall see.

Note, excalibur-backports, also known as stable-backports, has packages back-ported from the Debian "testing" repository.

Easy 7.3.7 has the SMPlayer media player, as Celluloid, that we have had just about forever in earlier releases of Easy, has been troublesome. EcoTube is a fork of Celluloid, works for me; let me know how it works for you.

Newcomers to EasyOS, recommend read the 7.3 announcement:

• EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.3 released — April 26, 2026

Download 7.3.8:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3.8/

If already running EasyOS, just click the "update" desktop icon, as usual. The .img and devx sfs delta (difference) files are big this time, due to so many changes. Normally, we would expect the delta file to be small, under 100MB, but this time about 300MB.

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=171493#p171493

Have fun!    

Tags: easy