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Global IP TV Panel updated 2026MK1

February 17, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member ETP maintains Global IP TV Panel, that you will find in the menu at "Multimedia -> TV Panel". He sent me a message, part of it here:

About 10 days back across multiple Pups, all 9 of the youtube
based channels failed to launch and continue to do so.

Strangely EasyOS 7.1.4, 7.1.5 and Manjaro continued to work with the exception of Fox News.
The culprit there was a change of url which I have rectified.

I need to investigate what is happening with the other Pups.
Both Manjaro and EasyOS contain later versions of mpv and ffmpeg which may be relevant.
There also may be deliberate changes on Youtube.
In the circumstances, I have just created and attached a new pet solely for Easy OS which you may
wish to include in your next version.

The difference from other pups may be that Easy has the latest yt-dlp script.   

Tags: easy

Fix for Limine Installer

February 16, 2026 — BarryK

Forum members don570 and Caramel reported an issue with Limine Installer:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=165226#p165226

Yes, the 'limine-installer' script launches the text editor from within a gtkdialog window, and the text editor has to also be terminated from within gtkdialog.

Have changed to using l3afpad instead of geany.   

Tags: easy

Compile Limine in woofQ2

February 16, 2026 — BarryK

woofQ2 is a "one stop shop" for building EasyOS, including compiling source packages that are not provided by the Devuan repository.

I have added compiling of Limine, as described in this recent blog post:

There are three scripts, '0prepare', '1compile' and '2createpet', in woofq2/source/limine

The latest woofq2 tarball not yet uploaded.    

Tags: easy

EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.1.5 released

February 15, 2026 — BarryK

Announcement of 7.1.4:

Changes since 7.1.4:

The biggest news is the jump of Limine, from version 7.12.0 to 10.7.0.

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.1.5/

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=165175#p165175

Note, there is a thread to discuss Limine here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8634

Have fun!    

Tags: easy

Default password for root is "woofwoof"

February 15, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member don570, at first bootup of a new installation, declined to give a password to encrypt folders in the working-partition, and at the fallback when it asks for a password for "root" and "zeus" users, he also only pressed ENTER. Reported here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=165165#p165165

If ENTER only is pressed, it should have defaulted to "woofwoof"; however, I have made that explicit. When the script asks for the root password, there is now this extra message:

Note: if you press ENTER only, or there is a timeout, the default "woofwoof" password will apply.

This change is in /inc/00functions in the initrd.    

Tags: easy

Script convert limine.cfg to limine.conf

February 14, 2026 — BarryK

I posted earlier that the latest Limine bootloader has been patched to support ext2/3/4:

https://bkhome.org/news/202602/limine-1070-patched-to-support-ext4.html

The next release of EasyOS will have limine 10.7.0, but that is going to be a problem for those of us who will be updating an existing installation, internal frugal or on usb-stick. Or will it?

The existing boot-partition, if the install has limine bootloader, which it definitely will be on a usb-stick, will have limine.cfg and /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI

The new config file is 'limine.conf', which has a different syntax to 'limine.cfg'. I have written a simple script that will convert 'limine.cfg' to 'limine.conf'. Just place the script in the boot-partition, like this:

img1

Make sure it is executable of course, then just run it in a terminal:

# ./limine-cfg-to-conf limine.cfg

...and it will generate limine.conf

The script, gzipped, is here:

https://bkhome.org/news/202602/images/limine-cfg-to-conf.gz

If we do a version update, from the current Easy 7.1.4 to the next, well, we don't have to update limine. Can just leave it as-is, at the old version of Limine.

If we do want to update limine in the boot-partition, can run 'limine-cfg-to-conf' as described above, and will also need the new /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI -- can get that from /usr/share/limine/ after updating EasyOS.

I will put 'limine-cfg-to-conf' in /usr/local/limine in the next release of Easy.

Note, I have updated Limine Installer to work with the new limine.conf syntax.       

Tags: easy

Limine 10.7.0 patched to support ext4

February 14, 2026 — BarryK

The developer of Limine bootloader, mintsuki, took out support for ext2/3/4 in version 6.0, but restored it in 7.12.0, then removed it again in 8.0.

EasyOS prefers 'vmlinuz' and 'initrd' to be in the working-partition, which is ext4, not in a vfat partition. So, we have been stuck at 7.12.0, whereas the latest limine is now 10.7.0.

I looked at the patch that restored ext2/3/4 support to limine 7.12.0, and after some modifications it applied nicely to 10.7.0. I compiled 10.7.0 and tested it; it works.

Limine 10.7.0 source is from here:

https://github.com/limine-bootloader/limine/releases/tag/v10.7.0

The patch is here:

https://bkhome.org/news/202602/images/limine-10p7p0-ext234.patch.gz

I compiled it in the "devx" container in Easy Excalibur, like this:

# patch -p1 < ../limine-10p7p0-ext234.patch
# bootstrap
# export LD_FOR_TARGET="/usr/bin/ld"
# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --enable-bios --enable-bios-cd --enable-bios-pxe --enable-uefi-ia32 --enable-uefi-x86-64 --enable-uefi-cd
# make
# mkdir ../out
# DESTDIR="$(pwd)/../out" make install

Then created a PET package, uploaded here:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/packages/pet/pet_packages-excalibur/

Forum discussion:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=165144#p165144

The configuration file has changed from 'limine.cfg' to 'limine.conf', with syntax changes, so some work has to be done in woofQ2, also the Limine Installer will need to be fixed. This should happen before the next release of EasyOS.   

Tags: easy

Bug in inode/directory mime type

February 14, 2026 — BarryK

The problem was posed by urzz, here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=159236#p159236

With response from Caramel here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=159285#p159285

The script /usr/sbin/build-rox-sendto generates /usr/share/applications/mimeapps.list

The fix is to exclude 'i.desktop', which is now done in line 47:

#20241107 exclude these from mimeapps.list ... 20260214 add i.desktop
LISTnoma='ghasher packit uextract i'

Now:

# xdg-mime query default inode/directory
i.desktop
# build-rox-sendto
# xdg-mime query default inode/directory
ROX-Filer.desktop
Good!   

Tags: easy