Limine Installer improve find EasyOS installs

Forum member nnriyer reported Limine Installer finding incorrect installation of EasyOS:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=100954#p100954

I fixed that, also found some EasyOS installations were not being found. Fixed that also. Commit at github:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/2a59729856567904fa535a40fbde52f987591213    

Tags: easy

ext4 support has returned in Limine bootloader

See discussion at github:

https://github.com/limine-bootloader/limine/issues/386

In a nutshell, Limine is a bootloader that is much simpler to use than grub2.
It is suitable for any Linux distro, not just EasyOS. Can boot Windows also.

Limine, up until v5, supports fat12/16/32 and ext2/3/4, no other filesystems.
The developer mintsuki has an ideology to keep Limine very simple, and she considered that the kernel vmlinuz and initrd could be in a fat partition, so could drop support for ext2/3/4.

The problem with that is EasyOS separates the bootloader and the OS, with the latter including vmlinuz and initrd being in a ext4 partition. Which is also how many other Linux distributions install.

So when mintsuki decided to drop support for ext4 in Limine v6 late last year, it left us stuck on using v5.

With upcoming 7.12.0 she has relented, but with the understanding that ext is experimental and unsupported. That means, if we do encounter any problem with ext4 then we should take it onboard to find the cause ourselves and present a solution, as a patch, to mintsuki. And not trouble her by reporting a fault.

Though, there are no problems with ext4 in the EasyOS usb stick.

Regarding the "Cannot enable A20 line", this is an ancient problem that goes right back to the IBM PC in 1981:

"A20 - a pain from the past"
https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/kbd/A20.html

For ongoing discussion about this new development in Limine, I have posted to the Puppy Forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=12214      

Tags: easy

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.1 released

Version 6.0.4 was released only 6 days ago:

• EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.0.4 released — July 07, 2024

Release notes for 6.1:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.1/release-notes.htm

if you are new to EasyOS, please read the 6.0 announcement, as it has more details:

• EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.0 released — June 18, 2024

Download 6.1:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.1/

Fast mirror in Europe, courtesy of NLUUG:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2024/6.1/

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=125841#p125841   

Tags: easy

yff audio video image converter

Jason (plinej in the forum) has a very long history of creating useful media applications. The latest is 'yff', for converting media formats. Forum thread:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8916

A great tool. I modified the 'yff.desktop' file in the PET with menu translations, and small mods to 'pet.specs'.

yff will be in the next release of EasyOS, builtin.    

Tags: easy

Linux kernel 6.6.39 compiled

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.0.4 has kernel 6.6.32. So, have bumped to the latest.

The download file, 'easy-6.0.4-amd64.img', is 905MiB. The file inside it, 'easy.sfs', has a very complete suite of packages, as per the philosophy of satisfying most users "out of the box". I posted yesterday about a couple of dependencies being removed, reducing the size of easy.sfs slightly:

• gtk4 dependency removed — July 11, 2024

Well no... there was another package added, and the latest Chromium, 126.0.6478.126, that I announced a few days ago, is bigger. End result, easy.sfs has grown in size and no longer fits in the .img file.

So, I have bumped the size of the .img file by 16MiB; it is now 921MiB. That results in about 15MiB free space in the .img file, so hopefully won't need to increase it for the lifetime of the Scarthgap-series.

I am just about ready to release EasyOS 6.1; waiting on youtube-dl to work again. This is a game between youtube-dl and YouTube.

Actually, I believe in supporting YouTube and not bypassing the advertisements -- we can pay YouTube to not see them. The "Internet" menu category has "YouTubeDL YouTube downloader" and I don't see any ethical issue with downloading a video for local archiving. On a daily basis I watch videos at youtube.com and tolerate the adverts.

That leaves "Global IP TV Panel", in the "Multimedia" menu category, for watching live streaming media. Some of those channels are on YouTube. I'm going to think about that; will report back.    

Tags: easy

gtk4 dependency removed

There are two packages in EasyOS 6.0.4 that depend on 'gtk4', but it isn't installed.

Package 'geany-plugins' requires the gtk4 version of vte, the virtual terminal emulator. Easy has the 'vte' package, although gtk4 is missing. However, Easy also has 'vte9', a dependency of 'sakura' and that only requires gtk+2.

I recompiled 'geany-plugins' in OE to use vte9. Great, have now removed the 'vte' package from Easy. Geany itself uses gtk+3, so hope there is no objection to a plugin using gtk+2.

Easy has packages 'gcr' which requires gtk4 and 'gcr3' which requires gtk+3. Package 'networkmanager-applet' requires 'gcr3', nothing requires 'gcr', so I have removed the latter.

Good, no requirements for gtk4. This is good, removing a couple of packages, as the 'easy-6.0.2-amd64.img' file is bursting at the seams. It is 905MiB and I don't want to make the download bigger. Now, there is some free space, could consider adding another app -- maybe not.   

Tags: easy

Claws Mail recompiled with SASL support

Forum member LarryDC reported unable to login to Fastmail with Claws Mail:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=125442#p125442

I have recompiled 'libetpan' in OpenEmbedded with 'cyrus-sasl' dependency.    

Tags: easy

Chromium 126.0.6478.126 compiled in OE

I have to compile it, as the official x86_64 package from Google don't support all the video codecs required to play videos at YouTube. Which would be Google's way of persuading us to move to Chrome.

There are other binary builds out there, but for security I would prefer to compile it myself.

There are Chromium binary packages from relatively trusted repositories, such as Debian; however, they are compiled with more and different dependencies. Compiling it myself, it links to shared libraries available in EasyOS, so there is a perfect match and a smaller package.

The downside is that Chromium is a monster to compile. Needs a huge amount of RAM, especially at the final link step; my Lenovo PC has 32GB. My Lenovo is the main daily workhorse, and while the Chromium build is going on, don't want to disturb it too much by doing other things.

Timed the build; about 26 hours. That would be plus or minus about half an hour, as didn't see exactly when it finished.

This Chromium will be builtin, in easy.sfs, in the next release of EasyOS.   

Tags: easy