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Fix reading Xlibre server version

September 16, 2026 — BarryK

See forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=176902#p176902  

A quick check, I have to fix more than just the xorgwizard:

# grep -rl 'Xorg -version' .
./usr/bin/inxi
./usr/sbin/xorgwizard-automatic
./usr/sbin/xorgwizard
./usr/local/video_upgrade/video_upgrade_wizard

 

Tags: easy

EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.4.9 released

September 16, 2026 — BarryK

Oh wow, uploading took all day. I'm at a caravan park in rural Western Australia, that has free wifi. It is by StarLink, which is slower to upload than download. But this is incredible; started uploading the latest EasyOS, by sunset still only about halfway.

My phone contract is with Vodafone; however, Vodafone has poor coverage in rural regions. Whereas, Telstra has good rural coverage. I have a second phone with a Telstra sim, a prepaid sim, not a contract. Gave up on the wifi, did a 28-day recharge, 20GB, on the Telstra sim, AU$44, and finished the upload very fast. Telstra has 5G in this town.

Changes since 7.4.8:

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.4.9/

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=176899#p176899

Have fun!   

Tags: easy

Audacious is back, more DE translations

September 16, 2026 — BarryK

The Audacious music player got left out of Easy 7.4.8, now fixed.

Forum member RingeUI has been contributing German translations. That's great, have added the last contribution for the easy 7.4.9 build.

As the Chromium X cursor has been fixed, Easy 7.4.9 will be back on building with the latest security-release of Chromium, right now that's 152.0.7977.82.  

Tags: easy

Fix system X cursor Chromium 151*

September 16, 2026 — BarryK

I posted that Chromium 151.* was no longer recognizing the system cursor.

Forum member NorthernSoul found a solution, adding this line in /etc/gtk-3.0/settings.ini:

gtk-cursor-theme-name = default

Good, but it does pose a problem when update Easy from an earlier version, as that settings.ini file may have user-customizations. That means, although I have fixed it in easy.sfs, the bottom layer of overlayfs, the user-customized settings.ini will be on the top read-write layer of overlayfs.

Therefore, in the initrd, I am putting in some code to check if there is a settings.ini on the read-write layer, and append that extra line onto it.   

Tags: easy

EasyOS Excalibure-series version 7.4.8 released

September 14, 2026 — BarryK

Highlights since 7.4.7:

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.4.8/

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=176818#p176818

Have fun!    

Tags: easy

Chromium 151 and 152 not using system X cursor

September 14, 2026 — BarryK

You guys running EasyOS 7.4.7 will know about this. It is a known problem reported to the Chromium developers:

https://doc-1160-1o5g-issuetracker.googleusercontent.com/issues/544155039

I have just built EasyOS 7.4.8 with Debian's latest Chromium .deb, version 152.0.7977.82, and the fault is still there.

I do wonder about the Chromium developers sometimes. A little while ago, they introduced a bug with the mouse pointer hovering over the tabs. These bugs should not be happening in the first place, which makes me think the developers are not using Xorg and not bothering to test on Xorg.

I don't want to release 7.4.8 with this bug still there.

EDIT:
Fixed, see post by NorthernSoul:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=176852#p176852

In /etc/gtk-3.0/settings.ini, appended this line:

gtk-cursor-theme-name = default     

Tags: easy

Compiled 6.12.109 kernel

September 10, 2026 — BarryK

Haven't done much EasyOS development recently; busy with the YouTube "Nomad" channel.

but, need to bring out a new release soon. Have bumped to the latest 6.12.x kernel.  

Tags: easy

Improve low-battery warning

August 27, 2026 — BarryK

Easy 7.4.7 has powerapplet_tray version 3.1, which added a beep when battery discharges below 10%, repeated every 15 seconds (and only when discharging, not on charge).

One of the tester guys commented that it wasn't very noticeable, and unfortunately I also discovered the same. Running the laptop in my tent, it wasn't on charge, and I did hear the beep, but didn't connect that with the battery being low. The tray icon also flashes, but I didn't notice that either. Then the laptop suddenly died.

I have bumped powerapplet_tray to version 3.2, and this time it calls an external script, /usr/sbin/bat-low-warn, every 15 seconds:

#!/bin/ash
#20260827 /root/Startup/powerapplet_tray will call this every 15 seconds
#when battery below 10%.

export TEXTDOMAIN=bat-low-warn
export OUTPUT_CHARSET=UTF-8

paplay /usr/share/audio/error.wav

M0="$(gettext 'WARNING LOW BATTERY')"
popup "background=#ffa0a0 terminate=5 timecount=dn name=batlow|<big><big><b>${M0} </b></big></big>"

sleep 1
paplay /usr/share/audio/error.wav
###end###

...that should get our attention!    

Tags: easy