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YouTube download GUI improved

May 16, 2026 — BarryK

EasyOS has a YouTube download GUI, a frontend for 'yt-dlp' commandline utility. Quite a long time since I worked on it, and recent posts by don570 and pp4mnklinux have reminded me:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16874

Yes, download needs some choices. There is now a "Download audio only" checkbox on the main window:

img1

After clicking on the "DOWNLOAD" button, there are radiobuttons to choose the format:

img2

The choice is made, actually, I changed to 720p mp4, clicked "OK" and it downloaded, confirmation on completion:

img3

Excellent improvements. It is nice also to see the file size before downloading.

The is now 'youtubedl-gui-0.7.pet', which will be in the next release of EasyOS.   

Tags: easy

Pburn missing dependencies

May 15, 2026 — BarryK

These old optical media apps have been neglected for years. A couple of days ago, posted about missing vobcopy:

Now, Pburn, CD/DVD burner app, has these also missing:

dvdauthor
vamps
vcdimager
normalize-audio
nrg2iso

See forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=170255#p170255

I have added them to be builtin in the next release of EasyOS.    

Tags: easy

PDFview Chromium PDF viewer

May 14, 2026 — BarryK

Yesterday I was experiencing Evince PDF viewer crashing when tried to print. Hmmm... EasyOS is currently using an old gtk2 version of Evince, because I prefer the UI to the latest.

Have changed to the latest Evince, in the Devuan repository. This has the advantage that supports many more file types, not just PDF; comicbook, djvu, dvi, eps, postscript.

I have grown to like Chromium for viewing and printing PDFs. Have added this for when you right-click on a PDF file; now "PDFview" will be offered, which will launch the PDF in Chromium.

Chromium has a feature to view the PDF like it is an app, not a browser. There is now /usr/share/applications/pdfview.deskop, which will cause a menu entry. Either via the menu (Document category), or via right-click menu on a PDF file, will run /usr/sbin/pdfview:

#!/bin/bash

F1="$(realpath "$@")"
if [ ! -f "$F1" ];then exit; fi
F2="${F1// /%20}"
chromium --app=file://${F2}

Then the PDF will open in Chromium looking like a PDF-viewer app:

img1

Another nice usability refinement.   

Tags: easy

Utility vobcopy required by Pdvdrip

May 13, 2026 — BarryK

In the Multimedia menu, there is "Pdvdrip DVD ripper and MKV encoder". However, it aborts as the 'vobcopy' utility is missing. The guys have reported here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=170144#p170144

This one has gone undetected by me, as I haven't ripped from a DVD for a very long time, probably over 10 years. Good that they tested Pdvdrip. Now fixed.  

Tags: easy

EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.3.2 released

May 13, 2026 — BarryK

Newcomers to EasyOS, recommend read the 7.3 announcement for more details:

Release notes:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3.2/release-notes.htm

For just 7..3.2:

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.3.2/

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=170101#p170101

Have fun!    

Tags: easy

Print Screen now works

May 12, 2026 — BarryK

The PC keyboard has a key labeled "Prt Sc", or similar, which is supposed to be for taking a snapshot of the screen; however, in EasyOS nothing happens.

This issue, and fix discussed in the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=170042#p170042

Nice, another great little refinement.   

Tags: easy

Eye candy at early bootup

May 11, 2026 — BarryK

Forum member l0wt3ch has implemented an animated gif on the screen in the very early stage of bootup, while execution is in the initrd:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=13911

Like it! Have put this into woofQ2, with the animated EasyOS logo. The woofq2/source/yocto section of woofQ2 has a recipe to compile gif_play, statically-linked with musl.

Right now, will do the in yocto to build an aarch64 'gp' statically-linked executable.   

Tags: easy

Improved create devx sfs in woofQ2

May 10, 2026 — BarryK

woofQ2 had woofq2/rootfs/2create-devx-sfs and 3post-populate-rootfs. The problem is that they really should be executed in reverse, so have renamed them to 2post-populate-rootfs and 3create-devx-sfs, with some modifications.

For installed .deb packages, say "audacious", we want to find a matching "-dev" package. In this case, there is package "audacious-dev"; however the naming of the -dev package may be different, which makes them hard to find.

2post-populate-rootfs creates rootfs/root/.packages/Packages-devuan-excalibur-* files, which are the Devuan package database in "Puppy format". Searching these files for matching -dev package(s) is easy, as they have a common generic name, in the 7th field. For example:

audacious-dev_4.4.2-1|audacious-dev|4.4.2-1||Multimedia;mediaplayer|235K|pool/DEBIAN/main/a/audacious|audacious-dev_4.4.2-1_amd64.deb|+libaudcore5t64&eq4.4.2-1,+libaudgui6&eq4.4.2-1,+libaudtag3t64&eq4.4.2-1,+libaudqt3&eq4.4.2-1,+libglib2.0-dev,+libgtk-3-dev,+qt6-base-dev|audacious development files|devuan|excalibur|0fc10863b8316b5dfec2e5e8e110567f||
audacious_4.4.2-1|audacious|4.4.2-1||Multimedia;mediaplayer|1574K|pool/DEBIAN/main/a/audacious|audacious_4.4.2-1_amd64.deb|+audacious-plugins&ge4.4,+default-dbus-session-bus,+libaudcore5t64&eq4.4.2-1,+libc6&ge2.34,+libgcc-s1&ge3.0,+libglib2.0-0t64&ge2.80.0,+libstdc++6&ge14|small and fast audio player which supports lots of formats|devuan|excalibur|a4aa4ee16384eec4c794b270bdf787df||

Previously, some -dev packages were getting missed. Haven't tested it yet.    

Tags: easy