site
contact
newsPlaying with Easy Daedalus
There are those who loved Easy Buster, EasyOS built with Debian Buster packages. This had access to the enormous Debian repository, which was the main attraction.
Awhile ago, I experimented with Easy Bookworm; however, could not get LibreOffice to start. There were no error messages, just nothing, not aven the splash logo. It was waiting for something, and back then I tried to trace it; found where it was not returning from a function, but couldn't understand what it was waiting for. Online searching did not help.
Devuan Daedalus is the equivalent of Bookworm, except without
systemd. Decided to give it another go, except this time build
with Daedalus packages.
Note, I did download DevuanPup, created by josejp2424, see forum.
Wrote the .iso to a usb stick, booted it and got a black screen.
EasyOS Daedalus-series looks good:
Brief testing, everything is working ...except LibreOffice. Same problem, hangs at startup.
Did a lot more online reading last night, and came up with a reference to apparmor causing startup hanging. Easy Daedalus has the apparmor package installed, to meet some dependency requirements, but the daemon isn't running. Played around a bit with that, then decided to compile LibreOffice, in a running Easy Daedalus.
...and, LibreOffice works.
Too big though, as I built with minimal use of system libraries. Today will have a go at compiling again, and reduce the size.
I did post yesterday about incorporating the Debian repositories
into Easy Scarthgap-series; will probably continue to investigate
that. However, Easy Daedalus is looking good, so tempted to
release it. Will do some more testing first
though.
Tags: easy
APT and DPKG now in EasyOS
DPKG is a low-level DEB (.deb) package manager, whereas APT is a high-level manager, that knows about repositories and has automatic dependency resolution. Quoting from here:
APT is at the higher level, taking responsibility for dependency resolution, repository management, and other daily package management related tasks, whereas DPKG is more at the low-level, going ahead to install .deb packages, yet it has finer control but manual handling of dependencies.
DPKG was already compiled in OpenEmbedded, but I only included the 'dpkg-get' utility in EasyOS. Next release of EasyOS will have the full DPKG, and I have compiled APT in OpenEmbedded and that will also be in EasyOS. Also the 'xxhash' dependency.
Why? Well, I'm going to explore a new way to add more packages to EasyOS. The guys on the forum have been installing .deb packages successfully in Easy, so I would like to formalize that a bit, see if can handle dependencies, avoid clashes with the scarthgap packages.
I'm going to explore this new direction, after yesterday struggling with XBPS:
- Finding XBPS to be very frustrating — October 11, 2024
...those problems are a symptom of a combination of per-package updating and rolling-release model. Easy and the pups have SFS file updates, which are "atomic" and avoid the per-package update pitfalls -- which a rolling-release model makes much worse.
...that's my little rant. Moving on, will post about exploring
this new direction.
Tags: easy
mtPaint now supports webp images
WEBP image files, with ".webp" extension, are not very well supported in EasyOS. Discussed in the forum:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=12789
I have compiled mtPaint version 3.50.10 in OpenEmbedded, with .webp support. Note that the latest mtpaint is not 3.51 as is suggested in the forum thread, it is 3.50.10. Yes, the README file here says "3.51", but the latest release identifies itself as "3.50.10":
https://github.com/wjaguar/mtPaint
Also modified /usr/bin/build-rox-sendto so that now click on a .webp file will open it in mtPaint, as well as mtpaint will show in the right-click menu.
Gimp in EasyOS is still not compiled with webp support.
Personally, that doesn't concern me, as I very much like mtPaint
and it does everything I want in an image editor.
Tags: easy
AARNet mirror of EasyOS
AARNet is "Australian Academic Research Network", see their about page:
https://www.aarnet.edu.au/who-we-are
Good news, they have agreed to mirror EasyOS from ibiblio.org:
https://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/easyos/
I will add this as another download choice in PKGget. This will join the only other mirror, NLUUG (Netherland Linux/Unix User Group):
https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/
So now we have the ibiblio.org server in the USA, NLUUG in
Europe, and AARNet for Oceania region. Though, of course, the best
download depends on many factors, not just what country the server
is located.
Tags: easy
Global IP TV Panel updated to 2024MK8
As the title says. Created and maintained by forum member ETP, see discussion:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=689
Tags: easy
Kernel 6.6.52 compiled
EasyOS 6.3.1 has the 6.6.47 kernel, compile was reported here:
- Kernel 6.6.47 compiled fix bt5 mouse — August 26, 2024
It was reported recently, a fix given by forum member dimkr, for the mouse synaptic driver on a Chromebook:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=131683#p131683
I have compiled the 6.6.52 kernel with that fix. Chose both of these as modules:
CONFIG_CROS_EC=m
CONFIG_CROS_EC_LPC=m
It is intended that this kernel will be in the next release of
both EasyOS and QV.
Tags: easy
Kernel 6.10.11 compiled
I announced on the forum, intend to return to QV development:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=131592#p131592
In anticipation, have compiled the 6.10.11 kernel, with the fixes for bluetooth v5 as reported recently:
- Kernel 6.6.47 compiled fix bt5 mouse — August 26, 2024
There is a lot to do. EasyOS is built with woofQ:
https://github.com/bkauler/woofq
Whereas QV is built with woof-quantum-vis:
https://github.com/bkauler/woof-quantum-vis
The work improving Scarthgap, including fixes, has gone into woofQ, but woof-quantum-vis is a separate project. Many woofQ fixes can be applied to woof-quantum-vis, and I will have to do it the hard way, given that they are radically different; will have to look at each woofQ commit and see if it can be applied to quantum-vis.
EDIT:
This kernel is a disaster! I started a filesystem check on a 4TB
USB3 SSD, and CPU activity went through the roof. So much on the
desktop became unresponsive. Some tray applets still worked,
networkmanager applet was unresponsive, window close buttons
unresponsive. My evaluation of this is superficial, just
observed this weirdness, didn't try any in-depth analysis.
Hit CTRL-C to stop the filesystem check, then ran "sync", but the USB drive was still very busy, even though sync had returned. I tried to shutdown, but it hung, with a message something to do with unable to flush to the drive.
I'm running EasyOS 6.3.1, on which I had compiled the 6.10.11 kernel. Went back to the 6.6.47 kernel, and all is good. In fact, right now doing a filesystem check on another 4TB USB drive, running 6.6.47, and this time cpu activity stays sane, and everything continues to work. The filesystem check is happening right now. It takes awhile with such a big drive.
I had previously used the 6.8.1 kernel with QV and no problem. One thing I notice, an alarming increase in vmlinuz size:
6.6.47: 6809K
6.8.1: 7489K
6.10.11: 8785K
These kernels have essentially the same configuration file, except as expected more hardware support with the later kernels; but mostly I would expect more modules, not the kernel to grow by such a huge amount.
Anyway, what is wrong with the 6.10.x
kernel? Some fundamental change in process management? Staying
with the 6.6.x kernel for QV.
Tags: easy
EasyOS and Bedrock Linux
I have posted about Guix, an application manager that can run in any Linux distribution, and provide an alternative repository:
- Decided not to integrate Guix into EasyOS — September 21, 2024
- Guix works with EasyOS — September 20, 2024
Nix package manager is similar. Guix and Nix install packages
that run as though they are native apps, with full access to the
filesystem and I/O.
Forum member Caramel investigated Nix, see here:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8904
AppImages and Flatpaks also behave like native apps, though the Flatpak sandbox can sometimes make this difficult.
Running apps in a container or VM (virtual machine), on the otherhand, is an isolated environment. Apps do not see the main filesystem and may have very limited I/O capability. It is possible to punch holes, for example could bind-mount /files inside the container or VM. But then, that's the whole idea; run the app securely, isolated from the rest of the system. Note also, some apps do not work properly in the container or VM environment, despite punching holes.
Now along comes Bedrock. It was forum member antithesis who mentioned Bedrock and (just now) got me interested in it:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6592
What you do is bootup an installed Linux distribution, then run the Bedrock script. This "hijacks" the Linux distribution, moves it all to a different location, and replaces the main filesystem with its own. I have done this with EasyOS, and after being hijacked, everything was moved to /bedrock/strata/easyos
At first, I attempted with a normal EasyOS; however, Bedrock choked on the aufs layered filesystem. It wants a normal full installation, so I created a usb-stick with EasyOS fully installed, no SFS layers, no initrd. I then ran the Bedrock script and hijacking worked. Rebooted and got the normal EasyOS desktop. Almost everything works, except apps that require dbus coud not find the dbus socket -- should be able to sort that out.
Jesse at Distrowatch wrote a very nice review of Bedrock a couple of years ago:
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20210705#bedrock
Here is the Bedrock homepage:
What I can do next, is add another strata, say Alpine Linux, and install apps that will run just like native apps.
Very interesting; however, EasyOS as-is is not suitable. I need to create a variant that is only a full install, which would be an entirely different distro, going back to what Quicky Linux was. QV (Quantum Vis, or Quirky Void) is a full install -- might use that as the starting point, except build from Scarthgap and do not use btrfs.
Stay tuned!
Tags: easy