More ROX-Filer usability enhancements

ROX-Filer is getting a lot of attention recently!

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=170356#p170356

...little things, under-the-bonnet, make usage that little bit nicer. In this case, improving drag-and-drop of large files, and window resizing.   

Tags: easy

YouTube download GUI improved

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:

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

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

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

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

• Utility vobcopy required by Pdvdrip — May 13, 2026

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

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:

Another nice usability refinement.   

Tags: easy

Utility vobcopy required by Pdvdrip

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

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

• EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.3 released — April 26, 2026

Release notes:

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

For just 7..3.2:

• Print Screen now works — May 12, 2026
• Eye candy at early bootup — May 11, 2026
• Improved create devx sfs in woofQ2 — May 10, 2026
• Rollback broken after pristine reboot — May 09, 2026
• Message while snapshot in progress — May 09, 2026
• Chromium 148.0.7778.96

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

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

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