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Evince PDF viewer rolled back to gtk2 version

September 19, 2026 — BarryK

I continue to be frustrated with Evince. This post from peasythope reminded me:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=17445

Yes, 1-pixel wide window borders, how useless. I also think the UI is poorly designed.

The old gtk2 version of Evince, on the otherhand, has normal system window decorations and a very sensible UI. Makes me wonder if there was a change of developers when moving to gtk3.

Anyway, I have decided to go back to the gtk2 Evince for the next release of EasyOS. It does lack support for some file formats, but handles PDF well, as far as I can recall.   

Tags: easy

EasyOS Excalibur-series version 7.4.10

September 18, 2026 — BarryK

Changes since 7.4.9:

Download:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/excalibur/2026/7.4.10/

Feedback welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=176993#p176993

Have fun!  

Tags: easy

EasyOS 7.4.8 and 7.4.9 removed

September 18, 2026 — BarryK

Decided to remove these from ibiblio.org, as too many issues. The latest version is now 7.4.7.

Doing this because thinking of newcomers.

I expect to upload version 7.4.10 soon.   

Tags: easy

Precaution when insufficient space in working-partition

September 18, 2026 — BarryK

A couple of people have run into this problem, of having insufficient free space in the working-partition. There are various scenarios where this is a problem.

One of those is when do a version update; the latest 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs' may push the free space below a reasonable value. One precaution that can be taken is to reduce the history-depth; that is, how many previous versions of Easy are kept. I have inserted this code into /inc/07-new-version script, at line 28:

 #20260917 check if enough space in working-partition...
 WPfreem=$(df -m /mnt/${WKG_DEV} | grep '^/dev/' | tr -s ' ' | cut -f 4 -d ' ')
 if [ $WPfreem -lt 3000 ];then #3GB
  if [ $DEPTH_MAX -gt 2 ];then
   DEPTH_MAX=$((${DEPTH_MAX}-1))
   echo -n "$DEPTH_MAX" > /mnt/${WKG_DEV}/${WKG_DIR}.session/session1/var/local/version-history-depth
  fi
 fi

That is one step, more checks can be done.  

Tags: easy

Audacious rolled back

September 18, 2026 — BarryK

Having a bit of a saga with Audacious music player. Easy 7.4.7 has Audacious package from Easy Scarthgap. I have been gradually recompiling them in woofQ2, in Easy Excalibur; and that is the case for Audacious in Easy 7.4.8.

However, pp4mnk has discovered a plugin problem:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=176978#p176978

I have taken the easy way out, reverted to using the Audacious packages from Scarthgap.   

Tags: easy

EasyClone alternate build path and progress

September 17, 2026 — BarryK

EasyClone is introduced here:

https://easyos.org/install/how-to-clone-a-easyos-installation.html

Forum member pp4mnk suggested it would be helpful to have a progress indication while the "EASYCLONE" file is being created. Forum member oliverjames wants an alternative path in which to build "EASYCLONE", if insufficient space in the working-partition. Discussion here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=16721

I have implemented both. There is now a button to bring up a dialog window to choose an alternative path, see near bottom:

img1

While creating EASYCLONE, there is a window on the desktop that has lines appended as the build progresses. Here it is at about 90%:

img2

...this makes use of the 'popup' utility, which has the ability to append lines.

Here is the final window, showing the path, in a "temp4" folder where I chose to build EASYCLONE:

img3

EasyClone is proving to be popular, this takes the usability up a notch.   

Tags: easy

German users please stay with version 7.4.7

September 17, 2026 — BarryK

There is a bad "de" translation that breaks the desktop:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=176948#p176948

Please wait for Easy 7.4.10  

Tags: easy