EasyOS Dunfell-series 2.8 for Pi4

EasyOS was created in 2017, for x86_64 computers. Easy is built in woofQ, which takes as input binary packages from any distribution, and uses them on top of the unique EasyOS infrastructure. The current release for x86_64 PCs is the Buster-series, built with Debian 10.x Buster DEBs.

EasyOS has also been built with packages compiled from source, using a fork of OpenEmbedded (OE). Currently, the Dunfell release of OE has been used, to compile two sets of binary packages, for x86_64 and aarch64.

The latter have been used to build EasyOS for the Raspberry Pi4. The first release is version 2.6. This will also work on the Pi3B, with only 1GB RAM, however, the faster Pi4 and a minimum of 2GB RAM is very much preferred.

Although the first version is 2.6, this is considered to be beta-quality. The "2.6" is for EasyOS itself, the infrastructure, support scripts and applications. This number is sync'ed with the x86_64 releases.

We now have 2.8, with lots of little improvements and fixes.

Version 2.8 is becoming mature, and you will find this distro to be a very pleasant surprise, or so we hope. The "beta" part is communicating with the underlying hardware, and we do hope to improve this. For example, we might be able to import applications for other distros such as Raspbian, for tweaking the screen display and other hardware interfaces.

EasyOS for the Raspberry Pi4 is a 64-bit operating system and uses the 5.10.39 Linux kernel. In other words, it is at the "bleeding edge". Surprisingly though, just about everything seems to be working. Here are items that are not yet working properly:

SeaMonkey browser, Celluloid and MPV media players can play 1080p videos OK, but 2160p stutters.
The Linux kernel has trouble recognizing when a USB-stick is plugged in. Sometimes it has to be replugged several times before the kernel suddenly decides to recognise its existence. FIXED in 2.6.1
Wifi works fine, except sometimes drops out then reconnects. FIXED: just seems require a strong wifi signal.
SeaMonkey sometimes "hangs". But if you wait, it will suddenly recover. MOSTLY FIXED: with change to kyber IO scheduler.

Here are some usage notes:

The SeaMonkey suite usually has an IRC chat module, however, it got left out. FIXED. However, there is Pidgin, a multi-protocol chat client.
The non-English builds of EasOS may have issues. They do have an extra delay at bootup, of a few seconds, due to failed attempt to run a GUI for password-entry in the initrd. There is a fallback to text-mode entry. FIXED.
'de' and 'fr' builds are fairly mature, but this is the first time for 'nb' and 'nn'. For the latter two, you might find some apps not translated.
Notice the "update" icon on the desktop. When there is a new release, all that you will have to do is click on that, and you get a complete update.
Notice the "share" icon on the desktop. This is a powerful tool for sharing files and printers over a network, however, it is a bit neglected. If anyone wants to hack on it, look in /usr/local/EasyShare.

For a quick overview of how EasyOS is different from other Linux distributions, read this:

https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.html

You will notice that the download is quite small, only 480MB, yet contains just about every application you would ever need, such as the SeaMonkey browser suite, LibreOffice, Gimp, Dia, Planner, Grisbi, Osmo, NoteCase, Celluloid and Audacious. There are powerful system managers, such as NetworkManager and BluePup.

BluePup for example, is a bluetooth manager, unique to EasyOS. Another unique tool is 'easydd', a GUI or CLI tool for writing an image file to SD-card or USB-stick.

Furthermore, the easy-*.img.gz file is only gzip-compressed. The squashfs file inside it (easy.sfs), is also gzip-compressed. If we had used, say, xz-compression, the file would be much smaller.

Rather than rambling on and on, describing why EasyOS is so good, try for yourself! If you would like to read a bit more, here are links:

Website: https://easyos.org/

News: https://bkhome.org/news

Forum: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewforum.php?f=63

Finally, a warning. At the time of writing, downloading from ibiblio.org is very slow. We do hope this will improve. EasyOS does have one mirror of ibiblio.org, here:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/

It would be great if there could be more mirrors of EasyOS!

Note, the downloaded image must be written to a microSD card or USB-stick at least 2GB capacity. However, 4GB or greater is very much preferred. The microSD card should be Class-10 for reasonable performance.

Legal statement: https://easyos.org/about/legal-disclaimers-miscellania.html