EasyOS Dunfell-series 2.8.3

EasyOS was created in 2017, derived from Quirky Linux, which in turn was derived from Puppy Linux in 2013. Easy is built in woofQ, which takes as input binary packages from any distribution, and uses them on top of the unique EasyOS infrastructure.

Throughout 2020, the official release for x86_64 PCs was 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, and first official release, 2.6.1, was in January 2021.

The page that you are reading now has the release notes for EasyOS Dunfell-series on x86_64 PCs, also debuting in 2021.

To try and keep things simple, all three, the Dunfell-series on Pi4 and the Dunfell-series and Buster-series on the PC, all are (approximately) sync'ed at the same version number.

However, there are differences in the maturity of each. In the case of the Pi4, the hardware still has some issues. For Dunfell-series on the PC, as the packages are all compiled from source, they are not as tested as those in the Buster-series.

The version number is for EasyOS itself, the infrastructure, support-glue, system scripts and system management and configuration applications.

The latest version is becoming mature, though is an experimental distribution and some parts are under development and are still considered as beta-quality. However, you will find this distro to be a very pleasant surprise, or so we hope.

2.6.1 release notes

Here are blog posts relevant to EasyOS Dunfell-series:

Some extra notes: the kernel is 5.10.11, SeaMonkey is 2.53.6. For those who need the 'wl' kernel wifi driver, it is available as a PET package -- click "petget" on the desktop. EasyOS is available as English, French, German, and Norwegian (nb and nn) builds. Norwegian is brand new and untested.

2.6.2 release notes

Not much different from 2.6.1, have just bumped the kernel and SeaMonkey. Release notes:

Most of the packages in the Dunfell series are compiled in OpenEmbedded, including Samba. However, Feodor discovered that CUPS support was broken. This was fixed by adding the 'cups' package as a dependency in the 'samba' OpenEmbedded  build recipe. The binary package is now "revision 3", samba-4.10.17-r3-nocona-64.tar.xz.

Regarding the last item, as explained, EasyOS has rejoined the Puppy Linux Forum, at https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewforum.php?f=63

2.7 release notes

Source packages have been recompiled in OpenEmbedded/Yocto, this time adding ModemManager, Inkscape and pngoverlay-cairo. ModemManager GUI has also been added to the build. A couple of significant bugs fixed. Release notes:

When click "dunfell" on the desktop, first startup of EasyOS desktop in container is faster. The bug getting corrupted wallpaper seems to be fixed, but feedback welcome if you still get it.

2.7.1 release notes

Thanks guys, for the feedback! This release has many incremental improvements and fixes, and two new packages, 'brightness control' and 'flsynclient'. Release notes:

2.7.2 release notes

Some small, but important bug fixes and tweaks, and one new application:

2.7.3 release notes

More small but important fixes and improvements:

2.8.1 release notes

The main news item for this release is that all packages have been recompiled in OpenEmbedded with glibc 2.33, up from 2.31. Also, some bug fixes, package upgrades and the kernel now has the Paragon ntfs3 driver builtin. Release notes:

Hmmm, after listing them, realise quite a lot has happened since version 2.7.3.

There was consideration of moving to a "save file" instead of a "save folder", here and here, but that got aborted.

2.8.3 release notes

Not many changes, but significant. Release notes:

The package selection has changed a little bit. The 'jack', 'modemmanager' and 'modem-manager-gui' packages are no longer compiled in OpenEmbedded and not included in the release of EasyOS.


About EasyOS

Firstly, which one should you go for, the Buster- or Dunfell-series?

On the PC, if you want maturity and the huge Debian package repository, then probably the Buster-series is the best choice. The Dunfell-series has a small package repository, and there may (or may not be) some maturity issues with the packages. But if you want very small, lean, mean and fast, without any dependence on systemd, pulseaudio, avahi, pam or polkit, and just plain more fun, choose the Dunfell-series.

Besides, in the Dunfell-series, you can run a Buster-series in a container, which is really easy to do.

Furthermore, in April 2021, Barry decided that the flagship release will be the Dunfell-series. This is where most of the attention will be, ongoing, though there may be one or two maintenance releases of the Buster-series during 2021.

Why would you choose EasyOS instead of some other Linux distribution?

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 490MB, yet contains just about every application you would ever need, such as the SeaMonkey browser suite, LibreOffice, Gimp, Dia, Inkscape, Planner, Grisbi, Osmo, NoteCase, Celluloid and Audacious. There are powerful system managers, such as NetworkManager, EasyContainers, EasyVersionControl 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.

Links

Website: https://easyos.org/

News: https://bkhome.org/news

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

We are very grateful to Ibiblio for hosting EasyOS, right from the start:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/dunfell/

EasyOS has one mirror of ibiblio.org, thanks to NLUUG, here:

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


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