EasyOS Kirkstone-series version 5.0

EasyOS Kirkstone-series version 5.0

February 26, 2023 —
BarryK

I started work on the Kirkstone-series early in December 2022.
There have been two Release Candidates, discussed in this forum thread:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8072

I also receive feedback via direct email. Finally looking OK, so version 5.0 is now out. Here is a summary:

Almost all of the packages in EasyOS Kirkstone-series are compiled
from source, using a fork of OpenEmbedded (OE) Kirkstone-release.
Almost all package versions are updated, compared with the
Dunfell-series (the previous EasyOS release, last of which is version
4.5.5, released January 10, 2023).
Apart from new package versions, many bug fixes and many
improvements, there is one other major improvement; the abandonment of
“langpack” language translation packages, as well as abandonment of
language-specific builds. Now, there is just one file to download, the
required language is chosen at first bootup, and the User Interface is
then rendered in that language. More or less; French is just about
complete, second is German.
MoManager is a GUI translation tool, that has its roots ten
years ago in Puppy Linux; it has been extensively rewritten, to make it
an easy experience for anyone to contribute translations. As a great
aid, it features automatic translation using Google or Bing, that the
user just needs to scan for correctness.
As always, EasyOS includes just about every application most
users would want builtin, including Chromium, LibreOffice, Inkscape,
Gimp, Gparted, SolveSpace, Homebank, etc., etc.
Easy does not ship with a ISO file, only a drive-image file,
that can easily be written to a USB-stick, or opened up for direct
install to internal hard drive.

The obligatory snapshot; this is on a 1024×768 monitor, the smallest supported size:

Easy will work on an old computer, as long as it has a 64-bit x86
CPU. When the USB-image is written to a USB-flash-stick, it will boot on
legacy-BIOS and UEFI-firmware PCs. I tested 5.0 on an old Compaq
Presario, with only 2GB RAM; Easy runs great.

More screen shots:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.0/snapshots/

Package versions are listed here:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.0/pkg-lists/

Release notes:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.0/release-notes.htm

If all you know are ISO files and unfamiliar how to write a
drive-image (.img) file to USB-stick or open it up, this page will help:

https://easyos.org/install/how-to-write-easyos-to-a-flash-drive.html

Download ‘easy-5.0-amd64.img’ from here:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/5.0/

…note, there is also an md5sum checksum in file ‘md5sum.txt’.

If you live in Europe, the people at NLUUG have very kindly mirrored EasyOS:

https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/amd64/releases/kirkstone/2023/

We welcome feedback! EasyOS has a section in the Puppy Linux Forum, and a thread for version 5.0 is here:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8117

If you would like to help out with translating, there is also this thread:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8070

If you are new to EasyOS and want to get a quick overview, see here:

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

Have fun!      

Tags: easy