EasyOS Kirkstone-series 5.0

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 Kirkstone release of OE has been used, to compile binary packages for x86_64.

Earlier releases of EasyOS compiled in OE are the Dunfell-series and before that the Pyro-series. They have also been compiled for aarch64 and EasyOS runs on the Raspberry Pi4.

The last release of the x86_64 Dunfell-series was January 10, 2023, version 4.5.5. The announcement and release notes are here:

https://bkhome.org/news/202301/easyos-dunfell-series-version-455-released.html

The version number is for EasyOS itself, independent of the target hardware; that is, the infrastructure, support-glue, system scripts and system management and configuration applications.

The latest version is becoming mature, though Easy 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.

4.99 release notes

Version 4.99 is a Release Candidate for 5.0. Here are relevant blog posts:

In a nutshell, packages are compiled in the Kirkstone release of OpenEmbedded, and EasyOS now has international translations builtin, langpack PETs no longer used, nor are there separate per-language builds.

4.101 release notes

Lots of bug fixes.

5.0 release notes

This is it, version 5.0-final, the official start of the Kirkstone-series. More bug fixes, tweaks and some updates:



About EasyOS

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, yet contains just about every application you would ever need, such as Firefox|Chromium browser, LibreOffice, Gimp, Dia, Inkscape, Planner, Homebank, 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:

https://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