Easy Pyro 1.1.1, 1.2

Version 1.1 is EOL (End Of Line) for the "Pyro" series of EasyOS. Released August 9, 2019.

Pyro is superseded by the "Buster" series, that starts from version 2.0.

For news about releases and development work, read Barry's blog:

Version 1.1.1

This is an extremely minor bug fix release. The main problem was SeaMonkey failing to start if launched on the main desktop when there is no Internet connection.

If you already have 1.1, you can fix the problem by doing this is a terminal:

# ln -snf /usr/lib/seamonkey/seamonkey /usr/bin/seamonkey

Despite the intention of EOL, there is another release...

Version 1.2

At the time of writing, Easy Buster 2.1 is being released. Although the Buster series is intended to receive most attention ongoing, Barry decided to keep doing maintenance releases of the Pyro series.

Although the package versions, such as gcc, glibc and libraries, are starting to get a bit "long in the tooth", Barry retains a fondness for them due to the very small size and targeted configuration. That is, the packages were compiled from source, using 'oe-qky-src', a fork of OpenEmbedded, so there are no unwanted dependencies, meaning no bloat.

Consider, the 'easy-1.2-amd64.img.gz' download file is 418MB. This includes the "kitchen sink" of applications, both GTK2, GTK3 and Qt5 based apps. On the other-hand, Buster 'easy-2.1-amd64.img.gz' is 504MB and has less apps -- Qt5 libraries and apps such as Scribus (desktop publisher) were left out, to limit the size.

Yes, Buster works, and has the advantage of access to the huge Debian package respositories (which was the main reason to go for it). However, aesthetically, small size, and the seamless integration off all packages, are the arguments in favour of Pyro. Pyro has a much smaller on-line app repository.

Version 1.2 has a kernel bump to 5.2.9, some bug fixes, infrastructure improvements, and the new "Copy session to RAM & disable drives" boot option.

Here are links to further information about changes in version 1.2, in no particular order:

Fixes when SFS layers change 1
Copy session to RAM & disabled drives 1 2
SFSget SFS management improved 1
Kernel 5.2.7 with cap_sys_mount patch 1
Fix opening up initrd.q 1
Chromium SFS updated, Firefox SFS removed 1
de and fr langpacks updated 1 2
YouTubeDL updated and improved GUI 1
Workaround starting seaMonkey in container 1
Fixes for Acer Aspire 1 laptop 1 2 3
German and French builds of EasyOS 1 2
Various extra technical improvements 1 2 3 4 5

Despite the small size, Pyro 1.2 includes the "kitchen sink", a huge collection of apps, including Libreoffice, Scribus, Gimp, Inkscape, Dia, Planner, Grisbi, SeaMonkey and Xine. Here is a list of all apps builtin to this release:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/pyro/1.2/pkg-list.txt

These packages are only in the "devx" SFS:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/pyro/1.2/pkg-list-devx-only.txt

Written August 25, 2019