Barry Kauler, the founder of the Puppy Linux project, has released the EasyOS 6.5 distribution, which combines Puppy Linux technologies with container isolation techniques for running system components. The distribution is managed through a set of graphical configurators developed by the project. The size of the boot image is 950 MB.
Features of the distribution:
- Each application, as well as the desktop itself, can be launched in separate containers using the Easy Containers mechanism for isolation.
- By default, operations are performed with root privileges, which are dropped upon launching each application since EasyOS is positioned as a Live system for a single user.
- The distribution is installed in a separate subdirectory and can coexist with other data on the storage device (the system is installed in /releases/easy-6.5, user data is saved in the /home directory, and additional application containers are placed in the /containers directory).
- Encryption of individual subdirectories (for example, /home) is supported.
- Meta-packages in SFS format can be installed, which are mountable images with Squashfs that combine several regular packages and are similar to appimages, snaps, and flatpak formats.
- The system updates in an atomic mode (the new version is copied to another directory, and the active directory is switched with the system) and supports reverting changes in case of issues after the update.
- There is a mode for running from RAM, in which the system is copied to memory at boot and operates without accessing disks.
- The distribution is built using the WoofQ toolkit and source texts of packages from the OpenEmbedded project.
- The desktop is based on the JWM window manager and ROX file manager.
- The base package includes applications such as Firefox, LibreOffice, Scribus, Inkscape, GIMP, mtPaint, Dia, Gpicview, the Geany text editor, Fagaros password manager, HomeBank personal finance management system, DidiWiki personal wiki, Osmo organizer, Planner project manager, Notecase notes system, Pidgin, Audacious music player, Celluloid, VLC and MPV media players, LiVES video editor, and OBS Studio streaming system.
- To simplify file sharing and organize printer access, there is a proprietary application called EasyShare.
In EasyOS 6.5, package versions have been updated, for example, the Linux kernel has been updated to version 6.6.61. Two editions have been proposed: Scarthgap — a build using a metadata fork from the OpenEmbedded project, and Daedalus — a build based on packages from Devuan 12. The capabilities for running other distributions in containers have been expanded, with support for running the EasyOS Scarthgap (based on OpenEmbedded packages) variant of the EasyOS Daedalus distribution (based on Devuan/Debian packages).
Source: opennet.ru
