Simon Peter, the creator of the AppImage self-contained package format, has released version 0.8.1 of the helloSystem distribution, based on FreeBSD 13. It is positioned as a system for everyday users looking to transition from macOS, dissatisfied with Apple's policies. The system is free of the complexities found in modern Linux distributions, is under full user control, and allows former macOS users to feel comfortable. For familiarization with the distribution, a bootable image has been created, sized at 941 MB (torrent).
The interface resembles macOS and includes two panels—a top one with a global menu and a bottom one with an application panel. The global menu and status bar are powered by the panda-statusbar package, developed by the CyberOS distribution (formerly PandaOS). The Dock application panel is based on the cyber-dock project, also from the CyberOS developers. For file management and desktop shortcut placement, the Filer file manager is being developed, which is based on pcmanfm-qt from the LXQt project. The Falkon browser is offered by default, but Firefox and Chromium are also available optionally. Applications are provided in self-contained packages. The launch utility is used to run applications, which finds the program and analyzes execution errors.
The project is developing a series of its own applications, such as a configurator, installer, mountarchive utility for mounting archives in the file system tree, a data recovery tool for ZFS, a disk splitting interface, a network setup indicator, a screenshot creation utility, a Zeroconf server browser, a volume control indicator, and a boot environment configuration utility. Python and the Qt library are used for development. Among the supported components for application development, listed in order of preference, are PyQt, QML, Qt, KDE Frameworks, and GTK. ZFS is used as the main file system, and UFS, exFAT, NTFS, EXT4, HFS+, XFS, and MTP are supported for mounting.
Main changes in helloSystem 0.8.1:
- The ability to connect to the internet via USB tethering with Android smartphones has been implemented.
- Support for USB systems with surround sound (5.1), such as BOSE Companion 5, has been added.
- For disks larger than 80 GB, a swap partition is enabled by default.
- Settings for language and keyboard are now saved in UEFI NVRAM.
- The kernel and modules can be loaded without outputting text on the screen (to display diagnostic messages during boot, press 'V'; for single-user mode, press 'S'; and to show the boot menu, press Backspace).
- The volume management menu now displays the manufacturers and models of USB audio devices.
- Information about the graphics driver has been added to the 'About This Computer' dialog.
- The menu now features auto-completion for paths starting with the characters '~' and '/'.
- The user management application allows the creation of users without administrator rights, deletion of users, and enabling/disabling automatic login.
- The interface of the Live build creation utility has been improved.
- Development has begun on a backup utility using the capabilities of the ZFS file system.
Source: opennet.ru
