Barry Kauler, the founder of Puppy Linux, has released an experimental distribution EasyOS 4.0, combining Puppy Linux technologies with container isolation for running system components. The distribution is managed via a set of graphical configurators developed by the project. The size of the boot image is 773MB.
Features of the distribution:
- Each application, as well as the desktop itself, can be run in separate containers, utilizing Easy Containers for their isolation.
- The default operation runs with root privileges, dropping privileges when launching each application, as EasyOS is positioned as a one-user live system (there is an optional ability to work under a non-privileged user 'spot').
- 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-4.0, 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.
- Installation of meta-packages in SFS format is possible, which are mountable images with Squashfs that combine several regular packages.
- 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 text editor Geany, the password manager Fagaros, the personal finance management system HomeBank, the personal Wiki DidiWiki, the organizer Osmo, project manager Planner, note-taking system Notecase, Pigin, the music player Audacious, media players Celluloid, VLC, and MPV, the video editor LiVES, and the streaming software OBS Studio.
- To simplify file sharing and organize printer access, there is a proprietary application called EasyShare.
In the new release:
- Significant structural changes have been made to speed up program launches and improve interface responsiveness. It is noted that the distribution can work well on a system with 2 GB of RAM.
- The distribution of the ISO image in compressed form has been discontinued to simplify its copying to storage media.
- In normal operation mode, all operations are performed in RAM without writing to disk.
- A Save icon has been added to the desktop for unscheduled backups of results stored in RAM to the storage device (in normal mode, changes are saved at the end of the session).
- The Squashfs filesystem compression uses the lz4-hc algorithm, which, combined with RAM operation, significantly speeds up the launch of applications and containers.
- The system has been completely rebuilt from OpenEmbedded-Quirky (revision-9). The Linux kernel has been updated to version 5.15.44.
Source: opennet.ru
