Barry Kauler, founder of the Puppy Linux project, has published an experimental EasyOS 4.0 distribution that combines Puppy Linux technologies with containerized isolation to run system components. The distribution kit is managed through a set of graphical configurators developed by the project. The size of the boot image is 773MB.
Distribution features:
- Each application, as well as the desktop itself, can be run in separate containers, which are isolated using Easy Containers' own mechanism.
- Running as root by default with resetting privileges on startup of each application, since EasyOS is positioned as a Live-system of one user (optionally it is possible to run under the unprivileged user 'spot').
- The distribution is installed in a separate subdirectory and can coexist with other data on the drive (the system is installed in /releases/easy-4.0, user data is stored in the /home directory, and additional application containers are placed in the /containers directory).
- Encryption of individual subdirectories (for example, /home) is supported.
- It is possible to install meta-packages in SFS format, which are mountable images with Squashfs that combine several regular packages.
- The system is updated in atomic mode (the new version is copied to another directory and the active directory with the system is switched) and supports rollback of changes in case of problems after the update.
- There is a run from RAM mode in which the system is copied into memory at boot and runs without accessing disks.
- To build the distribution, the WoofQ toolkit and package sources from the OpenEmbedded project are used.
- The desktop is based on the JWM window manager and the ROX file manager.
- The basic package includes applications such as Firefox, LibreOffice, Scribus, Inkscape, GIMP, mtPaint, Dia, Gpicview, Geany text editor, Fagaros password manager, HomeBank personal finance management system, DidiWiki personal wiki, Osmo organizer, Planner project manager, system Notecase, Pigin, Audacious music player, Celluloid, VLC and MPV media players, LiVES video editor, OBS Studio streaming system.
- For easy file sharing and printer sharing, a native EasyShare application is offered.
In the new release:
- Significant structural changes have been made, which made it possible to speed up the launch of programs and increase the responsiveness of the interface. It is noted that it is quite possible to work with the distribution kit on a system with 2 GB of RAM.
- Stopped distribution of iso-image in compressed form to simplify its copying to media.
- In normal operation, all operations are performed in RAM without being written to disk.
- On the desktop, the Save icon is proposed for an unscheduled reset of the results of work stored in RAM to the drive (in normal mode, changes are saved when the session ends).
- The lz4-hc algorithm is used to compress the Squashfs file system, which, combined with work from RAM, made it possible to significantly speed up the launch of applications and containers.
- The system is completely rebuilt from OpenEmbedded-Quirky (revision-9). The Linux kernel has been updated to version 5.15.44.
Source: opennet.ru