Getting started with EasyOS

[williwaw]

Looking where to download EasyOS? Go to Barry's blog at https://bkhome.org/news/tag_easy.html
and scroll down until you find announcement of latest release

EasyOs is a complete full featured OS designed to run from a USB flash drive. When EasyOs is run from a USB or a dedicated drive your primary disk can remain isolated.

EasyOs is currently released in two versions, one based on Scarthgap and another based on Devuan. Both include the LibreOffice suite and either Chromium or Firefox browser in addition to a complement of tools and apps to meet the needs of most users. Additional apps can be installed in multiple ways with PKGget, a puppy like package manager.

Larger apps, supplied as .sfs's, can also be installed with SFSget. and EasyOs also includes installers for Appimages and Flatpacks.

An index to Barrys documentation is found at EasyOS homepage You will find links to overviews of EasyOS, applications in EasyOS, development and programming pages, installation tutorials, technical details and usage guidelines.

How and Why EasyOs is Different is the primary introduction page

Some notable features are........

• Encryption of your your persistent data directories with fscrypt can be elected when setting up your install during the first boot up.

• EasyOs has many options for secure browsing.

• You can choose to save the current session or not, and a shutdown menu give you choices for running the next session totally in ram or not. When lockdown is selected it is impossible to mount other partitions or disks, in the next session, preventing any possible access.

• Applications can be run on the desktop or in a container. The entire desktop can be run containerized and you can even run a different OS in a container.

• Updating to recent versions can be done using EasyUpdate at your convenience, and Easy Version Control allows you to rollback to an earlier version Of EasyOs in addition to enabling snapshots and rollbacks of your persistent data directory.

For a deeper look under the hood, see this how easy works page

Installation

Creating an EasyOs USB
A USB flash drive should be dedicated to your EasyOs install, as the download is packaged as a full disk image. Having a dedicated USB install is also useful to have on hand as a rescue disk, or for making frugal installs of EasyOs to internal disks. The tutorial linked above explains how to write EasyOs to your USB stick and has links to useful tools. USB Image Tool or DiskImager is useful when working from Windows to create your USB , while Linux users who are not comfortable using the dd command in a terminal emulator should find EasyDD useful.

How to install EasyOS on your hard drive
Dual booting EasyOs with other operating systems from an internal disk, or installing EasyOs to a disk partition is also possible. A frugal install is the prefered method.

Should you need to open or mount an EasyOs image file from a Linux distrubition that does not support mounting an .img file, mount-img may be useful

Other documentation

For EasyOs and related projects can be found by using custom searches.

• in the search bar at Barry's News

• and the meta search at Puppy Linux Search and at rockedge.org

Barry posts quite often in his blog about the development of EasyOs and his other interests and projects.

[BarryK]

NOTICE
I have deleted a couple of posts in this thread.

This is a "sticky" thread, with information about EasyOS, like how to get started.

This thread is not the place for questions. If you have a question, if it is about a particular version of EasyOS, there is a thread for that, otherwise start a new thread under the "EasyOS" forum category:

viewforum.php?f=63

[mikewalsh]

@BarryK :-

NOTICE
I have deleted a couple of posts in this thread.

This is a "sticky" thread, with information about EasyOS, like how to get started.

This thread is not the place for questions. If you have a question, if it is about a particular version of EasyOS, there is a thread for that, otherwise start a new thread under the "EasyOS" forum category:

viewforum.php?f=63

We can "Lock" the topic if you want, Barry. No extraneous posts CAN be added, that way. Just make sure it has everything here that you want it to have before we do that.

Mike.

[greengeek]

NOTICE
I have deleted a couple of posts in this thread.

This is a "sticky" thread, with information about EasyOS, like how to get started.

This thread is not the place for questions.

Where should i go for basic info aimed at a standard puppy user with current frugal installs please?

[BarryK]

Where should i go for basic info aimed at a standard puppy user with current frugal installs please?

Do you mean frugal install of Puppy Linux?
If so, look at the main index of this froum.

For EasyOS frugal install, look at the install links at easyos.org:

https://easyos.org/

[greengeek]

Do you mean frugal install of Puppy Linux?

No, sorry i wasn't clear enough - what i meant was that i am currently running frugal installs of Puppy Linux and wondered if there was a tutorial regarding how to add EasyOS into my menu.lst

I did look at that link to the install notes page but nothing jumped out as a specific guide for existing Puppians to trial EasyOS.

Perhaps it is not practical for EasyOS to co-exist with my frugals - maybe I am better off dedicating a new flash drive?

[williwaw]

Hi greengeek

using grub4dos installed a vfat sda1 partition, with a subfolder (ez) in sda2 which contains initrd, vmlinz and the easy.sfs
my menu.lst stanza looks like

Code: Select all

title  easy
  find --set-root uuid () 1bc0ee61-7343-4e0f-8891-f26e1bfc7fe4
  kernel /ez/vmlinuz  rw wkg_uuid=1bc0ee61-7343-4e0f-8891-f26e1bfc7fe4   wkg_dir=ez
  initrd /ez/initrd

where 1bc0ee61-0967-4e0f-7343-f26e1bfc7fe4 is the uuid for sda2
if I recall correctly, sda2 should be ext4 if you want to use the encryption feature.

[Clarity]

Hi @BarryK

PUDD is a useful PUP app.

Is there a way to have it write an ISO backup or hybrid to a HDD/USB/SDcard? PUDD works for writing IMG files, just curious for writing ISO that I've created for restorations.

Thanks in advance

[BarryK]

Hi @BarryK

PUDD is a useful PUP app.

Is there a way to have it write an ISO backup or hybrid to a HDD/USB/SDcard? PUDD works for writing IMG files, just curious for writing ISO that I've created for restorations.

Thanks in advance

Pudd is ancient, I haven't looked at it for years ...like, about 10 years ago.
Can't really remember much about it. It is in all the pups, or was.

[BarryK]

I have made two blog posts about some "gotchas" when installing EasyOS...

"How to install EasyOS page updated"
https://bkhome.org/news/202212/how-to-i ... dated.html

"Warning old bootloaders not support ext4 encrypt"
https://bkhome.org/news/202301/warning- ... crypt.html

EDIT:
And this:

"Limine Installer check duplicate UUID, PARTUUID and label"
https://bkhome.org/news/202301/limine-i ... label.html

[FloraMae]

Am I dense or is there no links to find downloads of the .img file?

Ok, found a download under news: https://bkhome.org/news/tag_easy.html

but now how do I mount the .img file? mount-img command doesn't exist in Bookworm64 and just clicking the .img file has no run action. I did right click on the .img file and went to disk image mounter but nothing happened either.

So far not very "easy" lol

[williwaw]

FloraMae

some instructions on mounting an .img file and links to Barrys mount-img script can be found in this topic

[trawglodyte]

I was installing easy-5.8.3-amd64 today, so I made a video showing how easy it is. This assumes UEFI and GPT partition table. From MX Linux (probably about the same for any Debian or Ubuntu sort of OS). https://odysee.com/@trawg:3/easy-frugal:8 I think I could have the .img ready to boot in 2 minutes if I wasn't yapping at the camera. Here's the menuentry template I used.

menuentry "<folder name>" {
insmod ext2
insmod part_gpt
search --set=root --fs-uuid 3a0684f9-871b-4c62-aa88-4418bb62d10b
linux /<folder name>/vmlinuz rw wkg_uuid=3a0684f9-871b-4c62-aa88-4418bb62d10b wkg_dir=/<folder name>
initrd /<folder name>/initrd
}

# download link for EasyOS - https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64 ... tone/2024/
# replace folder name 4X with whatever you named the folder on your frugal partition
# replace uuid 2X with yours. found with blkid in terminal
# keep menuentry's you wish to boot in /boot/grub/custom.cfg

FYI - The download link was not real easy to find on this thread or Barry's website. Maybe it's there somewhere and I just missed it?

[BarryK]

I watched the video, nice.

Regarding the folder name, unlike Puppy, EasyOS can be installed into a folder without version number, such as "easyos".
This is because the installation can be updated, via clicking on the "update" icon on the desktop.
Doing that will immediately make a folder with version-number misleading.

[ghoen]

Another fast download link is https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/eas ... tone/2024/
https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/eas ... hgap/2024/
(updated)
Greetings

[pp4mnklinux]

.... From MX Linux (probably about the same for any Debian or Ubuntu sort of OS). https://odysee.com/@trawg:3/easy-frugal:8 I think I could have the .img ready to boot in 2 minutes if I wasn't yapping at the camera. Here's the menuentry template I used.

menuentry ....

I can't access to your video.

For sure it is really useful.

Why don't u upload it to utube?

(I understand this is not the best, but it is permanent).

Cheers

---- Edited -----

This is the way I started to work with EasyOS. How I installed EasyOS, just in case it helps you too.

https://easyosinstall.wordpress.com/202 ... ng-easyos/ English / Spanish / German

[eric52]

Greetings! I'm an old puppy person, and at pp4mnklinux's recommendation, I'm giving EasyOS a try. First, let me say that it's a great distro, ferociously fast, and it looks like it will be a lot of learning fun. Now the but: Clicking on the .img file does not mount it. Gunzip insisted that mount_img.gz is in the wrong format, but EasyDD was acceptable, and I installed to USB to copy to HDD. The machine had a bunch of puppies, dogs, and KLs already on it, so I stuck with Grub4Dos. I had found mention of the right entry, but the boot failed, insisting it could not find the SFS. It turns out that having the .img file, easydd, and mount_img.gz in the frugal folder was the problem, and I got going. The USB works flawlessly OOTB. As a matter of puerile personal pride, I never throw in the towel, but a new user really has to go the USB route. All the alternative options mentioned in the documentation are fraught with frustration. My first impression is that EasyOS looks like heaven, a mansion with many rooms, but the front door sticks and the hinges creak ominously. Once you're in, it's a blast, and I'm sure I'll be spending a lot of time with this distro. It sure seems like the daily driver I've been seeking - a versatile winner in local and portable venues that remasters easily. Thanks, pp4mnklinux!

[BarryK]

Clicking on the .img file does not mount it. Gunzip insisted that mount_img.gz is in the wrong format, but EasyDD was acceptable, and I installed to USB to copy to HDD.

Once you are running EasyOS, then clicking on the .img will mount it.
Other distros, such as most of the pups, you will need to mount the .img either manually or with a script.

I don't know where you got that mount_img.gz from -- perhaps it has a false ".gz" and all you need to do is rename the script to mount_img (and set it as executable)
-- that is quite common practice when uploading files on this forum.

Some instruction for creating a grub entry is here:

https://easyos.org/install/easy-frugal- ... ation.html

[eric52]

No problem, Barry, I'm good to go. In fact, I've been giggling and dancing around for about 2 hours. This is an incredible distro based on an amazing concept. It does everything, including several things I never even imagined could be done, and it's all ridiculously easy. WOW! You did it all over again. Thanks.

[williwaw]

I don't know where you got that mount_img.gz from -- perhaps it has a false ".gz" and all you need to do is rename the script to mount_img (and set it as executable)
-- that is quite common practice when uploading files on this forum.

Hi Barry

I attached it to viewtopic.php?t=8086, and had to add the .gz.
My google-fu was never strong enough to be able to find it on your server, but should it be located at bkhome, I would rather link to it instead.
a gzipped version can also be found at viewtopic.php?t=6214

[williwaw]

double post

[eric52]

Sorry I missed the fake .gz. I've only seen it as a second extension and therefore dismissed the possibility and did not properly pursue it. Boy is my face red.

[eric52]

This keeps getting better and better. I've been racking my brains about where I'd seen "scarthgap" before. This is a Yocto fork that got out of bed. I'm afraid I don't keep reading when I hit kiosks and routers, no matter how comprehensive the platform looks, so I don't know what a "scarth" is, but I do understand gapping. I have a lot of resurrected junkers, so it makes sense to keep sensitive data stored in isolation. It also makes sense to keep multiboot Wind internet-ignorant instead of just time-frozen. And here's the whole shooting match in one tiny package... made easy. To be honest, I don't really have any data that needs protecting, but I do value privacy, especially lately. 'Gorilla' computing - I love it! I haven't had this much fun in years. How many OSs can dance on the head of a pin?