EasyOS Daedalus-series version 6.6.5

[Caramel]

...

Could boot from FatDog but would have to open the encrypted ext4 dirs, but needed to compile fscrypt, something I have not done yet.

Could you boot with another version of EasyOS ?
Note, if there is space, you can install several EasyOS on the same partition (in different folders but with the same password)

[BarryK]

Zarfy update and fixes for both Scarthgap and Daedalus, see blog:

https://bkhome.org/news/202504/zarfy-up ... dalus.html

[fatdoguser]

Zarfy update and fixes for both Scarthgap and Daedalus, see blog:

https://bkhome.org/news/202504/zarfy-up ... dalus.html

In a Daedalus install (external USB HDD) using a laptop and HDMI monitor I opted to redefine the screens manually using xrandr, included a script in /root/Startup containing

Code: Select all

xrandr --output HDMI-A-0 --mode 1920x1080 --output eDP --mode 1366x768 --left-of HDMI-A-0 

as I usually have the laptop (eDP) to the left of the larger (HDMI) screen/monitor (both names were identified by running xrandr without any parameters). If the HDMI isn't connected that command just fails - leaves things as normal, otherwise I have one large desktop - a combination of both screens.

For such a setup its better if the menu/tray bar is at the top of screen, along with the drive icons, and the regular Files, WWW ...etc icons below that, as the smaller left (laptop) screen otherwise can't actually see the bottom of screen menu/drives. If you reposition the menu bar and drives to the top of screen however the drives and desktop icons all overlap each other - you have to move the desktop icons all down manually. Changing the desktop wallpaper to a single colour avoids ending up with a desktop picture/image that is split/framed rather than fitted to both combined screens.

I did try the container desktop, but found issues with configuration conflicts, dpi ... etc. so I ended up just deleting all of the containers - just run with the regular desktop as-is (hence no container desktop icons in the above image).

Used it quite heavily today (newly installed this morning, now late evening) and everything has worked really well. Biggest/only issue for me was at the original setup cli/console screen where there was some text on a orange background region and the font was relatively small making it difficult to actually see/read what that text said.

[fatdoguser]

The USB I used to try Easy is of a old external (mechanical) HDD variety. EasyOS initially expanded its available space to the full 250GB available on that, however I resized that back down to 16GB. The first FAT partition is also small, not large enough for instance if you wanted to use that to copy a file onto the USB in order to take that to the local Post Office where you can print off files when you otherwise have no local printer available - that typically requires a FAT type USB format (wont read ext2/3/4). Would be nice if there were options during the initial setup to resize the initial FAT partition size and how much of the remainder space was to be formatted as ext.

At bootup the easy sfs is copied to ram, however I've disabled that which means more ram space is left available for zram (save space). As I understand it the USB has to be left connected during use (maybe that is a misunderstanding?). Operationally that works just as well and boots quicker absent the time to copy easy sfs to ram. Which means that when a program is initially loaded it will be reading from USB, and then likely keeping it cached thereafter i.e. only reads/stores into memory whatever programs/libs are actually used/accessed. Which is more efficient use of available memory space. USB reads are relatively inexpensive, don't really wear out the USB stick, its more a case of writes that are the frictional/wear element. As the sfs is around 1GB not copying that to ram adds around 2GB more zram being available (assuming zram 1:2 average compression ratio).

I couldn't find any boot parameter option to disable copying sfs to ram, so I opened initrd and crudely edited init within that to hard code add a CPYflg=0 after line 2017

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#decide whether to copy easy.sfs to RAM, or not...
CPYflg=0
[ $FREEK -gt 3100000 ] && CPYflg=1 #>1GB ram then copy. 20220609 >3GB
[ $TIME10k -lt 100 ] && CPYflg=0   #but fast drive so don't copy.
[ $FREEK -gt 6100000 ] && CPYflg=1 #but heaps of ram, so copy. 181120 restore. 20220609
[ $TIME10k -lt 15 ] && CPYflg=0    #181120 but super-fast drive so don't copy. 200827 was 30 now 10. 20220607 now 15.

CPYflg=0

EasyOS Daedalus is great, so much already installed that pretty much most needs/use wont require anything else to be installed. As a casual home office type usage it already has calendar, diary, word processing, spreadsheet, image editing, printing, scanner (peasyscan didn't work for me, I did have to install xsane), browsing etc. Alongside enough media support so you can watch/listen to your preferred background choice of news/music/video. All possible on a cheap $10 or less USB stick. Amazing!