EasyOS version 3.2.1 released

[BarryK]

Now with Flowblade video editor!

Blog announcement:

https://bkhome.org/news/202201/easyos-v ... eased.html

Flowblade blog post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202201/flowblad ... asyos.html

flowblade.jpg (57.76 KiB) Viewed 1816 times

[nevarmaor]

I upgraded from 3.2 and it works no problem. Note I had to make sure the laptop was set to internal sound and not HDMI to have sound work straight away. No upgrading if connected to my TV

One problem -- I had been using firefox installed through the menu and set to default. After upgrading I had to reinstall firefox and I lost my profile. Fortunately, I still had another version of firefox installed in the root directory with the profile I use but would be nice to have a way to automatically carry that across versions for the menu-installed firefox.

[scsijon]

I upgraded from 3.2 and it works no problem. Note I had to make sure the laptop was set to internal sound and not HDMI to have sound work straight away. No upgrading if connected to my TV

One problem -- I had been using firefox installed through the menu and set to default. After upgrading I had to reinstall firefox and I lost my profile. Fortunately, I still had another version of firefox installed in the root directory with the profile I use but would be nice to have a way to automatically carry that across versions for the menu-installed firefox.

nevamaor, ther was a note referance on what to do about this before you upgraded on barry's easyos page.

[scsijon]

Got a problem when my system 'died' die to a local mains power failure, sequence was found as>

> mains unxpectedly shut down
>on restart the computer did it's 'thing' and cleaned itself up and restarted;
> it dropped out to the prompt instead of starting xwin;
>typing xwin at the prompt started jwm up;
>everything seemed to run ok until I went to shutdown;
>all the menu items under the shutdown menu did nothing;
>I could only shutdown by using a terminal.

I decided rather than blow it away i'd do some investigation as it was a 'test build' not a working machine.

>started it again and again it stopped at the prompt;
>xwin started jwm;
>trying to shutdown via the menu failed (as expected);
>After a bit of thinking I looked at xerrs.log, which showed the last lines as >> kill: usage: kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] pid | jobspec ... or kill -l [sigspec] << ,one to match each time I had tried a shutdown menu item;
> tried a few things and checked files tracking the startup path and after some time got to the /etc/windowmanager;
> found it contained dwm, checked another easyos box and that had jwm, so I changed the test box /etc/windowmanager to jwm;
> the shutdown menus now worked and shutdown/rebooted/etc worked ok.

Not sure how/why dwm got there, but it did, I hadn't added any packages at that stage except for the devx. However it was at least easy to fix once i had found what it was. What your need to/able to do with/about this I don't know, but thought i'd best at least report it, may save someone else.

ps Just looking at your page, you could try Zim (zim-wiki.org) as a replacement for didiwiki, a smart package too, even has it's own server inbuilt if you want to use it. Oh, and you can set your own editor so Geany or just about any other favorite test editor can be used, you don't have to learn to use a new one. I use 0.68 although just looking their up to 0.74.3.

Zim is a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages. Each page can contain links to other pages, simple formatting and images. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a nonexistent page. All data is stored in plain text files with wiki formatting. Various plugins provide additional functionality, like a task list manager, an equation editor, a tray icon, and support for version control.

[williwaw]

zim
+2

[jan]

Starts OK on my "AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3000+" (only 1 core) !
Only 2 bugs I see!
1: I have to select the sound card every time I boot "Card 0 : V8237 [VIA 8237], dev 0" or 1 both work to next boot.
2: Old encryption is broken filemnt script won't mount .2fs encrypted files!
The problem is the options -p and -e are no more available in losetup-FULL (in filemnt script line 173.)
Unfortunately there is no cryptsetup in easy (and I don't know how to install with deps) so "crypsetup -M plain -c aes-cbc-plain -h plain open xxx.2fs mappername" won't work .

[nevarmaor]

nevamaor, ther was a note referance on what to do about this before you upgraded on barry's easyos page.

Hmm, only note I see is uninstall firefox before upgrading. Does that somehow retain the profile whereas not uninstalling it doesn't?

[scsijon]

nevamaor, ther was a note referance on what to do about this before you upgraded on barry's easyos page.

Hmm, only note I see is uninstall firefox before upgrading. Does that somehow retain the profile whereas not uninstalling it doesn't?

Yup, it leaves your private stuff there and just removes the app so the app doesn't try to overwrite it.

[nevarmaor]

Still a bizarre way to upgrade. Also, I do not see how to uninstall firefox when installed through the "Download Firefox" menu item, short of deleting the directory.

I have currently set up my profile in a location outside of /home/firefox so it doesn't get deleted in future. I just have to relink it back once upgraded.

[scsijon]

I would have thought barryk would have still had it setup to show in the PPM and uninstall via that.

[nevarmaor]

I was referring to firefox installed through the menu "Download latest Firefox", which appears to be independent of PPM.

[BarryK]

I was referring to firefox installed through the menu "Download latest Firefox", which appears to be independent of PPM.

The next release of easy will have FF builtin, see my "last straw" blog post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202201/what-to- ... asyos.html

When you upgrade to this new version, it will not matter that that you had previously downloaded FF.
In the initrd, at a version upgrade, it detects that /usr/lib/firefox exists in easy.sfs and then deletes /mnt/wkg/.session/usr/lib/firefox
In other words, it should delete your downloaded FF and use the one builtin to easy.sfs.

It will keep your /home/firefox, so all settings, bookmarks, history, etc. will still be there.

This is all assuming that I wrote the code correctly in the initrd.

"Download latest Firefox" will no longer be in the menu, as I will bump FF with each new release of Easy.

[nevarmaor]

Aah, thanks for letting us know.

[hundido]

Do you know what video driver xorg was using?
Try boot to commandline, run xorgwizard, and choose "modesetting" driver. I have found that often fixes troublesome nouveau, radeon or intel drivers.

On one of my computers, it defaulted to the intel driver, but the screen freezes after a few minutes usage. Changed to modesetting and all was well.

I don't remember now what driver xorg was using then. But I just checked the md5sum of my download and put 3.2.1 on a 32 GB USB 3.2. About to reboot my computer and see what happens, while recording the results on this laptop.

First bootup. All went well until, I think, "Loading kernal devices." Then black screen. Hard power off.

Booting to Command line only, do not start X. It's asking me to choose a video mode. What do I choose? I'll try "n". It looked like it was going to boot. But then black screen. Hard power off.

Reboot. Selecting "Fix broken video." Undefined video mode number: 318
I ended up waiting 30 seconds while typing. This time I am at the xorg video wizard. I will select modesetting. Selecting Let Xorg guess it. Clicking okay to reboot.
Upon reboot, selected Default Startup. Black screen.

This is all on my new Radeon.

What do you think?

[BarryK]

Booting to Command line only, do not start X. It's asking me to choose a video mode. What do I choose? I'll try "n". It looked like it was going to boot. But then black screen. Hard power off.

Video mode? Do mean screen resolution? -- in that case, you should always choose the option to let Xorg guess it.

[hundido]

I booted Easy OS again and took pictures.

It's asking me to choose a video mode. What do I choose? I'll try "n".

Video mode? Do mean screen resolution?

20220201_192558video modes 2.jpg (135.37 KiB) Viewed 1284 times

At this screen I chose "n"

[BarryK]

Ah, I see. It is the kernel that is putting up that message.

I presume that you are booting from a usb stick. In the first partition, you will find 'syslinux.cfg', and in that file there are lines like this:

append initrd=initrd rw vga=792

"792" is a decimal number. In hexidecimal it is "318".
That vga resolution was chosen at it is supported by almost all video cards. Yours is one of the exceptions.

I wonder... if you edit that file and completely remove that "vga=792", does it help bootup?

Or, change it to something supported by your video card. The screen snapshot is a bit blurry, but "n" looks like "302", which is 770 decimal.

We have an app that does conversions, one of the calculators. It can also be done online:

https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/num ... cimal.html

[FeodorF]

Ah, I see. It is the kernel that is putting up that message.

I presume that you are booting from a usb stick. In the first partition, you will find 'syslinux.cfg', and in that file there are lines like this:

append initrd=initrd rw vga=792

I wonder... if you edit that file and completely remove that "vga=792", does it help bootup?

Yes, @BarryK very good idea.
I was getting black screens on NVIDIA cards - driving me nuts.
Without "vga=792" the BIOS PC will boot now into a screen.

Edit:
At the command line you will be able to run the xorgwizard to choose modesetting. This will setup f.e. 'nouveau' as card driver. In my case it uses NV92 for a GeForce 9800 GT card. This works in EasyOS-3.3-de as well.

NV92.png (11.29 KiB) Viewed 1216 times

[BarryK]

I am going to have to think back, what was my reasoning for putting in that "vga=792" in the first place.
It may have been to set the text to a known number of characters vertically and horizontally on the screen.

[FeodorF]

@BarryK , I have tested them:

Code: Select all

Slack64-7.0
Screen #0:
  dimensions:  1680x1050 pixels (444x277 millimeters)
  resolution:  96x96 dots per inch
  depths (7):  24, 1, 4, 8, 15, 16, 32
  root window id:  0x4b3
  depth of root window:  24 planes

Arch64Pup 20.05.+5
Screen #0:
  dimensions:  1680x1050 pixels (444x277 millimeters)
  resolution:  96x96 dots per inch
  depths (7):  24, 1, 4, 8, 15, 16, 32
  root window id:  0x55b
  depth of root window:  24 planes

Fossapup64-9.5
Screen #0:
  dimensions:  1680x1050 pixels (444x277 millimeters)
  resolution:  96x96 dots per inch
  depths (7):  24, 1, 4, 8, 15, 16, 32
  root window id:  0x55b
  depth of root window:  24 planes

EasyPup-2.5.1
Screen #0:
  dimensions:  1680x1050 pixels (444x277 millimeters)
  resolution:  96x96 dots per inch
  depths (7):  24, 1, 4, 8, 15, 16, 32
  root window id:  0x5ab
  depth of root window:  24 planes

They all work fine from the start.

Arch-video-info-full.gz

(7.84 KiB) Downloaded 47 times

Slacko-video-info-full.gz

(7.63 KiB) Downloaded 42 times

[BarryK]

I think that I recall why I put in that "vga=792", so as to get the logo at early bootup.

The pre-UEFI BIOS computers most likely startup with video in text-mode, not a graphic-mode. In a text-mode, the logo won't display. Putting "vga=something" causes startup in a graphics mode. I think alternatively, "video=something" can be used.

UEFI computers do startup with video in graphics mode.

[FeodorF]

@BarryK

The web advised to use 'vga=791' for a 1024 x 768 graphics mode.
Using this value for my BIOS boxes with Intel and nVIDIA graphics cards works well.
I have used my Samsung 1680x1050 as well as my ASUS 1920x1080 screen to double check that 'vga=791' works with the nVIDIA cards.

I wonder if @hundido is having success too.

[BarryK]

Actually, the advice is not to use vga= or video= at all, because may conflict with the kernel kms driver. Arch wiki:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel_mode_setting

You will have noticed at bootup, you get a screen at, say, 1024x768, but after the switch_root the kernel kms driver loads and the video switches to a higher resolution.

This switch works fine, and I have never found any reason not to use vga= despite what Arch wiki says. I suspect that is outdated advice.

[BarryK]

I see from the photo hundido posted, either of these would work:

Code: Select all

decimal hex  resolution
788     314  800x600x16
791     317  1024x768x16

[BarryK]

I have applied a fix, completely removed the "vga=" parameter:

https://bkhome.org/news/202202/vga792-r ... -mode.html

[hundido]

Thank you. I have had very full days but am hoping to test if it works with my hardware very soon.