4 ms·

EasyOS kirkstone 2.0 release – lightweight Linux from the guy behind Puppy Linux

95 points by jandeboevrie 4y ago

gandalfff 4y ago
Is it still running everything as root?
- tepitoperrito 4y ago
  Not firefox/seamonkey (and presumably others) "This is controversial, however, it is just a different philosophy. The user runs as administrator (root), apps may optionally run as a non-root user or in containers as a "crippled root". The practical outcome is that you never have to type "sudo" or "su" to run anything, nor get hung up with file permissions. Note, current releases of Easy default to running Firefox as user 'firefox', and SeaMonkey as user 'seamonkey'. It is easy to do the same for any app, that is, run it as its own user, isolated from other users."
sposeray 4y ago
[dead]
mysterydip 4y ago
Webpage says 5.0? Either way, really excited about this. I've been a fan of puppy linux for a long time.
wiradikusuma 4y ago
Every time I see "lightweight Linux", my first thought is, "Will it run better/faster/smaller on RPi compared to its default distro?" There's no mention of Raspberry Pi in the website. I think if it's indeed more lightweight, they should mention it.
- spyremeown 4y ago
  >Easy will work on an old computer, as long as it has a 64-bit x86 CPU
  - laweijfmvo 4y ago
    different interpretation of "old" than what I had in mind haha
    - beagle3 4y ago
      My home desktop was running 64-bit x86 back in 2005. My laptop in 2007. What did you have in mind?
- e12e 4y ago
  A fine criteria except for the fact that the rpis have some special problems - the combination of low(ish) ram and unreliable storage? So you can't (shouldn't) expand ram via disk (eats the SD card) - and need to fit everything in ram. This is different from a typical low end netbook/laptop - which might have more ram, and reliable, fast (compared to mechanical hdds) reliable storage (cheap ssd). In principle I agree - rpis are small/lightweight - but I'm afraid distros would do better targeting rpi or typical "small pc". Ed: that said, this is (like puppy) designed to run from USB stick, in ram, with a section for user data: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=2535 https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=2535 I'm not sure if it has the option to limit writes, like puppy?: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6526 https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6526
  - rom-antics 4y ago
    > I'm not sure if it has the option to limit writes, like puppy? From https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.html https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.htm...: > Flash drive will last "forever" > The default mode is to have a "save" icon on the desktop, to flush RAM to drive whenever you want, or not at all, or at shutdown. Thus, writes to the drive are severely constrained.
- trynewideas 4y ago
  > There's no mention of Raspberry Pi in the website https://bkhome.org/news/202101/easyos-dunfell-26-released-for-the-raspberry-pi4.html https://bkhome.org/news/202101/easyos-dunfell-26-released-fo... > even a Pi3B with 1GB RAM will work, or rather "just work" -- I recommend at least a Pi4 with 2GB RAM -- I have the 8GB RAM board. EasyOS is a container-focused OS with its own in-house containerization mechanism,[2] and it's seemingly not designed for or aimed at Pis specifically. 2: https://bkhome.org/news/202204/some-handy-tricks-with-easy-containers.html https://bkhome.org/news/202204/some-handy-tricks-with-easy-c...
fffrantz 4y ago
Apparently, it requires a 64-bit CPU but I wonder if really early 64-bit CPUs (e.g. 1st gen Intel Core) would work. x64 has evolved quite dramatically since its inception.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  > x64 has evolved quite dramatically since its inception Can you expound on this? Besides AES acceleration and virtualization support, I don't know of any features on modern x64 CPUs that would be a limiting factor in an OS that doesn't 'require' TPM support.
  - e12e 4y ago
    One thing that comes to mind is 32bit efi w/64bit kernel for older netbooks and laptops.
    - pantalaimon 4y ago
      But that has been an solved issue for years now. Both GRUB and systemd-boot support loading a 64 bit kernel with a 32 bit UEFI
      - e12e 4y ago
        I thought some newer distros dropped 32 bit uefi support - i certainly seem to recall an old thinkpad that wouldn't boot latest Ubuntu lts - but maybe I was wrong and it was old enough to be 32bit (don't think so...).
- Narishma 4y ago
  The article says it's running fine on a Core 2 Duo.
spyremeown 4y ago
As a professional Yocto-guy-developer-maintainer-dude, I've always wanted a lightweight distro built with Yocto for the desktop. This seems to fit the requirements pretty well! I'd love to pair this with some light and portable notebook.
rom-antics 4y ago
https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.html https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.htm... > In a traditional "full" installation, the filesystem occupies an entire partition, with the usual /etc, /bin, /usr, /proc, /sys, /tmp, etc. Easy does not install like this. > Easy installs to hard drive in what we call frugal mode, which occupies just one folder in a partition, allowing to co-exist with whatever else the partition is used for. Honestly, this is huge. I wish all distros supported this out of the box. It would be a lot less daunting to reinstall your system or try out a new distro if you could preserve your current working system in another directory.
- indigodaddy 4y ago
  Barry and Puppy have been doing this for years upon years. But yeah it’s surprising the idea hasn’t been picked up more in the Linux mainstream..
  - sidpatil 4y ago
    Wubi [1] did something similar for Ubuntu, if I recall correctly. For live booting, there's Ventoy [2], which boots directly from ISOs. Very convenient. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(software) [2] https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
- capableweb 4y ago
  That'd be really cool, one disk with: - os/ - archlinux/ - ubuntu/ - nixos/ - fedora/ - windows/ - home/ And everything shared between every OS, specially $HOME
  - commandnotfound 4y ago
    btrfs already supports this using subvolumes but you have to install the OSes manually (no installer supports this OOTB afaik) however Fedora uses btrfs with two subvolumes (root and home) by default but I haven't found a way to install it without formatting the root filesystem though.
dang 4y ago
Related: Why I stopped releasing EasyOS as an ISO file - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490679 - Dec 2021 (110 comments) EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21023989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21023989 - Sept 2019 (86 comments)

95 points by jandeboevrie 4y ago

gandalfff 4y ago

Is it still running everything as root?

tepitoperrito 4y ago
Not firefox/seamonkey (and presumably others) "This is controversial, however, it is just a different philosophy. The user runs as administrator (root), apps may optionally run as a non-root user or in containers as a "crippled root". The practical outcome is that you never have to type "sudo" or "su" to run anything, nor get hung up with file permissions. Note, current releases of Easy default to running Firefox as user 'firefox', and SeaMonkey as user 'seamonkey'. It is easy to do the same for any app, that is, run it as its own user, isolated from other users."

sposeray 4y ago

[dead]

mysterydip 4y ago

Webpage says 5.0? Either way, really excited about this. I've been a fan of puppy linux for a long time.

wiradikusuma 4y ago

Every time I see "lightweight Linux", my first thought is, "Will it run better/faster/smaller on RPi compared to its default distro?" There's no mention of Raspberry Pi in the website. I think if it's indeed more lightweight, they should mention it.

spyremeown 4y ago
>Easy will work on an old computer, as long as it has a 64-bit x86 CPU
- laweijfmvo 4y ago
  different interpretation of "old" than what I had in mind haha
  - beagle3 4y ago
    My home desktop was running 64-bit x86 back in 2005. My laptop in 2007. What did you have in mind?
e12e 4y ago
A fine criteria except for the fact that the rpis have some special problems - the combination of low(ish) ram and unreliable storage? So you can't (shouldn't) expand ram via disk (eats the SD card) - and need to fit everything in ram. This is different from a typical low end netbook/laptop - which might have more ram, and reliable, fast (compared to mechanical hdds) reliable storage (cheap ssd). In principle I agree - rpis are small/lightweight - but I'm afraid distros would do better targeting rpi or typical "small pc". Ed: that said, this is (like puppy) designed to run from USB stick, in ram, with a section for user data: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=2535 https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=2535 I'm not sure if it has the option to limit writes, like puppy?: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6526 https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6526
- rom-antics 4y ago
  > I'm not sure if it has the option to limit writes, like puppy? From https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.html https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.htm...: > Flash drive will last "forever" > The default mode is to have a "save" icon on the desktop, to flush RAM to drive whenever you want, or not at all, or at shutdown. Thus, writes to the drive are severely constrained.
trynewideas 4y ago
> There's no mention of Raspberry Pi in the website https://bkhome.org/news/202101/easyos-dunfell-26-released-for-the-raspberry-pi4.html https://bkhome.org/news/202101/easyos-dunfell-26-released-fo... > even a Pi3B with 1GB RAM will work, or rather "just work" -- I recommend at least a Pi4 with 2GB RAM -- I have the 8GB RAM board. EasyOS is a container-focused OS with its own in-house containerization mechanism,[2] and it's seemingly not designed for or aimed at Pis specifically. 2: https://bkhome.org/news/202204/some-handy-tricks-with-easy-containers.html https://bkhome.org/news/202204/some-handy-tricks-with-easy-c...

fffrantz 4y ago

Apparently, it requires a 64-bit CPU but I wonder if really early 64-bit CPUs (e.g. 1st gen Intel Core) would work. x64 has evolved quite dramatically since its inception.

Eisenstein 4y ago
> x64 has evolved quite dramatically since its inception Can you expound on this? Besides AES acceleration and virtualization support, I don't know of any features on modern x64 CPUs that would be a limiting factor in an OS that doesn't 'require' TPM support.
- e12e 4y ago
  One thing that comes to mind is 32bit efi w/64bit kernel for older netbooks and laptops.
  - pantalaimon 4y ago
    But that has been an solved issue for years now. Both GRUB and systemd-boot support loading a 64 bit kernel with a 32 bit UEFI
    - e12e 4y ago
      I thought some newer distros dropped 32 bit uefi support - i certainly seem to recall an old thinkpad that wouldn't boot latest Ubuntu lts - but maybe I was wrong and it was old enough to be 32bit (don't think so...).
Narishma 4y ago
The article says it's running fine on a Core 2 Duo.

spyremeown 4y ago

As a professional Yocto-guy-developer-maintainer-dude, I've always wanted a lightweight distro built with Yocto for the desktop. This seems to fit the requirements pretty well! I'd love to pair this with some light and portable notebook.

rom-antics 4y ago

https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.html https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.htm... > In a traditional "full" installation, the filesystem occupies an entire partition, with the usual /etc, /bin, /usr, /proc, /sys, /tmp, etc. Easy does not install like this. > Easy installs to hard drive in what we call frugal mode, which occupies just one folder in a partition, allowing to co-exist with whatever else the partition is used for. Honestly, this is huge. I wish all distros supported this out of the box. It would be a lot less daunting to reinstall your system or try out a new distro if you could preserve your current working system in another directory.

indigodaddy 4y ago
Barry and Puppy have been doing this for years upon years. But yeah it’s surprising the idea hasn’t been picked up more in the Linux mainstream..
- sidpatil 4y ago
  Wubi [1] did something similar for Ubuntu, if I recall correctly. For live booting, there's Ventoy [2], which boots directly from ISOs. Very convenient. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(software) [2] https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
capableweb 4y ago
That'd be really cool, one disk with: - os/ - archlinux/ - ubuntu/ - nixos/ - fedora/ - windows/ - home/ And everything shared between every OS, specially $HOME
- commandnotfound 4y ago
  btrfs already supports this using subvolumes but you have to install the OSes manually (no installer supports this OOTB afaik) however Fedora uses btrfs with two subvolumes (root and home) by default but I haven't found a way to install it without formatting the root filesystem though.

dang 4y ago

Related: Why I stopped releasing EasyOS as an ISO file - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490679 - Dec 2021 (110 comments) EasyOS: An experimental Linux distribution designed from scratch for containers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21023989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21023989 - Sept 2019 (86 comments)