EasyOS Excalibur-series 6.108
EasyOS was created in 2017, derived from Quirky Linux,
which in turn was derived from Puppy Linux in 2013. Up
until mid-2025, Easy was built in woofQ, which takes as
input binary packages from any distribution, and uses them
on top of the unique EasyOS infrastructure.
Throughout 2020, the official release for x86_64 PCs was
the Buster-series, built with Debian 10.x Buster DEBs.
EasyOS has also been built with packages compiled from
source, using a fork of OpenEmbedded (OE). Currently, the
Scarthgap release of OE has been used, to compile binary
packages for x86_64.
Earlier releases of EasyOS compiled in OE are the
Kirkstone-series, Dunfell-series and Pyro-series. They
have also been compiled for aarch64 and EasyOS runs on the
Raspberry Pi4.
The last release of the x86_64 Dunfell-series was January
10, 2023, version 4.5.5. The announcement and release
notes are here:
https://bkhome.org/news/202301/easyos-dunfell-series-version-455-released.html
The latest (maintenance) release of the Kirkstone-series
was on August 14, 2024, version 5.8.4, announcement here:
https://bkhome.org/news/202408/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-584.html
The latest (maintenance) release of the Scarthgap-series
was version 6.6.9, on May 27:
https://bkhome.org/news/202505/easyos-scarthgap-series-version-669-released.html
The Daedalus-series was first released in October 2024.
It is built with packages from the Devuan Daedalus
repository (equivalent to Debian Bookworm). The latest
release is version is 6.6.8, see announcement:
https://bkhome.org/news/202505/easyos-daedalus-series-version-668-released.html
The "new kid on the block" is EasyOS built with woofQ2.
As from mid-July 2025, all of the above are retired; still
available for download, but no longer being developed.
However, it may be that Easy Scarthgap will have one or
more maintenance releases.
woofQ2-built EasyOS has version numbering starting from
7.0. It is built from Devuan Excalibur (equivalent to
Debian Trixie) binary packages, with major structural
changes, including based on Debian's APT package
management and enhanced Easy Containers.
It should be noted that version 7.0+ implies improvements
and less bugs compared with earlier releases; however,
this series is a complete redesign, from the ground-up,
and likely there are some brand-new issues. We hope that
nothing serious emerges, and anyway, updating is very
simple, via the "update" button on the desktop.
The latest version is becoming mature, though Easy is an
experimental distribution and some parts are under
development and are still considered as beta-quality.
However, you will find this distro to be a very pleasant
surprise, or so we hope.
About EasyOS
Why would you choose EasyOS
instead of some other Linux distribution?
For a quick overview of how EasyOS is different from
other Linux distributions, read this:
https://easyos.org/about/how-and-why-easyos-is-different.html
You will notice that the download is quite small, yet
contains just about every application you would ever need,
such as Firefox|Chromium browser, LibreOffice, Gimp, Dia,
Inkscape, Planner, Grisbi, Osmo, NoteCase, Celluloid and
Audacious. There are powerful system managers, such as
NetworkManager, EasyContainers, EasyVersionControl and
BluePup.
BluePup for example, is a bluetooth manager, unique to
EasyOS. Another unique tool is 'easydd', a GUI or CLI tool
for writing a drive-image file to SD-card or USB-stick.
Links
Website: https://easyos.org/
News: https://bkhome.org/news
Forum: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewforum.php?f=63
We are very grateful to Ibiblio for hosting
EasyOS, right from the start:
https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/
EasyOS has a mirror of ibiblio.org in Europe, thanks to NLUUG,
here:
https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/easyos/
Legal statement: https://easyos.org/about/legal-disclaimers-miscellania.html
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