Quirky Xerus 8.1 Released, Supplying download images for Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 computers
Barry Kauler has announced the release of Quirky 8.1. Quirky is a sister project to Puppy Linux and offers a lightweight, user friendly desktop experience. The latest version, Quirky 8.1, diverges from past Quirky releases by supplying download images for Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 computers and not x86-powered computers.
Quirky, a sister project of Puppy Linux, is a Linux distribution built with a custom tool called Woof. The underlying infrastructure, such as boot-up and shut-down scripts, setup tools, hardware detection, desktop management, user interface, speed and general ease-of-use are common across all distributions built with Woof, but a specific build will have a different package selection and further customisation (even totally different binary packages). Quirky is developed by the founder of Puppy Linux and Woof to push the envelope a bit further, to explore some new ideas in the underlying infrastructure -- some of which may be radical or odd, hence the name Quirky.
Quirky Xerus 8.1
All Quirkies prior to 8.1 have been built for x86 and x86_64 PCs. Version 8.1 is the first to be built for the ARM platform, specifically the Raspberry Pi2 and Pi3. Note that Quirky will not work on a Pi1. It is expected a build for the Odroid XU4 is coming soon.
The functionality is much as you have come to expect with a Puppy-derivative -- you get "the kitchen sink" in a very small package. That is, an application for just about everything and utilities to setup and configure just about anything.
A difference though, with the Raspberry Pi build, is that it includes LibreOffice and Inkscape, whereas Puppy-derivatives usually have light-weight choices, such as Gnumeric, Abiword and InkscapeLite. This decision was made so as to provide the same functionality out-of-the-box as Raspbian, and in fact a whole lot more.
This has resulted in a somewhat larger build than usual, a download file of 360MB. However, compare that with Raspbian at 1.3GB, and Quirky is still relatively small.
As this is the very first release of Quirky for the Pi, it may have some issues, though we have been testing at the Puppy Forum and have fixed, hopefully, most of them. Some outstanding issues are:
Read more: http://linux.softpedia.com/progChangelog/Quirky-Changelog-53128.html#ixzz4OByvGSmw
What's new in Quirky Linux 8.1
- The old "April" series of Quirky is compiled totally from source packages, using T2. Quirky "Xerus" differs in that it is built with Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus binary DEBs.
- It must be emphasised that the mere fact of using Ubuntu DEBs does not make Quirky a clone of Ubuntu. Nothing could be further from the truth.
- Quirky Xerus behaves just like the April series, with the one difference that packages can be installed from the Ubuntu DEB repositories. The binary compatibility with Ubuntu offers a huge collection of packages, which is the main attraction of this series.
- However, some functionality of Ubuntu is castrated, such as systemd. These differences may mean that some Ubuntu DEBs may not work properly (but the vast majority should be fine).
- if anyone ever asks you "what type of desktop does Quirky run?", tell them "JWM and ROX-Filer". This has been the standard for Puppy and derivatives for the last ten years. JWM is a window manager that also runs the tray, ROX-Filer is a file manager on steroids, that also manages the desktop icons and background.
- Oh, and that systemd thing. No Puppy or derivative uses systemd. The standard for Puppy has always been the init mechanism provided by Busybox. You can find the guts of the bootup and shutdown scripts in /etc/rc.d. This works well, and is very fast -- the Pi3 boots to a fully-loaded desktop in about 9 seconds.
The release announcement has more information.
Download: quirky-pi2-sd-8gb-xerus-8.1.img.xz(358MB, MD5, pkglist).
