New ISO for Byzantium

Software PureOS
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Will there be a new ISO for Byzantium in the near futur?

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Yes, working on it as we speak. You can find the most recent ISO builds here: https://downloads.puri.sm/byzantium/ The ISOs and other files there are from November 2020.

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once i see a newer than 2020 november build of PureOS 10 Byzantium with GNOME i’ll be on it like white on rice …

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That is good to hear.

I used the ISO from November 2020 without problems and updated it regularly. The last update ruined my installation. I newly installed byzantium/KDE/plasma. There were about 650 packages to update. About 550 of those I could update without problems, but in the last 100 there was a package or more, which ruined my installation.
Byzantium Gnome works fine, but I do not like it. So I installed KDE Neon on my second ssd, which works without problems. But I hope, I can return to purism sonn.

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Thanks for sharing good news:

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FOR YOUR EYES ONLY!

We have a new ISO available. Please note, this is for testing purposes, it is not widely disseminated nor widely tested. If you wish, you may download and test but please, Caveat Emptor. :slight_smile:

https://downloads.pureos.net/byzantium/gnome/2021-04-18/

Thanks,

Jeremiah

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As I very much dislike Gnome I will only test a Plasma/KDE-Version.

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is there something wrong with the latest PureOS-9-Amber (Stable) OEM .iso with LibremMini-v1 ? latest coreboot flashed but it’s stuck after boot selection at the blue screen …

is the LIVE version generally MORE recommended than OEM ?

i hope you can sort the issues from ‘Files’ Nautilus from the latest Byzantium (all updates applied 20210504)

the ‘view options’ drop-down and the preferances GUI permissions and etc. are messed up. not acting reliably or not working at all. Emacs to the rescue …

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Working very well to me so far. If you are open to a bit of feedback, here’s what I have, all on the software defaults. TLDR is:

  • Glad you have gnome 3.38 not 40

  • Glad you still ship tweaks

  • Suggest you need a secondary browser or another workaround in order to use extensions.gnome.org

  • Confused why ship Thunderbird and not Evolution/Geary given (a) your work on Geary; (b) seamless integration of librem mail with them via online accounts; and © seamless integration of Nextcloud with Calendar/Contacts/Notes/Tasks (given announced Nextcloud partnership).

  1. Gnome Version

I’m glad you are sticking to Bullseye and Gnome 3.38. It represents peak Gnome 3 and is greatly improving both performance and the modernity of the system. It’s ridiculous that this is a totally free software distribution when it looks and operates this slickly. Will give you a bit more time to come to terms with the changes in Gnome 40.

  1. Tweaks

I still do not understand how you are one of (if not the) only distributions installing Tweaks out-of-the-box. It is great that you do this as it keeps things much more discoverable for new users, while not really doing anything to system stability.

  1. Browser & Extensions

Having said that, it does make it seem strange not to have a browser that can handle adding new extensions through extensions.gnome.org. I very much understand what is happening here. You can’t ship vanilla Firefox because of the strange way that seems to conflict with the FSF standards (I don’t really understand why it does, something about naming?). So it makes sense that, given that you see Gnome Web as the future for mobile, that you have stopped supporting Purebrowser and want to focus there.

But how strange it is that with this release you will remain one of the only distros that ships tweaks by default, making extension adding easier, while not shipping a browser than can actually install extensions? Seems to me that you should probably ship a secondary browser (Librewolf?) or perhaps find some other workaround (e.g. is it possible to create a electron-based webapp to use for accessing and using extensions.gnome.org)?

  1. Email Client

So strange not to see the new Geary in here by default, given your contributions to making it scale across screen sizes, and your shift away from Firefox and to Gnome Web? I know there are limitations. If you ship Geary, you really need to ship Evolution to handle calendar invites (at least). But why not do that, rather than ship Thunderbird, or at least ship both? Evolution and/or Geary integrate seamlessly with Gnome Online accounts, Thunderbird does not.

A few years back you created Librem.One, and before that announced a partnership with Nextcloud. I have no idea what that was meant to be beyond listing Nextcloud as the only listed Online Account to add when first logging in. But one thing is clear: Nextcloud integrates amazingly with Gnome online accounts! Really amazingly. Add it to online accounts and everything – calendar, contacts, notes, tasks, files – gets immediately and seamlessly integrated.

That means you can log in, add in your Nextcloud account and your librem.one mail via IMAP on online accounts and immediately have complete integration across your system mail, calendar, contacts, notes, tasks, integrated if you ship evolution/geary. But with Thunderbird you cannot do that. You have to again go in and configure everything there and any data from online accounts (e.g. calendar, contacts) is inaccessible to Thunderbird.

So your choice to ship Thunderbird and not Evolution/Geary is strange. It made sense in the last release, given you had a firefox-based browser, no librem mail, and had really only just announced a Nextcloud partnership. But it doesn’t really make much sense here.

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