19 January 2018

EulerOS 2.0 Test

EulerOS 2.0 is the (only?) freely available UNIX certified Linux distro, The other UNIX Linux: K-UX doesn't seems available separately (at least I can't find it).

version 2.0 with default Gnome 3
Made by giant tech manufacturer company Huawei, the OS name is not using "X" moniker like OSX, AIX or IRIX and we don't need to worry that the distro will be Chinese specific because the default language during installation is english.

Before that I found myself in confusion just trying to download it from http://developer.huawei.com/ict/en/site-euleros as pointed by earlier review, getting with registration shenanigans that ended with unresumable 4GB iso download. It turned own there is easier way just use the repo link here:

http://developer.huawei.com/ict/site-euleros/euleros/repo/yum/

There you'll find several versions, inside that you'll find os/x86_64/iso sub-directory leading to resumable iso download which literally contain the content of other directories. Note that version 2.0 has been recently refreshed (Dec 2017) with new kernel and packages on the level of CentOS 7.2 (which EulerOS based on). Therefor I found no additional packages in the site repo and you can just pointed repo.d config file to use directly your disc (unless you want updating).

Package naming follow CentOS but without "el7" moniker, that's make me suspicious if there any incompatibilities, for sure to comply with UNIX some modification needed for ex. the CLI userland
and compiler (GCC 4.8.5) may changed. So I try install several third-party packages such VirtualBox, old Acrobat Reader 9, Chrome and LibreOffice, everything works fine. Installing few "other" packages from CentOS repo also working. Note that with just 4GB repo EulerOS is severely lacking for desktop use, but mind you, this is a server-grade distro :).

I haven't investigate the userland changes (like if POSIX behavior become the default or not), actually I don't know where to get the sources for EulerOS.

Next I want to change the simpleton Gnome desktop with KDE which require borrowing lot packages from CentOS repo. If successful I may consider to really installing it along with Windows.