| Some of the history of Quirky Linux and description of old releases is here. Quirky Xerus
 The old "April" series of Quirky is compiled totally from source packages, 
using T2 (as described in above link). 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).
 
 Note, there have been quirkies built from earlier Ubuntu releases. See release notes for "Tahr", "Unicorn" and "Werewolf".
 
 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 Pi2 and Pi3 boot to a
 fully-loaded desktop in about 9 seconds.
 
 
Quirky Xerus 8.1All of the above-mentioned Quirkies 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:
 
 
 IssuesI will report on more as we discover, and fix, these. For now, this is 
what we know is either broken, incomplete, or needs improving:
 
  SeaMonkey web browser 2.40 is a bit unstable. On certain 
web sites, crashes. Do not yet know what it is on those sites, but they 
are media-rich sites. Note also, 2.40 was released in March 2016 so is 
getting a bit long-in-the-tooth. We are anxiously waiting on the 
developers to release another version.SimpleVLC is a GUI frontend to the CLI (commandline) VLC 
media player. It's capabilities are currently limited, basically it only
 plays local video and audio files. It is a very simple shell script, 
and if you are interested, take a look in /usr/local/SimpleVLC -- if you
 have basic shell scripting ability and an interest in media player 
setup (streaming, etc.), then you are welcome to have a go at editing 
the script.
 
 Usage notesThe original concept of Puppy Linux was to load totally into RAM and run
 from there. The entire Puppy filesystem was one Squashfs (SFS) file, 
that was loaded into RAM. The main advantage of this is speed.Puppy can also do a conventional "full install", just like you do for 
Ubuntu, Debian, etc., where the filesystem is in a partition on the hard
 drive. Puppy users know this as "PUPMODE 2".
 
 Quirky only does "PUPMODE 2". Well, not quite, but for the purposes of 
these ARM boards, that is all that is being offered for now.
 
 if you have a Puppy background, the most important thing to know is that
 there are no SFS files, as the layered filesystem does not exist. There
 are, however, PET and DEB packages, as with any other distribution.
 
 Quirky can be turned into a complete C/C++/BaCon/Vala/Genie programming 
and compiling environment, with all needed tools such as git and svn, by
 installing just one PET package. This package is name 'devx-*.pet' and 
can be found in the Puppy Package Manager. Also, kernel source is 
available as a PET package.
 
 Quirky Xerus 8.1 is built from Ubuntu Xenial Xerus 16.04 DEB packages, 
so has binary compatibility. The Puppy Package Manager (PPM) can install
 DEBs from the Ubuntu repositories.
 
 
 UpgradingQuirky 8.1 is built with Ubuntu 16.04 DEBs. If you want to install DEBs 
from 16.04.1 or later, the PPM Configuration window can update the local
 package database to whatever are the latest DEBs available online.
 Regarding updating Quirky to versions beyond 8.1, this is usually 
provided by what are called "Service Packs". These are PET packages. 
This provides incremental upgrading, though support for this mechanism 
has been a bit haphazard, as Quirky is only my hobby project -- I tend 
to jump around onto whatever catches my interest, and cannot guarantee 
long-term incremental upgrades.
 
 Anyway, if a Service Pack becomes available, you will be notified 
automatically whenever you run the PPM, or you can inquire for a Service
 Pack via the menu "Filesystem -> Quirky Version Upgrade Manager".
 
 
 Online news and feedbackTo read more about the latest release of Quirky, see my blog:
 http://barryk.org/news/?viewCat=Linux
 
 Puppy Forum thread for feedback about Quirky 8.1+:
 
 http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=108132&start=150
 
 Regards,
 Barry Kauler
 October 2016
 
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