Barry Kauler on EasyOS Development: ALSA, SpaceFM, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 09, 2026

• Barry Kauler ☛ SpaceFM removed from Excalibur

  SpaceFM is a multi-pane file manager and was added builtin to EasyOS Excalibur-series in July 2025:

  https://bkhome.org/news/202507/spacefm-file-manager-now-in-easyos.html

  It was included in response to requests for a multi-pane file manager, that ROX-Filer isn't. However, it is very much inferior to ROX, and the multi-pane feature does not really bring any usability improvement compared to ROX. ROX is multi-window, which achieves the same end.
  

• Barry Kauler ☛ Fixed wrong path to pngoverlay-cairo

  Caramel reported the problem:

  https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=163558#p163558

  The problem is that pngoverlay-cairo is in /usr/sbin, not in /usr/bin

  In Easy Scarthgap, /usr/sbin is a symlink to /usr/bin, so the problem never occurred.
  

• Barry Kauler ☛ ALSA fix for aplay

  The fix was reported in 2024:

  https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=133723#p133723

  That was in the days of woofQ. Caramel sent me a message that the fix did not make the transition to woofQ2.

  OK, it is now in woofq2/builtin/deb/fixes/alsa-utils/FIXUPHACK

  Another one bites the dust!    
  

• Barry Kauler ☛ Enhanced script to run app as any user

  I posted this morning, a script:
  

  "Script to run app as any user"
  https://bkhome.org/news/202602/script-to-run-an-app-as-any-user.html
  

  Have now taken it to the next level. The user should not be required to run a script in a terminal; running any executable as a particular user should be easily selectable graphically.

  Now, right-click on any executable, and there is a menu entry "Run-as-user" (and translated for non-English).