Linux distribution
Nate Drake endeavours to discover all that is great about this Arch-based Linux distro, created by former Antergos developers.
Back in May 2019, the developers of Antergos, B an Arch-based Linux distro, announced that the project would no longer be maintained. Disappointed, Antergos forum users banded together to continue the project under a new name, thus EndeavourOS was born that July.
If you’re already a user, there’s little to do given that EndeavourOS follows a rolling release model. Just run the integrated Eos-update tool to enjoy the latest Galileo version.
If, however, you download the 2.7GB ISO, you can also test the OS in a live environment. Unlike Arch Linux, which uses a command-line tool for setup, EndeavourOS deploys the Calamares installer, which you can launch from the helpful welcome window, which also contains options to load the EndeavourOS ARM image installer, update software mirrors and manage partitions.
If you proceed with installation, you’re offered two setup methods. Click Online to choose from a variety of desktop environments, including LXQt, Budgie, Cinnamon, Xfce and Gnome. The offline installer loads the desktop environment that comes with the disk. In the latest version of EndeavourOS, this is now KDE Plasma with some distro-specific branding.
Due to a lack of support from developers, the community editions of Sway, Qtile, BSPWM, Openbox and Worm are no longer available via Calamares but can be installed manually via GitHub.
Whichever install method you use, the Calamares package selection screen has been restructured to be clearer and to make some items more discoverable. When LUKS encryption with Systemd-boot is chosen, the system is also installed with a stronger LUKS2 encryption using Argon2id.
The latest version of EndeavourOS has been slimmed down to make it more efficient. A bug that previously generated a superfluous LUKS keyfile has also now been fixed. Former versions of the distro also generated numerous SELinux warnings during install. These have now been removed to avoid confusion.
The installer now only allows users to install
