Happy holidays, Atlantis neo has arrived

After reading the title you might think,

Okay, Bryan have you hit your head or did you take your medication this week? You know, that Atlantis is already released, right?!?

Rest assured, I’m fine, I don’t have amnesia and the medication part… Hmm, I have to check that one… All kidding aside, let me explain

Major release vs. hotfix feature vs. interim release

I want to start with the clarification that EndeavourOS is a rolling release and that the changes and updates on our ISOs only affect the installation experience and an update of our offline edition. We don’t hold back packages in any way. The point release numbers in the ISO name simply refer to the year of release followed by the number of releases in that year. Having said that, let’s go back to the Atlantis neo release and here’s what’s going on:

Major release – The recent Atlantis release was a major release that contained a lot of improvements and new features created and implemented by our developers’ team, next to the regular upstream package updates. A major release will also be “celebrated” with a new wallpaper and a new code name inspired by existing or fictional spacecraft names.

Hotfix feature – This is an express tool for the dev. team to push out small bug fixes to a released ISO. Those fixes can be, corrected errors created by us, workaround scripts to patch an upstream bug or upstream bug fixes that don’t interfere with other packages on the ISO. Just see it as a band-aid, fixes pushed out by this feature are merely temporary patches.

Interim release – An interim release ships a slightly updated version of a recent major release, without the addition of new features or new wallpapers. The fixes these releases contain are, reversed workarounds due to an upstream fix and/or upstream bug fixes or changes that also affect the behaviour of other packages on the ISO. Of course, with these changes, they will also ship all the upstream package updates.

We will release a maximum of two interim ISOs between major releases if needed. This means that each major release isn’t going to have two interim ISOs as a rule. It might as well have one interim release depending on the urgency and timing.

These releases will be carrying the name of the latest major release followed by the additions, respectably, neo and nova.

Slightly related to our space theme, we took our inspiration from the aviation world with the naming of these releases. Everybody knows the successful Boeing 737 and their revised model of that one the 737 MAX, or Airbus with its equally successful model A320 calling the revised one… A320 NEO…

What about reducing the workload?

The observant reader amongst you might have noticed that I wrote about reducing the workload for the dev. team by the addition of the hotfix feature in the Atlantis release announcement. So how do these interim releases fit into that, aren’t those adding more pressure and work to the team?

Well, yes and no and I will explain.

You see, the hotfix patches are often a result of bug fixes created by the dev team and the community offering a workaround for such a bug. So, these patches can be pushed out fairly quickly thanks to the many tech-savvy community members we and the entire Linux community have.

With the release of neo and nova the dev. team has a relatively easier job to implement upstream fixes and changes because then the fixes are smaller in numbers, making them surveyable and therefore better maintainable. As a rule, we only commit upstream changes and bug fixes with an interim release, making the work more straightforward. In the end, this will also simplify the work done with new features created by us for a major release.

Also, it will reduce the size of our release announcements, preventing our translators to go into a state of despair…

The team is also working on a method in creating these ISOs automatically and the very first test cases are very promising, but we will inform you about that in the near future.

The Atlantis neo release

We advise you to also read the full list of features shipped with Atlantis over here, Atlantis neo ships with these added fixes on top of the original list:

• In case of a bad/slow internet or mirror connection Pacman will not cease operations, resulting in a failed install. Instead it will try up to six times whilst fetching packages. This will reduce ending up with a failed install quite significally.
• Encrypted installations with BTRFS now works choosing SWAP partition and hibernation, thanks to our team member and moderator Dalto.
• Budgie not being able to let the user access the power menu after hibernation and suspend is now fixed with gnome-power-manager being added by default. A big shout out to the Big Daddy Linux community for bringing up this bug during their weekly distro challenge in week 49.
• Calamares now allows installs on systems with less than 2 GB of RAM.
• Virtualbox-ext-oracle has been removed from our repo due to the Oracle license agreement not allowing the package to be redistributed.
• power-profiles-daemon has replaced TLP for a better hardware compatibility, resulting in lean and minimal power savings by default. For Gnome and Plasma users, the power-profile-daemon will be integrated in the settings menu of the DE.

A little Christmas surprise

Normally, the improvements and fixes listed above would be the end of the announcement of a regular neo release. But Atlantis neo is our first interim release in our new release model and because we’re in the holiday season, we have added a little Christmas surprise for you.

• LxDe has been added as an option to our DE option menu and will be installed with a basic vanilla setup.
• Openbox has been added to our community editions with a basic and slightly themed setup.
• Qtile has been added to our community editions, the Python-based WM also ships with a slightly themed and basic setup to give you a kickstart with the WM.

We would like to thank our community developers team for their hard work and perseverance in creating these editions and the community for giving feedback whilst testing them.

” To us, each and every one of you is a precious radiating star that shines on our humble Endeavour…”

The EndeavourOS team

Despite the general feeling we all have looking back at 2021, for us, this year was an extraordinary year that brought us an expanding enthusiastic and loving community. It is a genuine privilege to be surrounded by a bunch of extraordinary people like you.

We possibly cannot express our gratitude for the love and support you have given us in 2021. There’s no single word in any language in the world that does your involvement with us, justice. But I’m going to give it a try in the best possible way of my limited capabilities.

To stay in our space theme, we are the ones that launch new information into space but you… you are the amazingly swift-moving satellites around us that transmit our code and mix it with your love and enthusiasm into infinity and beyond, giving the distro that distinct warm and welcoming face.

To us, each and every one of you is a precious radiating star that shines on our humble Endeavour… Thank you for giving us your warmth, love, enthusiasm, wisdom and light, because, without those, EndeavourOS wouldn’t be as strong as we are today…

Happy holidays everyone and to a fantastic continuation of our journey in 2022…

You can download Atlantis neo over here.