Our first anniversary, the July release and what’s next?!?

We’ve reached a memorable milestone, today it is one year ago that we made our fantastic debut in the Linux universe and boy, what a year it has been!

I’ve already said it in previous blog posts, on our forum and on our Telegram group, but that fuel is provided by you, a friendly, energetic and loyal community and I’ll say it again, we’re so grateful to you all.

EndeavourOS had very big shoes to fill in the first place, we weren’t starting with an entirely blank canvas, unlike any new starting project. The mission was to give the former Antergos community a new home and at the same time develop our own identity. According to the familiar faces and the many new ones, we had the honour to welcome in our community this past year, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve succeeded that mission.

One year has passed with big learning curves and challenging goals that seemed unreachable but we conquered them anyway and now it’s time for EndeavourOS to re-enter the atmosphere and heralded by a twin sonic boom to announce its landing back to base…

New server

Rest assured, EndeavourOS isn’t going to leave the Linux scene. No, we still have enough fuel, energy and ideas to keep continuing our amazing journey. I used the landing as a metaphor for our next journey because once EndeavourOS reaches base it will blast off again within a very short time.

In my previous blog post, I thanked the community members who’ve generously donated this past year. Thanks to these donations, EndeavourOS is able to stand on its own feet and therefore, we were able to afford a more powerful and future-proof dedicated server compared to our current one.

This might seem trivial in your eyes, but it is a very exciting and big step for us and by donating and/or contributing your time helping other community members, it has boosted our confidence to lead the project in search of new possibilities.

With the current state of the world in the back of our minds, we’ve chosen a server that is powerful enough to meet our needs in the long run and also one we could easily afford for the next two years. That calculation was made with the donations we’ve already received and not with the donations we might receive in the future.

We can’t shut our eyes for the fact that people all over the world are losing their jobs and this might reflect on our near-future donation flow. We simply owe it to our community and in particular to our financial contributors to make wise decisions and to ensure EndeavourOS’ future, even in the middle of a storm.

Within a couple of weeks our websites, mirror and forum will go down while moving to this new and more powerful server. After that, EndeavourOS will be back in orbit with more kick in its engine, ready to thrust forward creating the next chapters…

July release

Our July release is available from today. Besides the regular ISO updates as kernel version, Calamares version and the other usual updates, this version comes with a slimmed-down and easy-to-understand Welcome app that also ships with some new additional features. Those new additions are:

Package cleanup configuration – A handy tool to set the system to clean up the paccache history of installed packages and reduce it to the last three versions of each installed package after an update. This prevents your root partition from getting clogged up with packages you don’t need.

AKM – Arch Kernel Management lets you install the several kernel versions and their headers available in the Arch repository with a simple click. Not only does it install Linux kernels it also provides you info which version is in the stable and which one is in the testing repos and it also informs you which version Kernel.org is working on. AKM isn’t installed by default, but this is easily done by clicking the button in our Welcome app.

Personal commands

This feature needs a bit more explanation, hence the separate paragraph for it.

I might as well drop the bomb from the start, this feature is not a simple one-click solution for newbies, unlike the other Welcome features. In fact, it is a collaboration tool and is intended for users who already know how to create a script and for users who are willing to learn from those seasoned users to go system deep.

A lot of seasoned users have created scripts to perform maintenance or monitoring the system. Most of those solutions are created out of “laziness”, just to prevent the whole sudo nano/vim followed by locations and searching the script to enable or disable it. Instead, they replaced that whole procedure by a personal command. Our very own Manuel, the developer of our Welcome app, is such a user.

The Personal commands tool lets you be able to create a button for your customized script in the Welcome app using YAD, to enhance the experience. Then, if you want, you can share your customized script and button with the community, making it a learning experience for those who are willing to learn and perhaps create their own script.

Of course, you can also use this feature to contribute to our development in an easy way and in particular help or inspire Manuel to improve the Welcome app.

We hope you will enjoy our July release, a stable release with some new exciting features.

Oh, and one more thing…

What is a birthday without a final big treat, so here it comes…

EndeavourOS ARM is coming

I never thought I would announce this on our first birthday, but EndeavourOS ARM will be due very, very soon!

With the help from our community member Pudge, who recently joined the core development team, the ARM project moved from theory to reality in an amazingly fast pace. At this moment the project is still under development, but it is very close to being released.

The installation process for EndeavourOS ARM will be performed with a script and not with an ISO. We will be guiding the user through the installation process on the upcoming dedicated EndeavourOS ARM website with clear and easy to follow instructions.

The script follows the same principle as a bare Archlinux ARM script, except the user will end up with a modified EndeavourOS base install with almost the same choice of Desktop Environments to choose from.

The Desktop Environments that will be available are Xfce, Mate, LXqt, Cinnamon, Plasma, Gnome, Budgie and the i3-wm environment. Deepin is not supported by Archlinux ARM.

Besides for desktop or laptop use, there will also be instructions to create a headless server and instructions for an ARM-based NAS.

Theoretically, EndeavourOS ARM can be installed on every ARM device Archlinux ARM supports, however, we had the best results using the more powerful ARM SBC devices that are supported by Archlinux ARM such as Odroid N2 and Odroid XU4. This doesn’t mean it won’t work on other devices like the popular Pinebook series, we simply did not have access to such ARM devices during our tests.

Just keep an eye out on our website or social media channels for the launch of EndeavourOS ARM, because that day is coming sooner than you think.

Raise a glass

As you can read, our journey hasn’t come to an end and these new directions are only the beginning of a couple of innovations and improvements we have in store for you.

So, we’d like to raise a glass with you… To a fantastic collaboration with an incredible community this past year and for the years to come… Thank you for making EndeavourOS a success in its first year!!

Cheers!

You can download the latest release over here.