It has been a while since we released our last ISO, Endeavour Neo, and even though this new ISO comes with many improvements and technical challenges we had to tackle, like resolving issues that came with Linux kernel 6.13, the Xfce 4.20 update, sfdisk and Calamares’ kpmcore, those challenges weren’t the main reason for the long hiatus between Endeavour Neo and Mercury.
No, it simply was that well-known song of life getting in the way and this situation won’t change for some time. Let me reassure you that we are not planning to throw in the towel, but you will have to get used to a somewhat irregular release schedule from us for now. This doesn’t mean that our ISOs will be left to deteriorate during availability. Every ISO receives and has received hotfixes during their run which will be fetched automatically before the installer starts doing its magic. The only major issue that can happen with this method is that the newest hardware possibly won’t boot our ISO due to an older kernel version over time. We will resolve those as soon as we can with Neo and Nova releases.
One of the main reasons for our irregular release schedule is that Joe Kamprad is busy studying to be a certified programmer and I’m sure you can understand this is taking a lot of time and energy, but in the end, it will benefit the project. So, we’re still alive and kicking!
Before I go on into the release notes of our Mercury release I’d like to highlight the following:
The changes described over here are affecting new installs, our Calamares installer, and the Live environment on the ISO only. Running systems don’t have to “upgrade” to Mercury, if you update regularly your system is fine.
The Mercury release
Image by Unclespellbinder
The Mercury ISO ships with the following packages for both the live environment and the offline install option:
Calamares 25.02.1.4-3
Firefox 135.0-1
Linux 6.13.1.arch2-1
Mesa 1:24.3.4-1
Xorg-server 21.1.15-1 (xorg)
Nvidia 570.86.16-3
New Features and improvements:
- The ISO now has a memory test for EFI too.
- The issue with Bios/Legacy Installs is resolved.
- KDE, Gnome, XFCE4, Mate, Budgie and Cinnamon use a dark theme by default.
- XFCE4 theme is now closer to the default (Xfce) setup.
- Gnome sets dark and light wallpapers on changing mode automatically
- Replacing empty space with the “replace Partition” option is working again.
- The installer showing double entries for the EFI selection dropdown is resolved.
- EndeavourOS Branding is easier to find and use for artists and media usage. → https://github.com/endeavouros-team/Branding
- Both mirrorlists ranked now before installation will be copied to the target. In case the user changes the mirror list on the live session, these will be used instead, and not ranked in the installation process again.
You can download the ISO over here.
Loving this!!! Mercury is a great name and love the new wallpaper! Thanks EndeavourOS Team for all you do!
Thnx, you’re welcome
Sweet! I’m gonna purge the vile Windows on my Wife’s PC and this is perfect timing!
Good to hear, and all the best of luck to Joe.
Love the new background image, looks awesome as always
Thank you EndeavourOS. You have been a great switch to Linux for me.
Thanks you for a great Distro, well done, congrats!
Thanks for the updated ISO! Such good timing. I was just about to reinstall EndeavourOS, which is one of my favorite distros. Best wishes to the team!
Amazing EndeavourOs is the best linux distro among all linux distros, thank you for everything you do.
Thank you for everything and your outstanding work. May EndeavourOS live forever.
New XFCE theme is amazing. A lot better than old one.
grazie EndeavourOS sei il migliore, anni luce da windows che ho lasciato da tempo
What a relief! No more creepy-ass AI from Windows for me!
Great news and great job! Thank you!
EndeavourOS team, thanks and congratulations on your work. It really shows the effort and the passion you’re infusing in it. If waiting between ISOs means having this quality and this supporting team and community, i’m happy to stay and wait 😀
Great job! Very nice
I love Linux, I’m downloading to try the new Mercury version, if it works like Freddie sang it will be spectacular!!!
Thanks from Argentina!
You guys rock, thank you, this has been my daily driver for years. Love KDE and sway community editions !
I just read today, that facebook is censoring distrowatch, and labeling linux as malware is that true?
I use facebook website but don’t post about open source linux stuff on it at all? I seen some postings and youtube video talking about that today, I heard that people I getting hit with removed posts about distrowatch links on facebook, as they are now claiming linux is malware from what the youtube comments and peers were saying about it, I am hoping its not going to affect linux like ubuntu or arch based or fedora in the long run of things.
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/facebook-admits-that-the-linux-topic-crackdown-was-in-error-and-has-been-fixed
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/facebook-flags-linux-topics-as-cybersecurity-threats-posts-and-users-being-blocked
this might not be new, anyway I used garuda linux based on arch before, its good on my more modern laptops, but I also have an old celron 900 laptop, its not so good on it, as the ram disk bootup part it seems to get stuck on that a bit, it bootup the live mode just fine, but after installing it, the bootup slowed down on that, I used a older version of endeavourOS before, and I didn’t like when it disabled blutooth before since I do use blutooth for earpods listening to music, also have blutooth enabled soundbars at home, in any case, that was a problem for me, if I recall the blutooth problems have been fixed since that version of Endeavouros, sharing link are ok right in comments?
its a great linux distro i mean the best arch based distro out there
I have been using Linux for 15 years now. EOS is by far the best Arch-based version that is stable and just simply works. I used to be a beta-tester for StormOS but due to the laziness of the lead dev, I just said enough is enough with this. I’m a senior now so I just love to enjoy the EOS system and use this as my daily driver with no fears. Thanks for all of y’alls hard work and dedication.
I’m new to Endeavour & Arch.
Beautiful desktop with KDE Plasma.
Endeavour Mercury with its NVIDIA install fixed the problem that I was having with Linux Mint & Ubuntu 24.10.
I don’t have any more freezing when using Firefox!
I installed the LTS linux kernel & it is a very fast & a very stable operating system.
Absolute fantastic job by the developers!