It has taken a while to develop this release but we are still here and despite life throwing in extra challenges for each of our team members the past months, we are proud to present you our Galileo ISO with significant changes.
Before I go into further details of our release, I’d like to thank our ISO testers on both our forum and Telegram for helping us out. And community members ajgringo619, Matvey_Mochalov, and Smokey for stepping up recently to help us finish this release. Thank you so much, without your help the development of this release would’ve definitely taken longer.
The Galileo release
Just a reminder, 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 Galileo, if you update regularly your system is fine.
With Galileo, we have focussed on keeping EndeavourOS rolling by streamlining the workflow of the team. This meant that we had to make switches and cuts to fit the amount of work behind the scenes with the team’s day-to-day life challenges and obligations.
Despite having slimmed down the features on our ISO, Galileo is still a genuine EndeavourOS release. This means a jumpstart into Arch without too many pre-settings we think you should need, so you can tailor your system to your needs.
These are the changes the ISO is shipping:
KDE Plasma replaced Xfce as the Live environment and on the offline install option
- To make development and maintenance easier for the team, we switched to KDE Plasma instead of Xfce due to a more native experience for our developers with the Calamares installer. This only affects the Live environment and the offline install option. When choosing the online install option, Xfce is still there as an option to choose from. For those who like the Xfce theming, we created, this option will still be available after installation through the Welcome app.
The community editions aren’t available anymore as an installation option –
- Our community editions Sway, Qtile, BSPWM, Openbox, and Worm aren’t available anymore through the Calamares installer. Unfortunately, most of the original devs left the project and there’s nobody who picked it up from them to make them work with each Calamares update. For a while the core dev. team picked up the work, but we had to make this decision in order for the project to go forward. The community editions are still available installing them manually through this GitHub page.
Local Hostname Resolution will be enabled on a new install
- This was a community request to simplify the process to enable network printers described in our Discovery network printer article. Local Hostname Resolution being enabled doesn’t mean network printers are enabled by default, you still have to go through some steps to enable it manually.
Stronger LUKS2 encryption when chosen systemd-boot
- When LUKS encryption with systemd-boot is chosen, the system will be installed with a stronger LUKS2 encryption using argon2id.
Removed the ability to install more than one DE during install
- From now on only one DE/WM option can be installed within the Calamares installer to prevent issues regarding conflicting packages after installation.
A restructure of the package selection screen
- The Calamares package selection screen has been restructured to be clearer and to make some items more discoverable.
EFI partition permissions made more strict
- To avoid issues, especially with dual-boot installations with Windows.
Improved fstab
- fstab is no longer populated with extraneous defaults in options.
SElinux warnings are removed
- During installation, the SELinux warnings are removed to avoid confusion.
No more unused LUKS key file with systemd-boot
- The installation doesn’t create an unused LUKS key file anymore when systemd-boot is selected. This bug was resolved now thanks to community feedback.
Dracut-related packages are added to Holdpkg
- All Dracut-related packages are added to Holdpkg to avoid being removed inadvertently.
The correct German keyboard layout is chosen by default
- Previously TTY selected an uncommon German keyboard layout creating various issues, especially with encryption phrases. The default keyboard layout used is de-latin1.
EndeavourOS app improvements
welcome
- Support for KDE in the installer and in the installed system.
- Added language selection in the installer.
- Streamlined icons.
eos-bash-shared
- New option
--keyrings-resetineos-update. This can help with corrupted keyring problems. - Removed the
UpdateInTerminalapp. eos-sendlogcan now take commands as parameters, too.
Other packages and apps
- New mirrors around the world.
- Support for option
--threadsinreflector-simple. - Added options
--delayand--threadsinreflector-bash-completion. - Streamlined icons in many EndeavourOS apps.
ISO package versions:
- calamares 23.11.1.1-1
- firefox 119.0.1-1
- linux 6.6.1.arch1-1
- mesa 1:23.2.1-2
- xorg-server 21.1.9-1 (xorg)
- nvidia-dkms 545.29.02-2
Unresolved bug
Even though we tackled a lot of the most common bugs there is still one, not so common, bug that is unresolved. However, we do provide a workaround for that scenario.
When trying to select an empty unpartitioned space or replace an empty unsupported file system partition during the automated install option, Calamares doesn’t give a warning. We highly suggest that, if in doubt, use the partition manager in the Welcome app before installing the system or use the manual partition option in Calamares.
Have fun with it
Galileo kicks off the new direction EndeavourOS is taking, slimmer options, lean, but definitely heading forward. Just have fun with it. You can download the ISO through our magnet link or through a mirror near you on our homepage.
All clear. Thanks for your effort, appreciate it!
Thanks for all your hard work!
KDE Plasma isn’t visually appealing. I’ll stick with Xfce. Thanks.
Many thanks to the hard work of the team. Really enjoying Endeavour and love the simplicity and consistency around it.
Nice!
Keep up the good work. I prefer KDE over Xfce for live boot as I sometimes use it for troubleshooting. I found that KDE is easier.
Thank you guys for all the hard work you’re doing!
Can’t wait to try it out!
Greetings and salutations Bryanpwo, and EndeavourOS team.
Your work on providing an easy access point in obtaining a functional Arch Linux installation without vast technical knowledge is commendable.
I would like to thank you, for providing this modified Arch ISO file, as I use it to install vanilla Arch Linux on my systems. I humbly request, that you and your team, continue providing this modified Arch ISO file.
I would also like to offer… a suggestion. If I may be so bold.
If you and your team find yourselves having difficulty in maintaining the project, (as evident in the loss of the community editions) then perhaps you could alter your approach in providing a user friendly installation path of Arch Linux.
For example, in the calamares installer, your team could focus on providing only the packages necessary for a base system’ sound support’ and display drivers etc. This would allow users to have an easy point and click installation, without any unnecessary “bloat” on their installation. This would leave the new user with only a server, as if they just installed vanilla Arch manually.
After the new installation is complete, the user would be free to go in any direction they want for a graphical environment to use on their computer. To make this last step as easy as possible, your team could provide a set of instructions on setting up their environment of choice, and enabling the required systemd services on your website.
Your team could make this step even easier for end users by providing meta packages in your repositories.
These meta packages should only pull in a bare-bones desktop environment’ default file manager’ and default terminal etc.
This would ultimately leave an end user with a system that’s more or less vanilla Arch but with the EndeavourOS branding. It would be lean’ clean and minimal, with only the packages they need, and, the packages they want. No bloat here. (yay!)
Thank you for your reply.
The community editions were maintained by the community, the team has their hands full with the Calamares installer. We already provide a close to Vanilla Arch approach. The DEs are coming straight from the Arch repo without us tinkering anything, except a small layer of branding. So, that is not the part that is too difficult, it is the installer that needs attention, considering the team exists of three people, that is a more than enough task to maintain. Adding meta packages to our repository requires much more work than we are doing at the moment.
What you are suggesting IS Arch, except for those very first steps.
My apologies Bryanpwo. I hope I didn’t come off the wrong way or anything when I wrote that suggestion.
I’m not a developer or IT professional in general. With the way this announcement was worded, my brain interpreted things as if you and your team might have been struggling in keeping the project going as a whole.
Also, I’m sorry. I’ve always been under the impression that this project was a means to an end to give non-technical users a point and click installation of Arch Linux proper with a few tools to make installing AUR packages easier out of the box etc.
For myself, I adore and love that you provide this ISO file. (I get to be lazy <3) I can easily work in a graphical live environment, where I can do a manual installation of vanilla Arch with exactly the packages I want, and have everything fully configured by the time I exit the chroot and unmount everything.
Its the better way to install vanilla Arch if I do say so myself haha, plus I can add whatever extra repositories I want, to really fine tune my systems out of the box. Hell I once set up a full Trinity system just because I could, thanks to your work.
You guys are awesome, seriously. I mean this from the heart. Much love to you and the team. <3
No worries. I didn’t perceive your comment as wrong or anything. The community editions were maintained by community members and a lot of them left the project without a sign or warning, leaving the main devs with a pile of code to go through. That’s why we decided to ditch the community editions.
Thank you for your hard work! Of all the Arch distros out there I always come back to EndeavourOS.
What I like is that it has sane defaults for integration with your choice of DE and at the same time is not bloated <3
Keep it up!
Congratulations for switching to KDE Plasma!
It’s the best desktop environment out there, at least for me 🙂
Hola! He estado pensando en reemplazar el Sistema Operativo de una laptop vieja que tengo guardada. Pero me gustaría conocer los requisitos mínimos en cuanto a CPU/RAM de Endeavours, por favor.
The minimum we recommend is 4 GB RAM but 8 GB will be better. The distro will work on any Intel or AMD CPU made in the past 10 -12 years.
When you say most of the original devs left the project are you speaking about the devs for those specific community editions, or are you speaking more broadly that EOS has lost a core set of contributors?
The devs of the community editions. The core team has a small core team that remained through the years but they also can do with some help.
Got it, glad to hear that the core team is still engaged, EOS is a fantastic distro! I hope you guys can find some more volunteers, managing a distro, or any OSS projects really is a labor of love, but burnout is real.
I can understand why you think that, all of our DEs come slightly themed. However, we did theme Xfce a bit more since it was our flagship DE and for users who install Xfce after install, the theme is still available through the welcome app like it was before. I will change the wording when I have time.
Although I am not used to using KDE/Plasma I am very pleased with the slick experience this release provides. Amazing, keep up the good work!