Slimmer options but lean and in a new live environment, Galileo has arrived

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-reset in eos-update. This can help with corrupted keyring problems.
• Removed the UpdateInTerminal app.
• eos-sendlog can now take commands as parameters, too.

Other packages and apps

• New mirrors around the world.
• Support for option --threads in reflector-simple.
• Added options --delay and --threads in reflector-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.