EndeavourOS is a user-friendly Arch Linux-based rolling release distro with some handy new features that improve the user experience. It fits into a similar-but-different niche as Manjaro.
Most readers may probably remember the Antergos Linux distribution, discontinued in 2019. After that, a group of the older community merged efforts to create a new continuation of that distribution, EndeavourOS.
Today, almost four months after the previous EndeavourOS Neo release, the distro has a new update. The developers have announced the new EndeavourOS Apollo update, which is currently available to download and install.
EndeavourOS Apollo Highlights
We start with the fact that the Calamares installer has received massive improvements with this release.
A fix has been added when Xfce and i3 are both selected for installation. In the previous release, the issue of double-installed packages caused conflicts during the installation of the desktop environments in combination with i3.
We continue by saying that status is now displayed below the progress bar during the online installation processes to make it clear what is going on.
Moreover, instead of using LightDM + Slickgreeter as the default display manager, the EndeavourOS Community editions now install with their own. The display managers used LightDM + Slick greeter, Lxdm, ly, and GDM.
But perhaps the most significant change related to the Calamares installer is the changed ordering of the desktop environments option and package chooser installation options.
Calamares now allows the user to select the desktop environment before proceeding to the package selection page to install additional packages such as another kernel.
EndeavourOS Apollo is also shipping with a brand-new X11-based window manager called Worm. It is a tiny, dynamic, tag-based window manager written in the Nim language. Worm supports both a floating mode and master-stack tiling with gaps and struts and has window decorations with minimize, maximize, and close buttons in any desired layout.
Under the hood, for Btrfs installations, compression is now applied to the installed files. In addition, if you want to run EndeavourOS, you can now check if Bluetooth is working on your hardware; however, Bluetooth is disabled by default after installation.
On the application side, the eos-rankmirrors app received the addition of options. For example, you can now prefer and ignore specific mirrors in the EndeavourOS-mirrorlist by using the -prefer and -ignore options, which can be convenient and time-saving in some situations.
And speaking of apps, we can’t fail to mention that EndeavourOS Apollo has gotten a few. Perhaps the most striking, however, is the new EOS-quickstart app. It assists you in selecting and installing the most common and useful apps on a newly installed system.
On top of that, the Nvidia-ins is also a brand new app that is a rewritten version of the existing nvidia-installer-dkms app. In short, it is a command-line utility that assists you in installing the standard Nvidia driver. However, keep in mind that this tool is still in beta.
Among the rest of the news, EndeavourOS Apollo brings:
- Firefox 99.0-1
- Linux kernel 5.17.1
- Mesa 22.0.1-3
- nvidia-dkms 510.60.02-1
Of course, there are also numerous other improvements and bug fixes. But, again, you can refer to the official announcement for detailed information about all changes.
Download
If you want a fresh EndeavourOS install, you can get your copy from the project’s download page and create a bootable USB flash drive.
If you are already running EndeavourOS, there is no need to reinstall. Just open the “UpdateInTerminal” app from the menu. You would get all the latest packages and updates.
So, if you want to run the main-line Arch, EndeavourOS is absolutely the way to get going.
