EndeavorOS – Cassini Nova in a short test

Tuesday, June 27, 2023, Ralph Hersel

If I had to sum up the current situation with Arch derivatives in one sentence, I’d put it this way: all against Manjaro; despite of Archistel The mainstream distribution bouncy really dare not approach the original arc; Everyone loves Endeavorous. This is a very short point of view, with which one could gladly disagree. Since the last EndeavorOS demo was over a year ago, it’s time to take a very quick look at the current version of Cassini Nova as of May this year.

Load the ISO image here Download and try it in a virtual machine. After booting into the live environment, you will see the Xfce desktop greet you with this welcome application.

After clicking on “Start Installer” calamari , where you can choose between offline or online installation. Offline, there is only Xfce as a desktop environment; The online option provides these desktops: no desktop, Xfce 4, i3-wm, KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, Mate, Budgie, LXQT, LXDE. Ext4, btrfs, and xfs are available as file systems. I chose gnome and ext4. There isn’t much to say about the installation; It is very simple; Every student can.

While it’s running the installation process for you, you can Article by Dave McKay Read as it describes why it switched from Manjaro to EndeavorOS. In it you will learn, among other things, that Endeavor is closer to Arch than Manjaro. Endeavor uses Arch repositories, while Manjaro, as an organized roaming release, keeps high-end Arch packages for a few weeks before ending up in Manjaro-Stable.

After reading the last paragraph, your test installation of EndeavorOS should be complete. If not (like me), you might be wondering what the difference is between Arch and Endeavor if they both use the same repos. We already knew one difference: Calamares as a stabilizer. But there is more.

This is how EndeavorOS presents itself immediately upon restarting the installation. I think it’s a good idea for a distribution to take the trouble to write a welcome application. This is a boon, especially for beginners or those who are switching to Arch Linux and haven’t gotten to grips with it yet. However, I doubt if these users know whether to update mirrors of Reflector or EndeavorOS.

I selected Endeavor mirrors, performed all system updates and set up an update notification. The Hello app offers a lot more than what you’re used to from similar greeting apps. Here you can see all tabs:

Here it is not pierced, but quilted. The welcome app is self-explanatory when you click on the first tab about hello With Update Notifier clicks, you can set if and when the operating system should check for package updates.

There is even a dry run (test run) and status bar, as shown in the screenshot to the right.

Of course, Cman takes care of package management. However, in the Welcome app, there is an “Add more programs” tab. There you will find a collection of about 50 popular apps from different categories:

The remaining three buttons on this tab only link to the corresponding catalogs on the Arch Linux wiki. EndeavorOS lacks comprehensive graphical package management (such as Manjaro’s Pamac). Flatpak support isn’t pre-installed either, but that’s not a problem. Once you install your first Flatpak from Flatub.org, Flatpak support will be installed on demand.

The EndeavorOS team has not made any changes to the GNOME desktop environment. GNOME extensions are not installed. It only comes with one background image and Qogir theme (along with Adwaita).

Conclusion

EndeavorOS makes a good impression on me. The Calamares installer is easier to install than the Manjaro installer and much easier than the Arch installer. With its wealth of information and tools, the Welcome app is an asset, especially for those new to the Arch world. Opinions can be divided on whether a distribution should make modifications to the desktop environment. I wanted to feel a little bit of Endeavor in the GNOME desktop.

source: https://endeavoros.com/