After a year of development, the release of the Endless OS 4.0 distribution is published, aimed at creating an easy-to-use system in which you can quickly select applications to your taste. Applications are distributed as self-contained Flatpak packages. The boot images offered range in size from 3.3 to 17 GB.
The distribution does not use traditional package managers, instead offering a minimal atomically updatable read-only base system built using the OSTree toolkit (the system image is atomically upgraded from a Git-like repository). Recently, Fedora developers have been trying to repeat ideas identical to Endless OS as part of the Silverblue project to create an atomically updated version of Fedora Workstation. The Endless OS installer and update system is now used in GNOME OS as planned.
Endless OS is among the distributions that drive innovation among consumer Linux systems. The desktop environment in Endless OS is based on a heavily redesigned fork of GNOME. At the same time, Endless developers actively participate in the development of upstream projects and share their developments with them. For example, in the GTK+ 3.22 release, about 9.8% of all changes were prepared by the Endless developers, and Endless Mobile, which oversees the project, is on the GNOME Foundation's oversight board, along with FSF, Debian, Google, Linux Foundation, Red Hat and SUSE.
Endless OS 4 is marked as a long-term support release, with updates to be rolled out over several years. Including the distribution will be supported for some time after the appearance of the Endless OS 5 branch, which will be published in 2-3 years and is based on Debian 12 (the release time of Endless OS 5 depends on the timing of the formation of Debian 12).
In the new release:
- To simplify navigation through the list of installed applications, which can be divided into several pages, arrows have been added to the side of the icon block to navigate to the next and previous pages. At the bottom of the list, a visual indicator of the total number of pages has been added, in which each page corresponds to a dot.
- Provided the ability to quickly switch to another user without ending the current session. The user switching interface is accessible through the menu or from the lock screen page.
- The printing system has been upgraded. Printers no longer require the installation of separate drivers, and IPP Everywhere protocol is used to print and discover printers connected directly or available on the local network.
- The distribution components are in sync with the Debian 11 branch (Endless OS 3.x was based on Debian 10). The Linux kernel package has been updated to version 5.11. Updated NVIDIA drivers (460.91.03), OSTree 2020.8 and flatpak 1.10.2.
- The distribution building process has been changed, instead of rebuilding the sources of Debian packages on its side, in Endless OS 4 binary packages shared with Debian are now directly downloaded from the Debian repositories when forming the distribution. The number of Endless OS-specific packages that include changes has been reduced to 120.
- Added support for Raspberry Pi 4B boards with 8GB RAM (models with 2GB and 4GB RAM were previously supported). Improved graphics and WiFi performance for all Raspberry Pi 4B models. Support for the ARM64 platform is still experimental.
- Added L2TP and OpenConnect VPN support with support for Cisco AnyConnect, Array Networks AG SSL VPN, Juniper SSL VPN, Pulse Connect Secure, Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect SSL VPN, F5 Big-IP SSL VPN, and Fortinet Fortigate SSL VPN protocols.
- Instead of fake-hwclock and ntpd, the systemd-timesyncd service is used to set the system clock and synchronize the exact time.
- Support for the SBAT (UEFI Secure Boot Advanced Targeting) mechanism has been added to the bootloader, which solves certificate revocation problems for UEFI Secure Boot.
- The distribution of the application for remote control of the vinagre desktop has been discontinued, which is no longer supported by the authors. Alternatively, you can use Connections (RDP, VNC), Remmina (RDP, VNC, NX, Spice, SSH), or Thincast (RDP).
- Removed web shortcuts from the desktop to quickly open Duolingo, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube.
- Removed "The Word of the Day" and "Quote of the Day" apps, which were no longer useful when the Discovery Feed feature was removed in the last release.
- Chromium is proposed as the default browser, instead of the previously used stub that automatically installs Google Chrome the first time you connect to the network.
- The Rhythmbox music player and the Cheese webcam application have been moved to installation using Flatpak packages (previously Rhythmbox and Cheese were included in the base distribution and could not be uninstalled or disabled through parental control tools). After the upgrade, the user will need to move their playlists from their "~/.local/share/rhythmbox/" directory to "~/.var/app/org.gnome.Rhythmbox3/data/rhythmbox/".
- The icons used in the distribution have been replaced with stock GNOME icons, which are better adapted to screens with high pixel density.
- The components of the operating system and application in the Flatpak format are separated and are now stored in separate repositories (previously they were processed in the same OSTree repository on disk). It is noted that the change allowed to improve the stability and performance of installing packages.
- The method of optional participation in the transmission of telemetry about the user's work and the sending of reports on emerging failures has been changed (the inclusion of the transmission of anonymized statistics, if desired, can be performed by the user at the installation stage or through the "Settings β Privacy β Metrics" configurator). Unlike previous releases, the transferred data is no longer tied to a specific computer, but is associated with the build ID of the distribution installed on the computer. In addition, the number of metrics transmitted when sending statistics has been reduced.
- Users are given the ability to customize the contents of the installation image. For example, you can create your own install image that contains a different set of default applications and different desktop settings.
Source: opennet.ru