Endless OS is a Linux-based operating system which provides a simplified and streamlined user experience using a customized desktop environment forked from GNOME 3. Rather than using a traditional Linux package management system, Endless OS uses a read-only root file system managed by OSTree with application bundles overlaid on top.
To compare the software in this project to the software available in other distributions, please see our Compare Packages page.
Notes: In case where multiple versions of a package are shipped with a distribution, only the default version appears in the table. For indication about the GNOME version, please check the "nautilus" and "gnome-shell" packages. The Apache web server is listed as "httpd" and the Linux kernel is listed as "linux". The KDE desktop is represented by the "plasma-desktop" package and the Xfce desktop by the "xfdesktop" package.
Colour scheme:green text = latest stable version, red text = development or beta version. The function determining beta versions is not 100% reliable due to a wide variety of versioning schemes.
TUXEDO
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
Star Labs
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
I have tried many different Linux OSes over the years on an old desktop, and I keep coming back to Endless because it just works with very little tweaking, includes easy installation of real Chrome, and is quite snappy on an older machine. I use and like Chromebooks too, and to me Endless is very similar in operation and benefits. My printer, which is often a problem on many distros, just worked instantly. My secondary storage drive just appeared and worked. My wifi just worked. Everything was good to go.
Cons: Not for power users, and since the interface is not like Windows some may find it takes a little learning time. If you are used to a Chromebook it will seem quite similar in many ways.
This Distro is mainly meant for education and offline usage, it comes with pre-installed encyclopedias, educational content, custom games and activities specifically designed for this OS, The "Hack" app for example where you can explore the OS, write code and have some fun.
Lots of additional educational content and many games are available in the App Center, it can be very interesting to explore for kids age 8-15. Although the App Center itself is slow and can hang for a while after install/delete (more on it later).
The read only root file system means you can't install anything outside of the App Center, and can't really break anything by your own actions, at least not without deep linux knowledge to know how to break it.
Now the bad parts.
I have an old NVIDIA graphic card - GeForce 770 and Wayland driver is not available for this card, so I often had freezes and graphical glitches, for example in Anki, the hardware acceleration was not working either. But switching to Xorg at login manager didn't help, maybe because it was not using the proprietary driver? It's hard to tell, because you can't really use apt to install anything, and nvidia was not found in the App Center. I think the hardware detection and driver installation could be better.
The OS does not include any DNS filtering or parenting control by default so the 'bad' sites are fully accessible.
Endless OS 5.0.4 (May 2023) still doesn't support black theme in Gnome. Gnome itself is very limiting, I had to write configuration to .profile (which you can do since it's in a user home folder not the root fs)
Because you can't install anything which is not available in the App Center if this OS is broken for you out of the box it's very difficult to fix it, even if you know your way around other, traditional linuxes.
For some reason some apps were not available for me in the App Center - vscode(ium), vim, emacs. But I could find and install them from the flathub site, after which they started to show in the App Center.
App Center is too slow and buggy, it takes ~3-6 second for search. No availability to install with right click from the list of found apps, you have to go to each app page and install from there, but it takes ~5 seconds per each page load.
----
If you don't have an old nvidia card and want to explore the pre-installed apps in an Offline setting it can be OK'is choice, for anything else I would not recommend it.
I am a Linux noob. I installed Endless 5.0.2 Basic edition on a HP with a Ryzen 3 AMD CPU, Raedon GPU. 1 TB hard drive and 8 GB RAM. Endless installed on a single partition with read-only root file system with no issues. Most Linux distros will fail to install non-free firmware. Endless did the install PERFECTLY !!!
I installed the following software from the Endless App Center: Brave, Firefox and TOR browsers. Darktable, GIMP and Shotcut for media production. PyCharm Professional and VScodium for Python development. All these tasks were completed WITHOUT using the terminal and CLI commands.
Endless appears to be running smoothly and stable with the listed software installed. I setup Automatic Updates and Endless updated everything to the current version. Endless appears to target beginners, home and noob users. It is a CROSSOVER Linux distribution. If that is what you want, I encourage you to try it!
Copyright (C) 2001 - 2023 Atea Ataroa Limited. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Privacy policy. Change privacy settings. DistroWatch.com is hosted at Copenhagen.
Contact, corrections and suggestions: Jesse Smith
Tips: bc1qtede6f7adcce4kjpgx0e5j68wwgtdxrek2qvc4 86fA3qPTeQtNb2k1vLwEQaAp3XxkvvvXt69gSG5LGunXXikK9koPWZaRQgfFPBPWhMgXjPjccy9LA9xRFchPWQAnPvxh5Le PayPal.me/distrow • Patreon.com/distrowatch