The Linux distribution I was most thankful for in 2020 - EndeavourOS

Quoting: dibz

Quoting: scaineCertainly, Mint's biggest problem is the lack of an upgrade path. You basically have to re-install every two years, simple as that. Hardly ideal. But otherwise, it's amazing. So why am I constantly on the lookout for another distro...?

Oh? The upgrade path typically "opens" shortly after new releases, and they appear as a menu item in the update manager. The update manager does not, however, alert you about this; I believe that's intentional as the Mint camp typically, as well as any sane person would, tell a person not to do a major upgrade unless they had an actual reason to. It's fair to say I probably only knew about this because I subscribe to their rss feed on their homepage, and when they announce new releases, they also announce upgrade instructions typically; I doubt I'd be aware of the details otherwise. It's a few clicks to do and is pretty similar to just doing a normal update. All that being the case, if you don't mind doing new installs, keep doing them IMHO. Any OS, Windows and OSX included, tends to appreciate a fresh start once in a while. I've used the upgrade method for the last few major versions.

That said, for a long, long, time I've only made two data partitions for my installs -- home, and everything else, so if/when I ever need to do the nuclear option and actually reinstall it takes maybe twenty minutes combined; including picking out whatever software selection post install. Pretty much all my settings/icons/themes are in my home directory anyway, so even a fresh install takes very little time -- but I still haven't had to in a long time now. Not to make this about Windows, but honestly, whenever I have to do a full windows install it tends to be an all day affair in comparison; I'm not sure when it happened, but I tell ya, setting up Linux sure became far easier then windows at some point.

That's really interesting. I only use about 3 or 4 PPAs (Mesa, Wine, Chrome/Dropbox and OBS), but I've found the Mint upgrade to be a real train wreck. It refused to upgrade unless I downgraded all my packages first, which took ages. Then finally upgraded, then I had to restore all my PPAs, and so on. It was painful stuff. To be fair, Ubuntu isn't hugely better - but it automates a lot of the process for you.

But just look at these instructions... holy cow. https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2

Quoting: scaine

QuoteUbuntu was too safe, not particularly exciting and I didn't want another normal distro

Isn't this weird? I can really relate to it, but I don't really understand what drives it. It's the fundamental force behind distro-hopping I think.

I'm mostly settled on Mint, but there's still an itch that there might be something better out there. Certainly, Mint's biggest problem is the lack of an upgrade path. You basically have to re-install every two years, simple as that. Hardly ideal. But otherwise, it's amazing. So why am I constantly on the lookout for another distro...?

I think it's also that after having distro hoped a little, you find that no distro fits 100% of what you want. After a bit more than 15 years hoping around, I have settled on Fedora for the base... But use half a dozen VMs, guess that's the final stage of hoping. It is actually quite a nice way to use your computer, but needs quite a bit of RAM. Right now I personnaly have a virtual Fedora Silverblue - mostly to try, it is very fun btw -, Centos stream (for all these crap which require 10 years old packets but still have not completely outdated experience) and deepin (because... because ?)running in parallel ... + My Fedora host of course (used for steam and co directly)

Quoting: oldrocker99I tried EndeavourOS, and it's too close to vanilla Arch for me (I don't like spending a long time to install packages);

Not arguing your preferences here, but how are the Manjaro updates faster than Arch? I use both systems and I always use the same `sudo pacman -Syu` for each. I think Manjaro has fewer mirrors too. Maybe you mean the frequency of updates? That is completely controlled by the user. Just not sure what would be slower.

EDIT: Oh, I think I understand now that you mean the default packages that come with Manjaro versus vanilla Arch where you have to find them all and install them yourself... so the getting-up-and-running aspect of installing the system, not maintenance like I was thinking.


Last edited by 14 on 6 January 2021 at 7:17 pm UTC

I want something that's kept well up to date yet stable as hell. Up until recently, that was Ubuntu (Xubuntu, specifically), but with 20.04 I'd began having odd graphical and audio problems that I couldn't get to the bottom of.

I installed Pop at the end of last week and have been beavering away at making it more comfortable for me. Before I installed it, I spent some time with Manjaro and Mint, both XFCE (really, my favourite desktop) and even less time with Endeavour and KDE Neon. All had pluses and minuses, but Pop had a certain panache that really got to me --- surprising, really, given my preference for XFCE.

I like that Pop has kernel 5.8, and that Steam and Nvidia integration are solid. Best of all, though, Pop made it possible for me to install XFCE's superior clipboard manager, (clipman) and notes plug-in into my non-XFCE desktop. I actually left Ubuntu Mate behind because I couldn't live without zen-like clipman.




Last edited by Nanobang on 7 January 2021 at 1:30 pm UTC

Waiting for Debian 11 this year, I use this distro as my main OS as it's easy to create an offline repo and it's rock solid (got a bunch of offline systems all over the house so its handy).

My current good old Debian 9 base is showing its' age. Many programs work fine and I even have a bleeding edge kernel, Mesa and Wine however there are a few odd cases where a software refuses to compile from source.

I'll probably try an Arch based setup on my laptop.

I've landed on opensuse Tumbleweed. The reason. YAST. I've never seen anything like it when I was in the debs or heard of anything like it anywhere else. I would have expected something like it to appear in other distros, but maybe I just missed the news (I last used Ubuntu in 2007)

For me openSuse TW is fresh enough that I'm running the latest packages pretty fast, bit not so new that I get the obvious bugs. I'd date say I think it updates a little faster than Debian testing, or already feel that way.

I also like it because it is mature. The defaults make sense and most things work out of the box. In the 2 years I've run OpenSuse TW, I think I've only had 1 breakage and on top of that they've anticipated that possibilty and mitigated it with a snapshot system to roll back the system in case of a bad update.

I think I'm going to stay on this one for a little while

Quoting: Avehicle7887Waiting for Debian 11 this year, I use this distro as my main OS as it's easy to create an offline repo and it's rock solid (got a bunch of offline systems all over the house so its handy).

My current good old Debian 9 base is showing its' age. Many programs work fine and I even have a bleeding edge kernel, Mesa and Wine however there are a few odd cases where a software refuses to compile from source.

Amen! Been using Debian on my main machine since the 90s!

You should really upgrade to buster (Debian 10) though...


Last edited by seamoose on 7 January 2021 at 4:02 am UTC

Quoting: oldrocker99I tried EndeavourOS, and it's too close to vanilla Arch for me (I don't like spending a long time to install packages); I prefer the so-called "bloated" Manjaro. All the benefits of Arch with the ease of Ubuntu.

That was also my experience with EndeavourOS. When I installed it, I realised all the stuff that Manjaro does right out-from-the-box, and didn't want to spend time "copying" this behaviour in EndeavourOS.

I really loved Antergos, and it was a pity they had to abandon it.
After finally trying EndeavourOS this year, though, I can say that it's currently one of my favourite Linux distributions for advanced users (along with Fedora).
I use it with Xfce as desktop environment, and generally I'm very happy. The only problem is HiDPI support. To the credit of Xfce team it got a lot better this year, but it's still not as seamless as in GNOME: there are some things you have to tweak yourself.

Been using EndeavourOS for months now, since the Manjaro Devs decided to go off the deep end and destroy their community...

Haven't looked back. Endeavour has been excellent. Solid as a rock, stable AF, and very configurable.

Using the default XFCE edition, and I love it.

Gotta thank the Manjaro Devs for being complete asshats, because I wouldn't have tried Endeavour otherwise!

used endevour as my daily driver before its quite good, but now im on solus because arch package are to bleeding edge for me.

Quoting: Sar....since the Manjaro Devs decided to go off the deep end and destroy their community...
...
Gotta thank the Manjaro Devs for being complete asshats, because I wouldn't have tried Endeavour otherwise!

I am curious what you mean by that? I use Manjaro as my daily driver for over 3 years now and try to stay up-to-date with what happens in Manjaro space, but cannot think of something that would justify such harsh words. Would you mind to elaborate?

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: theghostI really liked and used Antergos a long time. I would really like to use EndeavorOS as successor but unfortunately they replaced the installer of Antergos with Calamares. But Calamares offers no option to encrypt your hard drive in combination with an unencrypted boot. The only two distributions which offer this are Ubuntu and Fedora. So I will stick with them.

It's possible in openSUSE, too (with custom partitioning). And Tumbleweed is a really great choice if you are looking for a quite up-to-date but still rock-solid rolling release....

As for EndeavorOS - never heard of it So the article is greatly appreciated, I'll have a look at it at some point!

Sounds like I have to tinker with Tumbleweed again :)

Quoting: Sojiro84Eventually I also needed a new home because of some of the stuff that happened at Manjaro.

I didn't wanted a normal distro and I liked arch so EndeavourOS it was!

I definitely needed to adjust my arch install script a lot. Manjaro come with a lot of stuff by default that I needed and liked and wasn't in the base Arch+Cinnamon package.

But, after many test runs in VirtualBox and adjusting my install script, my system is now always quickly up and running with all the packages I need, program settings are restored and the same goes for my Cinnamon settings and my system is basically almost the same as it was in Manjaro!

Ummm, you and the author (Liam) both mentioned things happening recently with Manjaro. I've been running Manjaro-KDE for several years on a couple of workstations, and I'm not aware of anything going on... What's been happening?


Last edited by inlinuxdude on 7 January 2021 at 3:48 pm UTC

Quoting: scaineThat's really interesting. I only use about 3 or 4 PPAs (Mesa, Wine, Chrome/Dropbox and OBS), but I've found the Mint upgrade to be a real train wreck. It refused to upgrade unless I downgraded all my packages first, which took ages. Then finally upgraded, then I had to restore all my PPAs, and so on. It was painful stuff. To be fair, Ubuntu isn't hugely better - but it automates a lot of the process for you.

But just look at these instructions... holy cow. https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2

You're not kidding about holy cow there, wow. Looks extremely verbose, and almost all of it seems to be about taking backups and such. That's also...not quite the right instructions, they should probably be more clear about that...

https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/upgrade-to-mint-20.html

I guess I was wrong about it being in upgrade manager, could've sworn it was. Uses the "mintupgrade" tool. I've taken backups like the doc suggests, but I've never bothered to downgrade any PPAs or anything; but then I don't use any PPAs that would interfere with system packages to begin with (that's "looking for trouble"). I will say this though, if you use any PPAs for newer graphics drivers it would be wise to downgrade and remove _that_ PPA in advance.

Quoting: dibz

Quoting: scaineThat's really interesting. I only use about 3 or 4 PPAs (Mesa, Wine, Chrome/Dropbox and OBS), but I've found the Mint upgrade to be a real train wreck. It refused to upgrade unless I downgraded all my packages first, which took ages. Then finally upgraded, then I had to restore all my PPAs, and so on. It was painful stuff. To be fair, Ubuntu isn't hugely better - but it automates a lot of the process for you.

But just look at these instructions... holy cow. https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2

You're not kidding about holy cow there, wow. Looks extremely verbose, and almost all of it seems to be about taking backups and such. That's also...not quite the right instructions, they should probably be more clear about that...

https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/upgrade-to-mint-20.html

I guess I was wrong about it being in upgrade manager, could've sworn it was. Uses the "mintupgrade" tool. I've taken backups like the doc suggests, but I've never bothered to downgrade any PPAs or anything; but then I don't use any PPAs that would interfere with system packages to begin with (that's "looking for trouble"). I will say this though, if you use any PPAs for newer graphics drivers it would be wise to downgrade and remove _that_ PPA in advance.

The instructions do look scary, but even my wife had no trouble using the upgrade tool, and she's no power user. But I did help her find good sources for her graphics software afterwards.

Personally I use every upgrade as an opportunity to do some system maintenance and clearing of inevitable cruft. An hour every couple of years is hardly a lot of effort.

I'm a bit impressed by people who have enough time to power user linux distro like archlinux.

Quoting: Avehicle7887Waiting for Debian 11 this year, I use this distro as my main OS as it's easy to create an offline repo and it's rock solid (got a bunch of offline systems all over the house so its handy).

My current good old Debian 9 base is showing its' age. Many programs work fine and I even have a bleeding edge kernel, Mesa and Wine however there are a few odd cases where a software refuses to compile from source.

I'll probably try an Arch based setup on my laptop.

Debian user too, but i'm on the "almost-rolling" side. I do use stable (buster) almost everywhere : laptop, server except on my main desktop where i have decided i can lose a bit of time on upkeep with a debian sid (unstable). Despite unstable is said unstable… it is very stable from my point of view, it's not really a rolling but it's not as "outdated" as stable, for me it's look like a good balance: just need to be a bit more careful during update.
What i do really like in debian sid, is that i don't have this kind of big update which change too much things in the system and cause potential lots of issues at the same time, on debian sid, it's look to me that the system don't change much after each update, it's less stressful.

Quoting: inlinuxdude

Quoting: Sojiro84Eventually I also needed a new home because of some of the stuff that happened at Manjaro.

I didn't wanted a normal distro and I liked arch so EndeavourOS it was!

I definitely needed to adjust my arch install script a lot. Manjaro come with a lot of stuff by default that I needed and liked and wasn't in the base Arch+Cinnamon package.

But, after many test runs in VirtualBox and adjusting my install script, my system is now always quickly up and running with all the packages I need, program settings are restored and the same goes for my Cinnamon settings and my system is basically almost the same as it was in Manjaro!

Ummm, you and the author (Liam) both mentioned things happening recently with Manjaro. I've been running Manjaro-KDE for several years on a couple of workstations, and I'm not aware of anything going on... What's been happening?

I remember a page that described many of Manjaro's issues, but right now I can only find this one: https://github.com/vizs/manjarno

I ignored most of it when I found out, nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes, but at some point, I can't make any more excuses.

For me, the reason was how the donated funds was used for personal stuff. There was a discussion on the forums (the old one, thread doesn't exist anymore, how convenient) started by a staff member to discuss it, but the project lead hid the thread from public eyes. Delisted it. So nobody could find the thread unless they had a direct link.

Ah, found the reddit thread that brought it all to light! https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hwoev3/change_of_treasurer_for_manjaro_community_funds/

And here is the thread that started it all on the Manjaro forums: https://web.archive.org/web/20200807042341/https://forum.manjaro.org/t/change-of-treasurer-for-manjaro-community-funds/154888


Last edited by Sojiro84 on 7 January 2021 at 9:12 pm UTC

Quoting: inkheyWhat i do really like in debian sid, is that i don't have this kind of big update which change too much things in the system and cause potential lots of issues at the same time, on debian sid, it's look to me that the system don't change much after each update, it's less stressful.

I agree with you, but more when I think of Debian testing. It's like that perfect middle between sid and stable. I used it for a very long time.

I might like Opensuse TW as my daily driver, but my little file server is running debian stable 10 years non stop.

I think what scares me away from arch is the fear of unexpected breakage and maintenance. I love to tinker with the systems, but sometimes I just want to play a game and when it suddenly breaks, that can be really frustrating. It sounds like ebdeavoros might be a good way to try it out.

EndeavourOS is very overrated imo and one should be using ArcoLinux, Manjaro, or vanilla Arch directly imo, as they (EOS) practically are doing nothing for Arch, they just offer the Calamares installer and a feminine purple theming and that's it, leeching the Arch servers for free and pretending "oh but my forum is so friendly compared to Arch". At least other projects like ArcoLinux or Manjaro actually DO something for Linux, like making Linux more accessible to newbies, providing good and helpful scripts, developing apps like pamac, teaching stuff and providing FAR more options (just compare the Calamares installer for ArcoLinux and the Calamares for Endeavour). You should have used the testing branch on Manjaro anyway, it's just some days behind Arch, practically the same and stable AF. As for bashing the Manjaro devs because one dev needed a beefy machine for developing, testing and building stuff and some immature whiners who like to whine and troll everywhere (a typical internet behavior) made a riot, that's just childish behavior of the kindergarden.