EndeavourOS - Learn Arch The Right Way

EndeavourOS came out last year after we had one of our favorite arch-based distros discontinued. Initially, the team released the first version with the Xfce desktop environment but today; they support several other desktop environments.

EndeavourOS is one of very few Linux distributions that does not claim to provide easy-to-use GUI tools to learn Linux. Actually, the team promotes the distro as a terminal-centric distro that gives you your favorite desktop environment with a few basic utilities and active, friendly community support.

Help wiki & Active community support

Being a terminal-centric distro, users will run into problems more often than with GUI tools. To help fix issues and keep new users motivated, the team has a wiki and active community support. It is not a problem to run into errors each time you fix an issue; it teaches more than you could with GUI tools.

Though, after installation, the welcome screen presents users with after-install options to configure some basic parts of your operating system.

EndeavourOS welcome screen

For example, the welcome window comes in handy in updating mirrors to get faster speed when downloading updates, Update the system, detect common system issues, upgrade the OS and customize the system’s look & feel.

Installation

Installing EndeavourOS is as simple as installing Ubuntu or Linux mint. The distro comes with a Calamares installer. You get an option to select one of their installation methods, offline & online. Offline installer installs EndeavourOS with a customized Xfce, and online installer lets you select & install packages as per your requirements.

For a detailed guide on installing Linux distro alongside Windows 10, visit this guide.

EndeavourOS select installer

Desktop environments

EndeavourOS installer prompts the user to select the installation method. The default offline installer, Calamares, sets up the system with the Xfce desktop environment customized for EndeavourOS. The online installer allows users to select the desktop environment and necessary packages.

EndeavourOS select desktop environment

EndeavourOS select packages

Install new applications

EndeavourOS is based on Arch, so the default package manager is pacman. You can use pacman from the command line to install & update packages.

pacman -S package_name

pacman supports to install packages from Arch repositories maintained by the Arch Linux developers but does not install packages from AUR (Arch User Repository).

EndeavourOS also comes with another package manager called ‘yay’. yay has a similar syntax to pacman, but it supports both Arch repository and AUR.

yay -S package_name

Download EndeavourOS

Conclusion

Initially, it might look like the devs are making mistakes by not developing GUI tools for making the Linux journey easier. But remember, the more you tinker with your distro, the better you learn. I myself have found the technique useful. I have learned from StackOverflow, Reddit, and other Linux communities than the distribution itself.

A Linux distribution can be easy to use, but EndeavourOS helps you learn Linux. You can try different packages, settings, make mistakes, and there is an active community to help you solve issues.

They have a community forum that you can visit here. There is also a wiki and Telegram group. So join the group for instant help.