I just installed EndeavorOS on an HP Spectre360 that’s roughly 2 years old. I am honestly surprised at how easy it went. If you google it, you’ll get a lot of “lol good luck installing linux on that” type posts - so I was ready for a battle.
Turned off secure boot and tpm. Booted off a usb stick. Live environment, check. Start installer and wipe drive. Few minutes later I’m in. Ok let’s find out what’s not working…
WiFi check. Bluetooth check. Sound check (although a little quiet). Keyboard check. Screen resolution check. Hibernates correctly? Check. WTF I can’t believe this all works out the box. The touchscreen? Check. The stylus pen check. Flipping the screen over to a tablet check. Jesus H.
Ok, everything just works. Huh. Who’d have thunk?
Install programs, log into accounts, jeez this laptop is snappier than on windows. Make things pretty for my wife and install some fun games and stuff.
Finished. Ez. Why did I wait so long? Google was wrong - it was cake.
What GUI package managers are you referring to? EOS doesn’t supply any.
If I’m not mistaken, this is all stuff you should also be doing on Arch. The single difference is that EOS provides a button in their “Welcome” app that will helpfully run a command for you in a terminal for some of these tasks.
The welcome app shows several package management buttons, but no clear explanation of what they really do or if & how they relate to each other. What’s a beginner to do, click each one multiple times and hope for the best?
By introducing more package management commands than came with Arch, they’ve made it seem more complicated, not less. Am I supposed to use
eos-updateas well as the other commands, or is it supposed to replace one or more of the other commands? Admittedly I’ve only spent half a day with EndeavourOS—the first Arch-based distro I’ve ever used—but I have no idea.I don’t think it compares well to a beginner’s experience of package management on Debian or Red Hat or Alpine-based distros.
Well that’s just it; Endeavour is not a beginner distro. It’s not designed to be. Endeavour is Arch with a graphical installer and some modest quality of life improvements for users who are otherwise willing to trawl through the Arch wiki for answers. The welcome app really just seems to be there so that you don’t have to memorize all the commands or set up aliases, etc, if you don’t want to.
So when you ask “am I supposed to X,” the answer is that there really isn’t a set-in-stone workflow to accomplish anything on EOS or Arch; what you’re supposed to do is read the manual, so to speak, and decide for yourself how you want to go about things.
Unlike some other Arch based distros like BlendOS and Manjaro, Endeavour is still very much a DIY distro.