{"id":29719,"date":"2023-01-12T19:38:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T19:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/12\/version-5-of-the-endless-os-enters-testing-the-register\/"},"modified":"2023-01-12T19:38:15","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T19:38:15","slug":"version-5-of-the-endless-os-enters-testing-the-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/12\/version-5-of-the-endless-os-enters-testing-the-register\/","title":{"rendered":"Version 5 of the Endless OS enters testing \u2022 The Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

Endless Computers is preparing a new version of its Endless OS distro, an easy-to-use OS for computing novices of all ages. It’s a unique distro which shows how desktop OSes may evolve.<\/p>\n

Endless<\/a> is an American company \u2013 since 2020, a nonprofit foundation<\/a> \u2013 which strives to bring computers, and computer literacy, to people who don’t yet have access to it. Its flagship product is Endless OS<\/a>, a rather different sort of Linux distribution. It also offers the Endless Key<\/a>, a bootable USB flash drive with Endless OS on it, and the inexpensive Endless Laptop<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s the distro that we are mainly looking at today, though. Endless OS combines several mainstream components, such as Debian and GNOME, to create something quite different. It’s probably the most widespread and least experimental immutable desktop Linux. Although the hard disk layout is fairly standard (a single root partition, formatted with the standard Linux ext4<\/code> format), the root directory is read-only. Yes, even for the superuser. Although the OS is based on Debian, you won’t find the apt<\/code> or dpkg<\/code> commands or any other command-line package management tools whatsoever.<\/p>\n

\"Endless<\/a><\/p>\n

Endless OS 4, with its somewhat Windows-like panel, showing three open apps and a Skype status icon<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Updates are handled by the Red Hat-developed OStree<\/a> tool. In effect, it works a little like updating your smartphone: the vendor periodically issues updated OS images, and your computer downloads the whole thing and applies it in a single step. This happens automatically in the background, and if everything goes fine, it tells you an update is pending, and when you reboot, you get the new OS. If there’s a problem, the computer can roll back to the older version \u2013 again, automatically.<\/p>\n

The idea is that updating becomes atomic<\/em>, meaning that it happens in one step that either completes or doesn’t; and transactional<\/em>, meaning that if there’s a problem, they can be undone, restoring the OS to how it was before. It’s the same principle as used in Fedora’s Silverblue and Kinoite spins<\/a>, and in the embedded and IoT Ubuntu Core distro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n