from Hacker News

Endless Operating System

by peterdemin on 3/25/21, 3:46 PM with 52 comments

• by lproven on 3/25/21, 7:05 PM

  Endless is a rather interesting distro. It's aimed to be suitable for non-technical users on fairly low-end hardware, with an internet connection that might be intermittent at best.

  Some salient but unusual features:

  • A desktop that is GNOME adapted into a non-desktop metaphor, more like a smartphone: a full-screen app browser, and an app switcher that's loosely like the Windows taskbar.

  • A read-only root filesystem, with no package manager.

  • All apps are Flatpaks.

  • OS upgrades are atomic, whole-system-at-once, like Android or iOS upgrades on a smartphone.

• by geocrasher on 3/25/21, 4:52 PM

  "useful resources for students and families"

  "and even works without internet access."

  "free for individuals and non-commercial use up to 500 computers"

  I'm confused- who are they targeting? At endlessos.org, I found this:

  "We're not changing the way technology works... we are working to make it better.

  We develop our tools to meet the needs of real users with diverse technical challenges to work with.

  We design them with access, agency, and usability in mind. This approach allows us to create as much positive impact as possible for our communities."

  Am I the only one who finds such marketing speak to be a sure sign to run the opposite direction and stick with a well known FOSS distro?

• by offtop5 on 3/25/21, 5:00 PM

  Actually I think students need to learn to use apt. I swear, the entire reason I got comfortable with the command line is because when I was 16 I couldn't afford a Windows license, and I ordered a free Ubuntu CD.

  I'm still very good with the terminal and it serves me well in my six-figure career

• by incrudible on 3/25/21, 7:09 PM

  This is curious branding. In my language perception, the word "endless" is pretty much universally associated negatively. Even the girl in the stock photo seems to evoke "how long is this going to take?".

• by khaledh on 3/25/21, 4:43 PM

  This seems to be just another GNU/Linux distribution.

  I think the word "operating system" should be reserved for systems with sufficiently original kernel and/or system code.

• by mlinksva on 3/25/21, 5:51 PM

  They announced a pivot (in terms of organization, not technology) early this year https://www.endlessos.org/post/launching-endless-os-foundati...

• by realo on 3/25/21, 5:35 PM

  Wow!

  Church of the machine God strikes... (From Deus Ex)

  https://images.app.goo.gl/5KHWS599ddTmkvVb8

• by riffic on 3/25/21, 4:45 PM

  they seem to be positioning itself the same way Ubuntu was back in 2004 or so, before Canonical made a hard pivot into where they are today. That space isn't an easy one to operate in.

  This is the distrowatch page describing the technical details underpinning Endless:

  https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=endless

• by ThinkingGuy on 3/25/21, 6:40 PM

  This seems to be similar to Internet-in-a-Box.

  http://internet-in-a-box.org/

• by slim on 3/25/21, 10:11 PM

  this comes preinstalled on asus low end netbooks