59 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
59 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "EndeavourOS: a beautiful Arch-Based Distro"
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date: 2020-12-03T09:00:36+01:00
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tags: ["Linux", "Review"]
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draft: true
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---
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> A terminal-centric distro with a dynamic and friendly community in its core
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The slogan on [their homepage](https://endeavouros.com/) perfectly describes
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the intent of EndeavourOS: create an Arch-based distro that doesn't stray far
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from the original feel of plain old Arch, but with a friendlier community.
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For the uninitiated, it's generally known that the Arch community can be a bit
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harsh at times; [RTFM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM) is a regular
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occurrence. And even though this encourages people to try things out themselves
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and learn more about how Linux works, it can be a bit scary for newcomers.
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Now, I've been using this distro for about two weeks on my old MacBook, and I
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have to say that I'm impressed.
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## Installation
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EndeavourOS uses the Calamares installer, so the install is about as
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straightforward as it gets. I've come to use EndeavourOS as my "easy install"
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for Arch, because it just feels like regular Arch. You can download their ISO
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[here](https://endeavouros.com/latest-release/). They also have an
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[ARM version](https://arm.endeavouros.com/), which I might try later on my
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Raspberry Pi.
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For my install, I choose the i3wm version, as I prefer tiling window managers.
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I also discovered that a desktop environment (Plasma in my case) is just too
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much for my old MacBook to handle, so i3wm was not a difficult choice. The Only
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thing I changed about the initial config was tweak the key bindings a bit to
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use the Vim bindings instead of the i3 ones.
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## First Impressions
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When we boot into our fresh installation, we're greeted with a simple, yet
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elegant LightDM login screen. Out of the box, the i3 config is quite welcoming
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and polished, albeit a tad crowded for my tastes, but this can be easily solved
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by editing the config files.
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By default, a welcome screen pops up whenever we boot the computer, and a
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terminal is launched. I personally find this decision quite odd, but to each
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their own. And of course we can just turn this off by changing one line in the
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config.
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This brings us to how closely this distro resembles pure Arch. No
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fancy GUIs to configure everything, just a terminal and a text editor is needed
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to configure it for your own needs.
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EndeavourOS is very lightweight, barely consuming 300MB of ram on startup. This
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result may vary if you've chosen another desktop environment/window manager.
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This is one of the reasons I chose EndeavourOS: I needed sometimes light,
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something that my 7-year-old MacBook could run without issues. I previously ran
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PopOS! on it, and while this is a great distro, it was too heavy for this old
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thing.
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