Arch, nearly Arch and more distant Cousins

[captain-sensible]

I happened to be sub Sahara while investigating alternatives to Slackware . I was looking at Arch but had to take into consideration random frequent power outage and another parameter of poor internet connection and bandwidth.

EndeavourOS became a candidate to look at since it allows easy install from the iso only without having to download anything for the install. From memory while trying to download the EndeavourOS iso I lost connection about 4 times ; i think i used Kget and was able to continue download from the point where connection was lost. I managed to get an UN-corrupted iso.

I didn't have a lot to play with had some disastrous attempts with an old tower and wifi adapter so went for installing on my wife laptop which i had previously installed ElementaryOS . The installer was Calamares ; and i didn't encounter any particular problem. To be honest for the limited time i had to play with EndeavourOS I found it a great OS and stepping stone to Arch.

I say stepping stone to Arch since EndeavourOS is very close to Arch is compatible i understand in every way with Arch repos (unlike manjaro) but its not Arch. There's an element in the software updates that evolves specifically EndeavourOS. Now my thinking (possibly warped and OCD i grant you) but Arch vanilla is a better bet for long term use than a distro based on Arch.

Now they state from memory that being a distro maintainer is a hell of a thing and so why should i think myself clever enough to take out whats not Arch in EndeavourOS and morph it to Arch ?

Thus really liking the EndeavourOS experience but knowing it was not pure Arch then got me seeking to install pure Vanilla Arch.

Now that was another experience. The latest Arch iso come with a built in "guided installer" it didn't work for me and i have since seen youtube reactions where they absolutely slated the installer.

So i booted the Arch installer ; connected to the rubbish internet i had and tried archfi script https://computingforgeeks.com/arch-linux-easy-and-fast-installation-with-archfi-installer/ i think that would have worked if it wasn't for the power outage and poor internet. To have to have Un-interupted downloads in the region of 700 Mb where i was ; was impossible.

back in blightywith copious notes i felt confident to install Arch manually but i decided to try Anarchy https://anarchyinstaller.gitlab.io/ now Anarchy used to be a distro in its own right but is now an installer for vanilla Arch . It went like a dream ; i did manually set up partitions before hand and also did some confirming of my hard ware in advance to check for graphic specifications. Also i did have on hand my notes to refer to as needed. Result vanilla Arch.

There are other other alternatives such as manjaro but the fact its not completely backward compatible with Arch vanilla repos put me off .

 

[Tolkem]

I recently(past weekend)installed endeavourOS. I'd been tinkering with the idea of installing arch for a while, my first thought was grabbing an arch.iso and use that, but since I have three other systems(Windows 7, Q4OS and KDE Neon Testing)installed in the same machine, I wasn't confident enough to try that, I much preferred a GUI installer, so I didn't screw the partition layout, endeavourOS uses calamares, which is ok, I guess. According to distrowatch, and I quote: `

The project aims to be a spiritual successor to Antergos

I used Antergos, and found it to be a superb distro, such a shame the project died. So yeah, endeavour looked promising to me, also, one reviewer at distrowatch added:

Great distro for making custom iso or getting working system fast.
It's less bloated than Manjaro and close enough to Arch. I can easily install when I need working system ASAP and it's basically Arch so I feel home and familiar with everything.
Building iso is also very easy with EndeavourOS-archiso. Desktop is already configured, not as bloated as Manjaro but also not bare-bones as Arch (which requires some work to get desktop working). I just edit a file and write all the packages I want installed. That's it, the defaults are sane enough for me.
I hope they keep the distro simple and only improve. I much prefer adding stuff I need than removing stuff I don't.

I do like the idea of being able to install as minimal as possible, and I was able to do just that with endeavourOS; install a fairly minimal KDE with just the basic packages, which is why I also like Q4OS, and by the way, KDE Neon is pretty minimal too.
I'm still exploring the system(I'm writing this from it) and can't say much about it, but so far, so good. I did have one issue though; I use mostly my keyboard, and the first day while using the system, I found that the hotkey Meta + N, which in KDE(and Windows 7)is used to minimize/maximize windows/apps from and to panel, didn't work, I managed to fix it by importing the schema from Neon, other than that, the system's been working just fine. I also have archbang installed in a VM with QEMU. It is a nice distro, I considered installing it in my laptop, but two things stopped me from doing so;
1. It uses openbox, and I don't like it, I reather use awesome-wm, so the idea of "remaking"the whole system wasn't really attractive to me.
2. I can't quite remember, but I don't think I installed go or anything using that language, however, anytime I boot the VM and do a pacman -Syu, I see a bunch of go pkgs there, in fact, they amount for almost half the download size sometimes, as a result, I haven't booted that VM like for a month or so.
That being said, it is pretty fast and very lightweight. If you like arch and openbox, that's a very good alternative.

DistroWatch.com: EndeavourOS

News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions.

distrowatch.com

DistroWatch.com: ArchBang Linux

News and feature lists of Linux and BSD distributions.

distrowatch.com

 

[f33dm3bits]

The only thing I dislike about the Arch-based distributions is that 99% of them use the Calamares installer which doesn't support an LVM setup during installation.

 

[atreus]

Endeavour is awful. Manjaro all the way.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Endeavour is awful. Manjaro all the way.

Explain why?

 

[Tolkem]

Endeavour is awful. Manjaro all the way.

Why? Tell us more about your experience. I find it to be quite good. I've used manjaro in the past and had a good/bad mixed experience.

 

[captain-sensible]

This is quite a good read :https://www.fosslinux.com/45873/endeavouros-review.htm

I noted this bit in the article

EndeavourOS allows you to switch back to the “vanilla theme” for the DE with a click of a button. This will remove the EndeavourOS theming. Whereas Manjaro is a heavily themed distro, and it can’t be so easily removed.

So i wonder what else would be left of EndeavourOS and how near would it be to Vanilla Arch ?

 

[f33dm3bits]

If I have to pick a Arch-based distribution that is my favorite it s Archlabs because it's basically Arch with a graphical installer and support for LVM during installation.

 

[Tolkem]

2. I can't quite remember, but I don't think I installed go or anything using that language

I just found out where go came from. I installed yay, which is written in that language. I just forgot about it entirely.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Nice thread, Andy.

I have Endeavour OS in my stable of 68, and I quite like it as a Distro, but it has a feature which will annoy a multi-multi-booter such as I am. Same with PC Linux OS and I think) OpenMandriva.

They eliminate the secondary submenu option in Grub Menu, which houses old kernels and Recovery options, and put it all on the front page.

Add to that theming spaces between entries, and my 4 - 5 page Grub Menu can become 15 - 20 pages long, when that Distro is in primary position (at the top of the menu).

Needless to say, I am quick to replace them with another in primary spot, very quickly. Might work OK for only a dual-boot with Windows, or a couple of Linux, but a pointless exercise IMO, for others.

Wiz

 

[captain-sensible]

So let me see if i understand you correctly Chris .

if i output my grub default at /etc/default/grub the last lines show:

#GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true

# Uncomment to disable submenus in boot menu
#GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=y

which means i have the option to un-comment to enable or disable the drop down grub menu; but in EndeaourOS that option is not available so you just get the full Monty of list whether you like it or not .

Your last Linux install would install & take control of grub i would have thought; so was that ich was that EndeavourOS until the grub glitch, i'm guessing ?

Now here's a thought EndeavourOS unlike say Manjaro is completely backwards compatible with vanilla Arch( which is what i'm running) .So if you got grub from vanilla Arch AUR ; build with makepkg , then it should install OK and it would or should also have the sub menu feature available ?

Or is it more complicated than that ? I had a quick look at grub source
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/ "optional features" in configure options - i couldn't see anything about menu option