I have already blogged about EndeavourOS, which I use most of the time on a few laptops. Since EndeavourOS, based on Arch, is a rolling release, I update it almost daily and don’t need to install it from scratch when a new release comes out, like Artemis, which was released a few days ago. However, since I wanted to switch from the EXT4 file system to BTRFS (since I started to experiment with this file system and its snapshot capabilities), I took the chance to try this new release by installing it from scratch (of course, using BTRFS this time).

I’ll first go through the installation, but I can anticipate that, once again, I’m impressed by EndeavourOS. This installation feels really fast, maybe due to BTRFS or the new kernel (instead of the LTS kernel, I now use the latest one provided by the distribution) or both. Most of all, EndeavourOS is pure Arch but with outstanding defaults. Indeed, the KDE and GNOME environments are vanilla ones.

Installation

As usual, the first thing to do, once booted in the live environment, which in this case is XFCE, is set up the network connection. You might also want to change the keyboard layout (Disable system defaults and install your layout, in my case, it’s the Italian layout):

Then, let’s update the mirrors (typically by selecting your state) and start the installer.

I choose the “Online” method because I want to install KDE Plasma instead of Xfce.

You have to wait a few seconds (or about a minute) for the installer to download the modules (I always prefer to install any operating systems in English):

Maybe, due to a bug, the location has been found successfully, but the English version proposed is not the right one, so I have to change it to Americ English again:

After setting the keyboard layout (this time for the installed system), it’s time for partitioning.

Since on this computer I have a few Linux installations, including the old version of EndeavourOS I’m going to replace, I choose Manual partitioning (and not “Replace a partition” because that would keep the same file system type, EXT4, while I want to switch to BTRFS).

I Edit the partition, select “Format” (otherwise, I cannot change the File system type), modify the File system (BTRFS), and specify the mount point.

Before going on, we must specify to mount the EFI partition (into /boot/efi) without formatting it and ensure the “boot” flag is selected. This way, the installer can properly install GRUB.

WARNING: on another computer, the installer complained that I did not select a boot partition with at least 300Mb (mine was just 200Mb). Since I knew there was enough space in that partition, I ignored the warning, and the installation went fine.

As for the desktop, I select Plasma.

And then, we can select the single packages. Note that, different from my previous review, you choose the packages after selecting the desktop, so that a few packages, in particular, the ones of the chosen desktop, have already been selected:

In this blog post, I’m not going to install GNOME besides KDE, but I also select the “Printing-Support” and the “Support for HP Printer/Scanner” checkboxes.

As usual, then you have to specify your user’s details, and then it’s time to take a look at the summary:

Let’s start the installation. It might take a few minutes because it’s an “Online” installation, so it has to download several packages.

You can press “Toggle log” during the installation to see the installer’s log.

When it’s done, it’s time to restart the computer.

First impressions

As in the previous blog post, I must note that the Discover icon is still in the taskbar, though the software manager Discover is not installed at all.

Maybe because I selected KDE Plasma only, the Wayland session has not been installed, while in my previous post, I installed both GNOME and KDE. However, I just had to run this command:

And then I could enjoy Plasma also in Wayland, which seems to be pretty usable.

A nice addition is a firewall applet in the taskbar

Here’s neofetch:

Printing support is excellent! I connected an old USB HP Deskjet printer, and I got these notifications from Plasma:

The printer has been automatically installed correctly (I only had to configure a few things like paper size and color mode).

Setting up my Google accounts (drive access and calendar) is as cumbersome as always, but I did not experience any problems once I finished.

Power consumption on the battery is also excellent, but that was true in the past, so nothing changed in that respect.

All in all, this distribution keeps on being awesome.

As I initially anticipated, you have Arch and its vanilla desktop environments, but with useful and reasonable defaults. Moreover, the installation is effortless! 🙂