It's literally Arch Linux but with an easy bundled installer and a couple of small tools you'll forget about.

I am using it until the archinstall script gets easier for dual-boot, encrypted BTRFS configs.

I kinda wished the EndeavourOS team made efforts to improve archinstall and simply bundled their couple extra tools as that, extra tools for easier Arch Linux usage, instead of branding it all like a new distro.

The out of date package problem you're running into is because Mint is based on the LTS version of Ubuntu. This means that it's set up for long term service and stability. All well and good if that's what you're after.

As to your problem, I'm not big on Endeavor - or any Arch based distro - for folks who are new to Linux. Unless you're willing to take the time to use Arch itself and set up your system, and learn how it all comes together, you're better off not using Arch. I know I'll get shouted down for this, but IMHO, all of the easy install Arch based distros are terrible for people new to linux.

If your biggest issue is that the software versions aren't as up to date as you'd like, then all you really need to do is switch to a non-LTS. I'd recommend Fedora. I use it myself, and it's easy to set up, works great out of the box, and is up to date. They come out with a new version twice a year, and upgrades run smoothly.

If you're really focused on a rolling release, though, I'd suggest looking at OpenSuse Tumbleweed. It's rolling, super stable, and has a fantastic community. Their Yast tools are famous and really impressive.

Alternately, take the time to install a proper Arch setup. You'll learn a ton, and find out that all that maintenance stuff you feel like you don't have time to do isn't that big a deal, really.

Endeavour is fairly easy to run and maintain, aside from not having a GUI package manager installed by default (I say this as someone who has been running it for about 2 years now, and still considers themselves a Linux noob)

One underrated feature is the Welcome tab, which also notifies you if there's some critical error in the latest update so that you know to use caution and take certain steps when updating

Other than that, running yay or sudo pacman -Syu is most of the maintenance you'll need to do

I've been using EndeavourOS for about 1.5 years on my laptop and about a year on my desktop. I've been using it as arch but pre-configured. I believe EndeavourOS uses the same repositories as stock Arch, with an extra EndeavourOS repo added for theming and some convenience tools they use.

The UI might not be as easy as Manjaro (I don't think they pre-install a GUI for pacman/yay, but it isn't hard to install one like pamac). Other than that if you use a desktop like Gnome or KDE and install a pacman frontend you probably won't need to interact with the terminal more than you want. Honestly I think EndeavourOS is a great place to start if you want to learn more about Linux without having to spend the time configuring your system from scratch.

EndevourOS is excellent. It has been very stable for me. It is easy to install. Your problem will not be out of date packages for sure.

That said:

• there is no graphical package management. You will need to use command line ( yay / pacman ) or TUI ( pacseek ) tools.
• there are A LOT of package updates and you will want to stay current with them. I update my packages multiple times per week.

If either of those things bother you, they may be a problem.

Updating packages is reliable and painless but a chore you need to get in the habit of doing. I suspect you would get more problems if you let it go too long. On the upside, as it is a rolling release, you never have an “upgrade” to go through.

I've been using it since it succeeded Antergos (2019ish) and I've really enjoyed it, I use it on most of my systems! It has really sane defaults and makes for a good Arch experience that doesn't involve setting things up yourself. If you like XFCE, they have the best out of the box theming I've seen a distro have for it, but there are other DEs that you can pick (I think you need internet access during the install IIRC).

It has its own repository that has some nice apps in it (like AUR helpers). The community around the distro is also really good, whenever I've come across an issue posted on the forums everyone seems really chill and noob friendly.

Other than that, it's basically a GUI Arch installer (an amazing one at that!) that doesn't get in your way and it just works. There's been probably one problem, in the four years I've used it, that wasn't caused by me breaking things (the grub incident), but the distro's response to that was very well done.

The only other distros I use are Arch and Debian, but EndeavourOS is always my recommendation for people newer to Linux. It just works.

since "archinstall" is a thing endeavouros is not that relevant.

As someone who's used it for at least 3 years, go for it. However, it requires lots of configuration to get it the way you like it, so openSUSE Tumbleweed is probably the better pick for you.

It also comes with cool utilities like nvidia-inst (archinstall advocates, write that down) and the community's great too.

I had already used other linux distros for a while but never arch (or arch based systems), so I decided to give EndeavourOS a try and I am really liking it, it's pretty solid for me. I am currently using it with Gnome in my personal laptop and I really just needed to configure gnome (my extensions and such), nothing about endeavour especifically.

That being said, EndeavourOS does not ship with a graphical package management tool by default so it's up to you to choose one or just use the command line to manage your packages (if you're new to Linux it can sound complicated at first but it's quite simple when you get used to it).

There are other solid and "noob-friendly" rolling-release distros like Fedora and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but if you want arch, EndeavourOS is an excellent choice.

I’ve been using it for a while now. It’s generally good. I’ve been facing random system crash issues during gaming or using Firefox or background steam. I have an amd 6800xt and don’t have this issue on fedora.

It's very good but as it's Arch based, there will be some manual work required. If you want to try a rolling release without the fiddling, try openSUSE Tumbleweed.

"Always configuring" isn't what Arch requires. It requires you to be tolerant of every so often dealing with a bug or two. Currently, the Arch-packaged version of Waybar has a regression which prints fractional seconds when using %T or %S specifiers. A tad annoying, and I could fix it by switching to waybar-git, where it's been patched. But that hasn't hit my threshold of annoyance, as I bounce between Sway and KDE.

The grub issue was a bigger deal, and while I knew how to resolve it (liveboot → lsblk and fdisk -l got me all the info I needed, then cryptsetup, mount -o subvol=@, arch-chroot, grub-install) the EOS blog had a nice guide.

But the reason why I chose it? Firewalld and Pipewire by default, customizable welcome app, and pretty simple otherwise.

NixOS will probably fully convert me in a year or two, but I've greatly enjoyed my time on Endeavour.

I'm running EndeavourOS on a little Ryzen box I got for a desktop. It's fine. They have their own mirrors hosting some different core packages than base Arch, and it seems pretty stable. I haven't had any issues other than some missing PGP keys once.

That said: I've been using Arch-based distros for a while - I have a half dozen different servers running Arch, and a laptop running Artix. After installation, I haven't used any EndeavourOS tooling. I do most maintenance from the command line, and I use a tiling window manager. So my experience doesn't really stress test the EneavourOS configuration, or any of the tooling it provides.

TLDR; It's stable enough.

When I built my new PC (January last year) with an Intel 12th gen I first wanted to install Debian, cause I've used it basically ever since I've used Linux, but the kernel shipped with Debian did not support Intel 12th gen yet, so I was looking for another distro with up to date kernels/packages and stumbled upon manjaro, but quickly realised that it had some issues, than went for a manual arch install just for the sake of it, some stuff broke and I couldn't be bothered to fix it since I didn't do much on the system set anyways, I kept my home partition and installed endeavour and have been using it ever since on all my machines (with the exception of a short trip to fedora on my work laptop. It is just arch and basically any thing on the arch wiki applies, the only difference is some sane defaults and packages/services you'd most likely want to install and configure on your arch system anyways, they're just using the arch repos and have added a repo of their own with some "bundled" packages like DEs/WMs and AUR helpers

I went to EndeavourOS with i3WM (from dual boot Windows/ Ubuntu) and have been loving the experience. It's really helped push my boundaries with learning Linux.