What is Reddit's opinion of
Endless OS?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
25 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
EndlessOS is a Linux distribution targeted towards general purpose and offline use. While many of us might scoff at the insane amount of bloat, having most of what you could possibly need may be useful when an internet connection is not available.
Click the Linux/Mac tab on the download page or go to this FAQ for a big list.
If you have a spare laptop around take a look at https://endlessos.com/home/ while you have good internet on your trip. From what I've read about it, it was designed for folks with limited internet access.
As u/superflu998 said, there isn’t any distro which looks entirely like the wow interface. You have to modify a distro OR teach him to use a desktop environment.
Endless OS (https://endlessos.com/home/) might be a good one. It has a gnome based desktop environment and is relatively easy to use. You can try it by live booting from a usb without installing it.
> Is Mint the most “out of the box” and GUI distro?
Since the newest mint image "linuxmint-19.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso" is only 1.8GB, clearly no, but since you're already used Mint for 6 weeks Mint and you like it, you may want to stick with it and it's fine.
> What are other distros that meet these criteria?
Many. My to-go distro is Knoppix. The KNOPPIX_V8.1-2017-09-05-EN.iso image is 4,342MB big (one full HD), with a compressed file system, so it amounts to about 10GB of software. Transfer it to an USB stick, boot from it and you're there.
But the most out-of-the box distro is most probably Endless OS a whopping 16.2GB(!!) download, clearly needs an USB stick bigger than 16GB, so 32GB would be sufficient, boot from that and you're good to go. Don't even need to wipe Windows. Boots fast, looks fancy and isn't slow at all. Looks like this right after booting: https://www.distrowatch.com/images/cgfjoewdlbc/endless.png
That's the one I'd recommend now for someone coming from Windows and being relatively new to Linux and especially wanting something that works out-of-the-box as much as possible. But it's not using the Cinnamon desktop.
Do ex contributors/employees count? If so:
Former Endless dev (was there since the start): https://github.com/endlessm/eos-desktop/graphs/contributors (grep for sgnn7) & moderator of /r/endlessos
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Hey thanks for answering. Yes I do enjoy gnome but like I said I think diversity is good and everyone should use what they feel best with. Since you brought up the schools I wanted to say I used to work at Endless and we created a new Linux distro focusing on education for developing countries and a strong emphasis on the user interface for the target audience (we did a ton of user testing around low income and rural communities in Latin American and some other places around the world). Not sure where are these schools and ngo but perhaps sth useful. Disclaimer: it's heavily based on gnome, but with immediately noticeable differences.
You could take a look at Endless OS. It's designed for third-world countries which have sporadic or no internet access and bundles a whole bunch of educational resources, and yes, even some kid-friendly games.
I don't know how you'd get your parental features into there, though.
Something that I feel is necessary to point out: You say that you don't want a way to connect to WiFi, but you also want to able to remotely view what she's doing and remotely shut it down. You can't really have both, at least not in that way. You'd need to set up a WiFi connection and then block everything via the firewall, except for your parental services.
Looks like they have couple of older models for less than $100 (in the spirit of this subreddit :)). All of them run their customized version Linux, not sure what it is based off of. But I'm pretty sure they can be massaged to run one of the mainstream distributions.
Edit: Low end models are based on Amlogic S805, while higher end ones are Intel Celeron (detailed specs are on their shop link)
I've only heard about this distro - Endless OS
It's obviously more exotic distro than listed above and I haven't tested it. Looks interesting imo. However it's based on gnome so it can be a little bit heavy for that atom.
plug in USB cable and do wired tethering, or a wifi hotspot.
as for an absurdly large iso.. I seem to recall a few distribution like that.
Endless os was one such distro I think, I have not looked into it in a long time.
I recall EndlessOs being a bit unusual in other ways as well.
> allows me to download binaries or sources offline
Well, this is impossible, unless you're talking about 'downloading' packages from a friend's USB Stick, because downloading from the internet requires you to be connected to the internet
However, you can get a distribution which has a fairly large set of pre-installed applications, so that you don't need to connect to the internet to download applications everytime you need them. Such a distribution is Endless OS, which is specifically made for the purpose of being usable without internet
I downloaded the .iso file (this one) and currently trying to burn it using etcher.
However when I’m trying to find the file to burn it doesn’t show up in the location it’s supposed to be in.
You can get the Operative System Endless OS and put it in a USB or install it in a computer, have a lor of local apps and a good chunk of the Wikipedia, is designed to work offline
There is ChromiumOS and CloudReady. It's pretty good; I have it on 2 machines.
I disagree about "Google garbage"; whereas my main browser is Waterfox (see /r/waterfox) I use Chrome for very JS-intensive stuff, Google apps, the translate function and a few other things. It's a decent browser; I just value the customisability of pre-Quantum Mozilla.
As the sole point of ChromeOS is that it's an OS for accessing cloud services, and specifically Google cloud services, a non-Google ChromeOS would be a contradiction in terms. Nobody else really offers such a rich set of cloud apps and services, so I can't really see any other vendor coming in with a rival to ChromeOS.
The lightest, simplest, end-user-friendly distro I know apart from ChromeOS is probably Endless: https://endlessos.com/
There is an os called EndlessOS that is based on Ubuntu or Debian that was created for environments with no internet access. It was created for schools, government institutions, and business environments in developing countries. It installs things through flatpack rather than apt. https://endlessos.com/home/
Might be worth a look!
Are you sure they are cancelled? https://endlessos.com/computers/ still lists them - though right, there is no price and no store anymore.
That's a unique design! At least I haven't seen it yet. Cooling this is probably not working well, but the hardware listed would not produce much heat anyway. The version with the SSD should work well as a terminal PC for web apps.
Yeah, looking at the specs, it is on pair with most Chromebooks. Which really does make the price seem expensive for what it offers, especially when looking in the used market. But hey, it does at least seem like a simple, hassle-free (on paper at least) design, and is geared toward offline use, unlike a Chromebook.
One other thing, are you sure it was renamed. Because it seems like you may be thinking of the different, though same concept really, Endless Mini.
https://endlessos.com/computers/
From website:
>PAYG was designed to de-risk loans through a PC locking mechanism, built into the Endless OS, that is tied to the payment status of a loan. If a customer is not able to make their loan payment the laptop locks until payment is made. While locked the users' data, files and settings are all perfectly preserved and protected.
Nice!
>We also create custom apps and OS-level analytics to suit your unique needs.
Wow!
You might look into Matt Dalio’s Endless OS. It’s designed to work in areas of limited internet access and provide access to resources like Wikipedia, and refresh its data whenever it gets a connection.
Not sure if this fits but Endless OS is an entire 16GB OS you can install that has loads of educational and wiki type stuff for offline use.
I wanted to try it in a VM but I couldn't get it to work
Don't see why more schools don't use Endless.
https://endlessos.com/computers/
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It is as if they are trying to see how much they can spend on devices......1K USD is ridiculous.
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Edit: Maybe ask if the principle/leader would reach out? The money could be spent elsewhere.....
>So what should I know or already be skillful of in order to use Linux?
I recommend you to start with a system that is build to be roboust and allows you to make mistakes without breaking a sweet (like not booting into the Desktop Environment anymore, because you shut down your machine in the middle of an update).
Endless OS:
While it might be not the most flashy one around (it looks and feels arguable a bit clumsy, when compared to other DEs), and it being aimed the education market, the system is build to withstand abuse and system updates trough libostree and flatpacks.
That's to technical for you?
Let's just say it is one of the most awesome update systems I've seen to date ...
- The power can go out in the middle of an update, doesn't matter.
- The update runs while you work? Doesn't matter, changes are only applied after reboot (by simply flipping a switch).
- Want to shutdown fast after an update? Doesn't matter - it's instant (it just flips a switch, like I said).
- An update broke your system? Simply roll back your system image to the state before the update - without touching your download, documents or anything else that you've modified since then.
If you know how GIT works libostree is like GIT for the Desktop.
It displays the atomic model that might come to many more distros in the future (I really hope so because it fucking rocks from my personal experience with Fedora Atomic Workstation).
Keep in mind tough, the Look and Feel is certainly not the best - there are better ones out there like Linux Manjaro or arguably Budgie, Ubuntu (Budgie) out there that give a better "look and feel" out of the - but not when it comes to the stability and roboustness of the underlying system.
It's just the only choice of a starter friendly, libostree powered, Linux Distro so far.
Does this work?
sudo systemctl disable --now snapd.service
(use enable to switch it back on when needed).
You might also want to look at Endless OS, which is a distribution specifically targeted at people with limited bandwidth.
We don't make any secret of where Endless derives from - for example https://endlessos.com/for-developers/ - and I'd guess around half of our development team (particularly in the kernel, distro and desktop space) spends its time deriving from, modifying, developing, improving, fixing and submitting changes to open source stuff. It's just that the difference between one distro or the next, or GNOME and Linux, doesn't have any relevance to the people we're trying to target, so our outwards marketing isn't about that. Non-Linux people simply don't care about Linux distros at all.