This was suggested for me to review by another user here, as it was somewhat similar to the SoaS (Sugar) OS.
It was difficult to review this, not because of any problems with the distro, everything worked fine. But rather because it seemed like just
another Gnome based desktop than anything else. The other problem was that the latest update of Chromium seems to have broken the ability to upload pictures here.
But of course that has nothing to do with Endless-OS.
I was somewhat surprised by the size of the iso file. A whopping 24.8GB. This largest iso I think I have ever downloaded.
But this can be good, because it installs everything you will ever need, no internet required.
I am greeted by the standard Ubuntu/Mint/Debian initialization page. I select English.
For the purpose of this review, I am simply chooing the "Try It" without installing it to a VM.
I am still somewhat surprised that some Debian based distro's don't auto-gelocation to determine what language and keyboard you want to use. Not a big deal. Obviously you
might not always want the default language for your location, you should have a way to choose, it just strikes me odd that the locale isn't automated.
Another surprised is that I had to sign a license agreement. Not a big deal. It mostly says I can't reverse engineer this distro and charge for it. I have seen Eula's before but usually not
for a desktop distro, more for commercial server distro's.
I then get the standard.. "do you want to share your info with the world" dialog. Since it's only a temporary VM, I decided to live wild and free.
Once I answer all these things, now I can start using the OS.
For this most part, this just looks like another standard Gnome desktop. I will say that it comes with many applications already pre-installed. I suppose that justifies the 24GB download.
This is just a personal preference, not a problem with the distro. But I'm not a fan of the Gnome "icon folders". You click on the older and and it shows you another list of applications inside the folder. I guess this is Gnome's way of organizing applications, but it seems like the whole purpose of Gnome is to have an "un-organized" flat icon desktop. I don't like that I have scroll through multiple screens to get to the application I'm looking for, and now I have to click yet once more to get the application I'm looking for. Sometimes Gnome isn't the easiest desktop to use.
Clicking on one of the "group" icons brings up yet another screen that I have to scroll across to get to the application I'm looking for. I hate to beat a dead horse, but it seems rather un-intuitive.
But all in all this is just Gnome. It's not a Endless-OS problem, it's the same for every distro.
I did notice that endless uses an older 6.5.0 kernel, and some of the applications are somewhat dated. Some of them were able to update automatically, bit others were not.
Allin all I like the distro, I would say the target audience is a one-computer family. It does have young child based applications for pre-school aged children. I tend a big advantge to having these applications pre-installed that you can see them, and you are aware they exist. Sometimes when using Disovery software manager or even apt, you don't know what to search for because you don't know such an application exists. I felt like the pre-install choices to to favor younger children. Having said that, it did also come with more "grown-up" applications such as Libre-office.
It also comes with applications such as VLC, Audacity, and Gimp pre-installed. Obviously these would be geared for a more mature audience, not toddlers so much. That is what I meant by a single computer distro. I think it tries to be everything to everyone. I didn't see anything in this distro that couldn't be done in a more traditional Debian/Mint install. (I don't include Ubuntu here because
I notice it still prefers .deb packages over snaps). But it is nice that it has a lot of applications pre-installed. Everything worked, I didn't really have any problems at all with anything.
My personal opinion is, if I was already running Mint or Debian, I don't see a reason to switch to this OS.
It was difficult to review this, not because of any problems with the distro, everything worked fine. But rather because it seemed like just
another Gnome based desktop than anything else. The other problem was that the latest update of Chromium seems to have broken the ability to upload pictures here.
But of course that has nothing to do with Endless-OS.
I was somewhat surprised by the size of the iso file. A whopping 24.8GB. This largest iso I think I have ever downloaded.
But this can be good, because it installs everything you will ever need, no internet required.
I am greeted by the standard Ubuntu/Mint/Debian initialization page. I select English.
For the purpose of this review, I am simply chooing the "Try It" without installing it to a VM.
I am still somewhat surprised that some Debian based distro's don't auto-gelocation to determine what language and keyboard you want to use. Not a big deal. Obviously you
might not always want the default language for your location, you should have a way to choose, it just strikes me odd that the locale isn't automated.
Another surprised is that I had to sign a license agreement. Not a big deal. It mostly says I can't reverse engineer this distro and charge for it. I have seen Eula's before but usually not
for a desktop distro, more for commercial server distro's.
I then get the standard.. "do you want to share your info with the world" dialog. Since it's only a temporary VM, I decided to live wild and free.
Once I answer all these things, now I can start using the OS.
For this most part, this just looks like another standard Gnome desktop. I will say that it comes with many applications already pre-installed. I suppose that justifies the 24GB download.
This is just a personal preference, not a problem with the distro. But I'm not a fan of the Gnome "icon folders". You click on the older and and it shows you another list of applications inside the folder. I guess this is Gnome's way of organizing applications, but it seems like the whole purpose of Gnome is to have an "un-organized" flat icon desktop. I don't like that I have scroll through multiple screens to get to the application I'm looking for, and now I have to click yet once more to get the application I'm looking for. Sometimes Gnome isn't the easiest desktop to use.
Clicking on one of the "group" icons brings up yet another screen that I have to scroll across to get to the application I'm looking for. I hate to beat a dead horse, but it seems rather un-intuitive.
But all in all this is just Gnome. It's not a Endless-OS problem, it's the same for every distro.
I did notice that endless uses an older 6.5.0 kernel, and some of the applications are somewhat dated. Some of them were able to update automatically, bit others were not.
Allin all I like the distro, I would say the target audience is a one-computer family. It does have young child based applications for pre-school aged children. I tend a big advantge to having these applications pre-installed that you can see them, and you are aware they exist. Sometimes when using Disovery software manager or even apt, you don't know what to search for because you don't know such an application exists. I felt like the pre-install choices to to favor younger children. Having said that, it did also come with more "grown-up" applications such as Libre-office.
It also comes with applications such as VLC, Audacity, and Gimp pre-installed. Obviously these would be geared for a more mature audience, not toddlers so much. That is what I meant by a single computer distro. I think it tries to be everything to everyone. I didn't see anything in this distro that couldn't be done in a more traditional Debian/Mint install. (I don't include Ubuntu here because
I notice it still prefers .deb packages over snaps). But it is nice that it has a lot of applications pre-installed. Everything worked, I didn't really have any problems at all with anything.
My personal opinion is, if I was already running Mint or Debian, I don't see a reason to switch to this OS.
