EndeavourOS 'Cassini' Releases With New Features and Linux Kernel 6.0

EndeavourOS is a popular Arch-based Linux distribution that aims to make the Arch experience easy.

Code-named 'Cassini', it signifies a new phase in EndeavourOS's development that aims to make the OS better than its previous iterations.

Similar to a previous release, this release is also named after one of NASA's projects.

Let's see what makes this release so unique.

🆕 EndeavourOS 'Cassini': What's New?

The 'Cassini' release packs plenty of improvements, some of the noteworthy highlights include:

Improved ARM Support
Linux Kernel 6.0
Various User Interface Updates
Updated Software Packages

Improved ARM Support

EndeavourOS now features support for the Pinebook Pro.

This was made possible by including the new 'linux-eos-arm' kernel that comes with the 'amdgpu' driver for supporting generic ARM devices.

The developers also added that:

We’ve leveraged existing work and PKGBUIDs of both Manjaro ARM and archlinuxarm-pbp projects to create our Pinebook Pro images and would like to thank them for their continuing work in supporting PineBook Pro for Arch Linux ARM platform.

Furthermore, EndeavourOS also has enhanced support for ARM devices like the Phytiuim D2000, Raspberry Pi, and Odroid N2+.

🎨 Various User Interface Updates

With this release, EndeavourOS has received quite a few user interface tweaks; some of the highlights include:

The 'Discover' icon was replaced with a 'Konsole' icon on KDE Plasma.
Qogir theme is being used for icons in Cinnamon and Budgie.
In the case of GNOME, the wallpaper follows night and day theme like the Console.
The default wallpaper is now set by the 'settings' package instead of 'welcome'.
A load of cleanup work for Calamares.

Linux Kernel 6.0

EndeavourOS 'Cassini' features Linux Kernel 6.0.12.arch1-1, which enables it to have enhanced support for OpenRISC and LoongArch architectures.

Alongside that, there is a noticeable uplift in performance for AMD EPYC, Ryzen Threadripper, and Intel Xeon Ice Lake chips.

You can go through our coverage for more details:

Updated Software Packages

This release also features a lot of updated software, including:

Calamares 3.3.0-alpha3
Firefox 108.0.1-1
Mesa 22.3.1-1
Xorg-Server 21.1.5-1
nvidia-dkms 525.60.11-1
Grub 2:2.06.r403.g7259d55ff-1

🛠️ Other Changes

There were also a few other changes that I want to mention, such as:

dracut has replaced mkinitcpio to handle the installation process.
You can now choose not to install a bootloader.
You have two bootloader options to pick from, systemd-boot and Grub.
The Grub submenu is now enabled by default.
gedit and GNOME terminal have been replaced by gnome-text-editor and GNOME Console.