This is the second part of The end of a project
As I wrote earlier, I was adamant to decline the offer. I mean, all I had envisioned was another home for the community in the form of a new forum and at the time I had no idea how to make that happen, let alone create a completely new distro.
I have no idea what happened, but when I was in the process of “brushing” the guys off, a little voice in the back of my head was telling me to ask them if they had experience in creating such projects, so I asked them that question instead.
The answer was crystal clear, none of them had ever done a thing like that, but it was @fernandomaroto who was very convincing that it was going to be a great and exciting learning experience for all of us and that it didn’t matter if we made mistakes.
I still was on the fence about the idea, but with @joekamprad’s enthusiasm and @manuel’s calm and rational approach to things, I eventually said yes.
The Endeavour
Our original goal was to continue the Antergos project as it was because it seemed easier, but the Antergos founders didn’t approve of carrying on the name but we were free to use their code under another project name.
That was a setback we didn’t expect but continuing with another name wasn’t throwing us a lot, so we carried on.
Fernandomaroto already looked and toyed with the Cnchi installer and it broke whatever he tried. Reborn, another Antergos-derived project, also had issues at the time and they were in the middle of creating an installer of their own.
It was the lack of experience and lack of knowledge from our side that we decided to use the Calamares installer since it already had an existing and active development community surrounding it.
We announced the project under the code name Endeavour on the Antergos forum and asked the community if they could help us find the definitive name for the project, since Endeavour wasn’t well received by the team, I was the only one who liked it, and it would be a problem to pronounce it for non-English speakers according to an image and branding consultant we worked with back then.
Endeavour to EndeavourOS
The announcement received a lot of enthusiasm and to our surprise bloggers and vloggers picked up the news as well.
Our first priority was to launch the forum first since the time was ticking for the Antergos forum and with that media exposure, I can tell you that my anxiety was at boiling point at the time but the other guys didn’t seem affected by it, so I carried on.
It’s a good thing I didn’t know they were anxious too, because I would’ve thrown in the towel if I knew back then.
Meanwhile, the community came up with a lot of names but at the same time, they ran with the name Endeavour in creating astronaut penguins and Space Shuttle images.
Also, amongst that artwork, logo suggestions appeared with them.
I found a reasonable deal for a server with email accounts and a domain name, but the expiry date was heading for that deal and we still didn’t have a name.
We quickly decided to keep the name Endeavour and picked @nate’s purple sails logo as the official one and on June 23rd 2019, a month after Antergos’ announcement, the EndeavourOS website was launched followed by the forum on July 3rd and on July 15th we presented our very first ISO.
Five years EndeavourOS
Writing this, the events feel like yesterday and at the same time light years away.
We have come a long way from the day we decided to jump into the deep end without knowing where we would navigate.
The worries if we could get Calamares to work, create a forum and how we were going to pay for the infrastructure, in the long run, are far behind us.
To be honest, I initially thought we would call it a day within a year but five years down the line Endeavour is still going strong still exceeding our expectations.
In hindsight, it was a blessing that we couldn’t carry on under the Antergos flag, otherwise we couldn’t have created our own identity.
In those five years, we added a lot of features but also said goodbye to a lot of them. The community editions and the ARM branches are among them, although I have a feeling ARM might return given the upstream changes.
From the start, EndeavourOS was and still is a project in development. It would not be normal if we don’t adapt to changes and whether we add or lose features, that doesn’t reflect on the ongoing state of the project.
That enthusiasm and fire we had since 21 May 2019 is still burning bright and that fire is shining far and beyond thanks to you, our community.
Thank you for giving us the fuel to keep Endeavour in orbit, way up in that purple universe.
Are you ready to create more memories and experiences with us for the next five years?
I got to know that much later.
