Greetings,
I’m considering switching to EndeavourOS. I’m under the impression that Arch-based distributions do not have versions (Debian 10, 11,12 etc.) I’m currently using MXLinux.
Endeavour OS has a current release called Mercury. The previous one was Galileo (or was it Endeavour NEO ?)
could please explain like I’m five what are the differences between Mercury and the previous versions ? thanks in advance 
The ISOs are more up to date so that you have fewer updates to do after install. They may also add or remove packages to match packages that have been added to or removed from latest Arch repositories.
Oh. And welcome to the forum.
Long story short: EndeavourOS is an Arch-based rolling release. So the “versions” actually represent points in time when the ISO was published.
You’ll always end up with the current state of things, but it is advised to always use the newest ISO release for fresh installs (less problems and less volume to update).
The second quote, you got it right.
Arch based are “rolling” that is there is no really new version.
There are no versions as such.
If you want to think of “versions” as in MX Linux or as you said (Debian 10, 11,12 etc.), then if you install Debian 10 then just update, you will be having the same as if you installed Debian 11 then update, the same as Debian 12… etc.
So, installing from any ISO then updating is exactly the same as installing the latest ISO.
You always have the latest operating system all the time by just updating.
A direct answer to your question, the “older” ISO when you update will get and download more updates than the latest ISO, simply the latest ISO is the same previous ISO but with the updates that came after it included in this latest ISO.
I hope this helps.
There are usually several Differences between ISO’s. The main difference is Kernel Versions/ Driver Versions for Gpu (Nvidia) and other updated packages.
Names are only for the installer ISO itself, that’s released, packages and installed systems do not have versions.
As we do online installs, system is created from scratch fetching latest packages directly from the web, there is no updating needed at all, only in cases you do use the fallback offline install.
EndeavourOS is basically the installer and ISO, as we do use Arch Linux packages directly.
New versions adding features or fixing problems user reporting on some hardware e.t.c.
And yes always use latest release.
Welcome, @henry-lucien !
Here you will find the News and you will find all the details listed when a new ISO was released.
https://endeavouros.com/news/
For example there is a bigger EFI partition now. It is increased to 2GB in size when you are using the latest ISO. There are sometimes things that are not able to change via installing updates. 
Honestly I missed this.
Maybe in such case there should be instructions on how to do it on the installed system or a script that runs automatically after reboot to do it and do it automatically.
Only to be exact here thats not true for EndeavourOS as we install from scratch with online installs, not like most other Archbased Distributions they use the OS image from the ISO copy this to the target and update from there..
We have an offline install option too in addition, but that’s a fallback only in case you have issues with internet connection or such.
Older ISO is never recommended to be used in any case, and if so only offline installs will properly work.
But still will not include BUG fixes (for install process or configurations of initial OS install), latest ISO will bring in.
Sure I understand. Any fresh install should be done from the latest ISO and online for best results.
My reply was just mainly to answer the OP question specifically as it seemed to me he is a bit confused and thinking of different ISOs as different “versions” while it is not so.
Thanks a lot @joekamprad
yea only wanted to make it more clear, the online installer is one of our core features we invented
It is clear.
Thank you.
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