Since your post came after Bryan expressly stated that EndeavourOS development is at a crossroads, and choosing between ceasing and going forward with limited features, you posted a series of suggestions that would require substantial work from a team stretched to the limit. Your suggestions display, and I cannot stress this enough, an unrealistic expectation from even the team at Red Hat.
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I’m not taking offence I was only asking what are you willing to do to help make it better.
This was not my intention.
That said, if I came across like that I am sorry.
Given my admitted luck of experience in regards to iso development, as well as Bryan’s statement, is it impossible to think that my suggestion is exactly to limit the “features” to the context of the installer, since the work that has been done to it makes it a fantastic tool already?
Also, in the context of the above, would you agree that init system aside (which indeed is stupid in hindsight), some of those other inclusions may be simpler and possibly simpler than maintaining all the extra eos packages, mirrors etc?
I’m genuinely asking:
Would changes to the installer such as offering a choice of the default shell, the inclusion or not of yay/paru, the inclusion and enablement of Flatpak, the inclusion of a snapshotting solution with BTRFS (and generally other similar inclusions) be more work than the current workload of maintaining the distro?
With the exception of a choice of default shell, the other suggestions are not unreasonable. Changing the default shell may prove to be a bit trickier during install time, but I could be wrong about that. It is for similar reasons that I prefer to build my own Arch system with my choices rather than using someone else’s system and making the changes I want. If you are at the point of wanting to change so many little things, you may also be at the right place to want to build your own system. It isn’t that hard, and quite rewarding.
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I have no other answer than YES.
Well, good to know.
To put this in perspective for you, here is what that translates to:
- First, the installer doesn’t support a separate advanced flow, that functionality would need to be added to Calamares
- Next we would have to individually build and test each of those things
- Lastly, every time we released a new ISO, all the permutations of all those things would need to be tested.
In summary, it is a lot of work, both in the short-term and ongoing.
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If it really was that easy, don’t you think we would’ve gone that road from the start? Creating and maintaining your own DE environment to your wishes is a completely different beast than creating an ISO for most common hardware out there., especially on an Arch-based distro.
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One of the things I really enjoy about the Installer is that its not bogged down with all kinds of choices like the ones you wish to propose.
As far as flatpak and all the other apps you were speaking of You can do this during the install with a custom package file.
I totally agree with you and Endeavour team.
Offering a choice of a default shell is utterly pointless. Arch Linux requires Bash to be installed, a lot of things will break if you remove it. So it may as well be the default. The user can easily install and use other shells, as desired.
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I enjoy the freedom to do as I wish with EOS. Up to and including screwing up my install so badly I have no choice but to reinstall 
I call this a LEARNING MOMENT.
About the only other thing I would add is, the Internet is full of shiny trinkets and fairy dust to add to your desktop. Go crazy there.
EDIT:Wording
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My biggest criticism with EndeavourOS Linux is that it works too well. . . . I’ve been distro hopping for 25 years and this is where I am today. . . .No complaints whatsoever. . . .The community and the forums are very friendly. About 20 years ago I was accosted by ‘geek’ idiots in the Debian forums who thought tearing into me was appropriate. Well, personally Debian is still Debian and they may have cleaned up their act in ‘forums’ with the types of responses they give people. . . .it still leaves me a bad memory in my head about how unprincipled and idiotic some people are. I haven’t looked back since to Debian. Thanks for all the good work you people all do for making this a terrific distro.
Rich:)
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Because they don’t configure eos-update-notifier.conf, and maybe don’t even know they can, and how… After “Did you go into the settings or preferences?” the second thing that comes to mind is: Configure the .conf files! For just about everything in Linux that can be done, and many of them even have instructions inside of the file!
Every Linux user should know this!
Ever try the Mozilla forums? How about LibreOffice? The forst is a kindergarten, and the latter everyone expects everyone else to understand the depths of the sweet in great detail!
I got scolded on the Mozilla forum for this: Someone was asking how to uninstall and reinstall Firefox to get the panel icon back, and it was very clear just by the question they were a Linux newbie, and knew nothing about desktop files… But despite that several people jumped in to help and just confused the person even more with building it, versions, dependencies, the terminal, and what not, only confusing them more! So I chimed in and said Everyone is missing the point: They don’t even need to uninstall a perfectly working app, just to get the icon back, and proceeded to explain how to recreate the icon in their DE, done.
They deleted my answer, and duked it out with me in private all the way to threatening to ban me for challenging their flawed logic and insisting I gave the right and easiest solution, all because it didn’t address the OP’s exact question as asked! Finally (two weeks in of back and forth) some moderator with more authority and common sense stepped in and told everyone that I was in fact right, and it was the best solution, no matter how the question was asked, to get off my back, and not take the rules so literally. As soon as they put my solution back in, the OP did it, and was delighted for the easy solution, and thanked me. I hate the Mozilla forums, and avoid it like the plague!
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I can’t think of any constructive criticism of EOS, nor do EOS developers mess with too much in the first place to warrant it! OK, maybe advertising the github (or is it gitlab) pages more, add better descriptions of what the various scripts there do and how to use and configure them, maybe even add more of them, as there are quite a few procedures with many steps that could be consolidated into easier to use scripts. I can’t even tell which ones are in the OS by default (often because of inconsistent naming between the scripts name and some welcome app widget or start menu icon that launches them). When I have a script I know I will use more often, I have a .bin folder, to put them in, declared as a PATH variable, and make desktop files with fitting Icon wherever needed, and viola’: point n’ shoot!
As to the default wallpaper: It’s the first thing I change on any distro and OS starting with Windows 3.1 way back when! There are literally millions of wallpapers to be had online, and in my case I make my own with my business logo, and have made quite a few over the years. In KDE plasma I can have the DE change them every ten minutes, and use different ones for different screens to where I made versions for the different screen resolutions as it can change them independently of each other so I have different wallpapers on different screens!
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The dalto support AI isn’t available offline, I always have to visit the forum.
Please provide an offline version. ok thx.
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We don’t need an AI when we have the real @dalto
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I cannot think of any criticism small or great on my experiences with Endeavour. It helps get a very nice of install of Arch done without being over done and also not just pure vanilla.
I saw a comment about “terminal centric”; that is one of the reasons I came to Endeavour. I have installed Arch “the right way” but after they developed that script I used that. Then I found Endeavour and prefer it. It is Arch but with configurations and enhancements added but not so much that you have to undo it. I have seen some pretty garish desktops on some projects… but some folks like it and that is linux, use what you like.
I wish I had better skills to offer my assistance but still working on those.
I appreciate the hard work those that work on EOS do and I am just fine with the newest release and cutbacks on what ships; I thank you for sharing the difficulties.
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Out of all the distro s I ve tried; EOS RULES. That being said only one thing comes to mind. It s personal preference, but I d like to see a way to enable/disable desktop icons as a setting in EOS rather that installing a Gnome extension.