I’ve installed Arch multiple times over the years, both with the installer and the old-school “Arch way” by the command line.
I’ve also been using EndeavourOS for years now, on and off with experiments in other distros such as Fedora, Nobara, Bazzite, Mint, Pop_OS!, Sparky, MX, Kubuntu/Xubuntu etc etc.
But I always come back to Endeavour for several reasons.
The sensible, out of the box default setup is perfect. I don’t need to do much to have a usable system on install, and everything just works. I’ve never had an issue with Endeavour (or Arch), whereas ironically the “easier” Ubuntu-based distros (Kubuntu/Mint/Pop) have always fallen over on me when upgrading between major versions, leading me back to Arch/Endeavour.
The community here and these forums are the best Linux distro community around IMO. Helpful, welcoming, warm and (largely) non-toxic. Even if it’s just to chat crap, show off our desktops or recent purchases, or chat about what games we’re playing etc, I love it here, and I hope this specific distro and community is around and active for many many more years to come.
And the Devs are active in the community, and lead the community by example, which is why we have such a great community here.
I could not agree with you more @Sar The community is top-notch, that is for certain. Even if we’re not running Endeavour, people still try to help. That is remarkable in my opinion.
What effort? I run pacman -Syu every day, and that’s it. I have a pacman hook that updates grub if the package updates and a pacman hook to keep the package cache limited to one previous version. I do not understand where the bad reputation comes from?
My reason to go with EOS was I was interested in checking a rolling release. Poking around convinced me Arch based was the way to go, but I didn’t want to put in the time needed do an “Arch way” install (the script had yet to be released at that time). EOS delivered on its promise of an easy, minimal install - the essential stuff to be able to function and build upon easily, giving me control over the system.
I stayed due to the stability of Arch, and the community here. Also it was nice to know if disaster struck, EOS can be converted to a vanilla Arch without a reformat/reinstall.
FWIW, I do fine updating monthly but keep an eye out for emergency update notifications. I based the frequency on what I got used to on the Windows systems where I worked. And I only have to reboot once, not the three agonizingly slow reboots MS Spyware 1.0 required. God only knows what it’s like on MS Spyware 1.1.
I use EOS because I was part of the community that started EOS. Long time Antergos user so I was around when Antergos died. More than a few Antergos users wanted to stick together and while they were figuring out the next step some of us converted our Antergos install to Arch instead of starting fresh Arch install. Bryan Poerwoatmodjo is the one who used the word Endeavour in a thread he started, in that thread the subject of what to name the OS came up and my suggestion was the name is under everyone’s nose…EndeavourOS. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. EOS has the best group of people so I’m EOS to the end. BTW I do thank Arch for all the hard work and opportunity’s it provides.
I’m a high school student from China. I really love Linux and the Arch philosophy, but I don’t have much free time to tinker with my system because of the heavy study pressure here – I have to prepare for the college entrance exam (Gaokao). I also need a reasonably stable environment for my daily schoolwork and coding.
That’s why I chose EndeavourOS over pure Arch. It gives me the rolling-release benefits and the “Arch feel” I enjoy, but saves me hours of manual installation and initial configuration. More importantly, EndeavourOS provides excellent driver support for my hardware out of the box, especially hardware-accelerated video decoding in browsers, which works flawlessly and is essential for me when watching tutorials and online courses. Everything just works, so I can focus on using my computer instead of fixing it.
After Gaokao, when I have more time, I might try to install Arch from scratch to learn more about the internals. But for now, EndeavourOS is the perfect balance for me.
As a recent (2025) Linux adopter on my main machine, I wanted a “just werks” distro. I played with Ubuntu and used Mint for about a month, but I never really liked the package management. I felt like I was either waiting around for application updates, or worrying about whether to use the distro or Flatpak versions when I didn’t really understand the difference. I looked at rolling release distros and loved the philosophy, theming, and community of EOS. Arch was intimidating, due to the reputation and the philosophy. I don’t spend much time on my PC at home so I have limited time to learn and troubleshoot, making Arch’s “build it yourself” ethos challenging. I value the ability to just jump in and get going. I considered EOS or CachyOS and I went with EndeavourOS partly because of the Arch kernel, as I felt it kept things more straightforward on the OS level.
Like others, I find rolling release updates actually easier to manage due to the smaller number of changes taking place in an update. The installer is also a great feature. And the community is very active and supportive of different knowledge levels.
Yes/No.
We are using arch repo’s and packages so in that aspect your correct we are basically arch. The real difference is how you install. EndeavourOS has a graphical install and offers some sane defaults and some custom theming. Arch does not.
You are correct regarding installation. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, the question was what are you using, not what are you installing. (I’m using both)
Well Arch does not use yay by default, and is not using dracut, some config files are a bit different compaired to Arch. And ofcourse the EOS tools are not in Arch.
To continue with the house analogy, perhaps it’s more like two people saying they both “built” their house.
Bob is a builder (obviously), and he built his house himself, sourcing all the materials himself, and banging in every nail, himself.
Tom also “built” his own house, by approaching a building firm, selecting house plans and having them organise the entire build process for him.
Afterwards, both of them can say they “built” their house, but what each of them means by that, is rather different. Let’s assume how each goes about maintaining their house after it’s built, is very similar.
I can agree that as EndeavourOS users, we are essentially using Arch, but if we simply say that, people would mistakenly believe we’re like Bob, when in fact we’re more like Tom.
(I’m using both)