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The Endless Foundation announced today the beta release of the upcoming major Endless OS 5.0 operating system, which promises a refreshed desktop experience, an all-new App Center, and other features.
I talked about Endless OS 5.0 in late July 2022 when Cassidy James Blaede shared some of the new features and enhancements coming to the new release, which was supposed to arrive by the end of 2022.
Now, Endless OS 5.0 is finally here in a beta variant that you can download and try on your personal computer if you want to enjoy the new desktop interface built on top of the GNOME 41 desktop environment, the revamped App Center that no longer features hard-coded lists of apps, as well as support for the next-generation Wayland display server protocol.
Endless OS 5.0 also promises improved multi-GPU support as the system UI and most apps now use the integrated graphics card by default to save battery life on laptops. GPU-demanding apps like video games or 3D graphics software, such as Blender, are automatically started with the discrete graphics card.
In addition, the new desktop interface comes with a “Launch using Discrete Graphics Card” right-click context menu option to let you manually launch any application you want with the discrete graphics card by long-clicking on the application launcher icon.
Endless OS is a Flatpak-focused distribution, so the new release comes with more apps as Flatpaks. These include the Shotwell image editor, Gedit text editor, GNOME Contacts, GNOME Archive Manager (previously File Roller), GNOME Calculator, GNOME Fonts, and GNOME Logs. This is done so you can update them to newer versions much faster.
To try the beta version of Endless OS 5.0, follow the instruction provided by the development team here. Basically, you’ll have to already run the latest version of Endless OS and then execute a command in the terminal emulator to switch to the beta channel.
Anyway, I highly recommend waiting for the final release as beta versions may include bugs or unfinished features, so it’s definitely not recommended for use in a production environment. For more details, check out the release notes.
Image credits: Endless Foundation
Last updated 1 year ago
