It’s literally Arch Linux but with an easy bundled installer and a couple of small tools you’ll forget about.

I am using it until the archinstall script gets easier for dual-boot, encrypted BTRFS configs.

I kinda wished the EndeavourOS team made efforts to improve archinstall and simply bundled their couple extra tools as that, extra tools for easier Arch Linux usage, instead of branding it all like a new distro.

Here’s the thing with Arch-based distros: they aren’t more stable than Arch, and Arch breaks. Fixing Arch is often possible, but requires Terminal skills. You mentioned you want Arch because of the AUR, why not try Distrobox? It’s a tool for integrating containers (and their apps) with the “base” system. With a few commands, create an Arch container, then just use your favourite AUR wrapper (like yay or pacman) as you would on a regular Arch system and you may need to run `distrobox-export ’ in the container. Your apps will just show up like any other apps.

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“Always configuring” isn’t what Arch requires. It requires you to be tolerant of every so often dealing with a bug or two. Currently, the Arch-packaged version of Waybar has a regression which prints fractional seconds when using %T or %S specifiers. A tad annoying, and I could fix it by switching to waybar-git, where it’s been patched. But that hasn’t hit my threshold of annoyance, as I bounce between Sway and KDE.

The grub issue was a bigger deal, and while I knew how to resolve it (liveboot → lsblk and fdisk -l got me all the info I needed, then cryptsetup, mount -o subvol=@, arch-chroot, grub-install) the EOS blog had a nice guide.

But the reason why I chose it? Firewalld and Pipewire by default, customizable welcome app, and pretty simple otherwise.

NixOS will probably fully convert me in a year or two, but I’ve greatly enjoyed my time on Endeavour.

The out of date package problem you’re running into is because Mint is based on the LTS version of Ubuntu. This means that it’s set up for long term service and stability. All well and good if that’s what you’re after.

As to your problem, I’m not big on Endeavor - or any Arch based distro - for folks who are new to Linux. Unless you’re willing to take the time to use Arch itself and set up your system, and learn how it all comes together, you’re better off not using Arch. I know I’ll get shouted down for this, but IMHO, all of the easy install Arch based distros are terrible for people new to linux.

If your biggest issue is that the software versions aren’t as up to date as you’d like, then all you really need to do is switch to a non-LTS. I’d recommend Fedora. I use it myself, and it’s easy to set up, works great out of the box, and is up to date. They come out with a new version twice a year, and upgrades run smoothly.

If you’re really focused on a rolling release, though, I’d suggest looking at OpenSuse Tumbleweed. It’s rolling, super stable, and has a fantastic community. Their Yast tools are famous and really impressive.

Alternately, take the time to install a proper Arch setup. You’ll learn a ton, and find out that all that maintenance stuff you feel like you don’t have time to do isn’t that big a deal, really.

I’ve been using EndeavourOS for about 1.5 years on my laptop and about a year on my desktop. I’ve been using it as arch but pre-configured. I believe EndeavourOS uses the same repositories as stock Arch, with an extra EndeavourOS repo added for theming and some convenience tools they use.

The UI might not be as easy as Manjaro (I don’t think they pre-install a GUI for pacman/yay, but it isn’t hard to install one like pamac). Other than that if you use a desktop like Gnome or KDE and install a pacman frontend you probably won’t need to interact with the terminal more than you want. Honestly I think EndeavourOS is a great place to start if you want to learn more about Linux without having to spend the time configuring your system from scratch.

EndevourOS is excellent. It has been very stable for me. It is easy to install. Your problem will not be out of date packages for sure.

That said:

• there is no graphical package management. You will need to use command line ( yay / pacman ) or TUI ( pacseek ) tools.
• there are A LOT of package updates and you will want to stay current with them. I update my packages multiple times per week.

If either of those things bother you, they may be a problem.

Updating packages is reliable and painless but a chore you need to get in the habit of doing. I suspect you would get more problems if you let it go too long. On the upside, as it is a rolling release, you never have an “upgrade” to go through.

I’m running EndeavourOS on a little Ryzen box I got for a desktop. It’s fine. They have their own mirrors hosting some different core packages than base Arch, and it seems pretty stable. I haven’t had any issues other than some missing PGP keys once.

That said: I’ve been using Arch-based distros for a while - I have a half dozen different servers running Arch, and a laptop running Artix. After installation, I haven’t used any EndeavourOS tooling. I do most maintenance from the command line, and I use a tiling window manager. So my experience doesn’t really stress test the EneavourOS configuration, or any of the tooling it provides.

TLDR; It’s stable enough.

I use EndeavourOS and OpenSuse tumbleweed myself, and I’d caution you about using endeavour. It’s a great OS that I personally love but there will be manual interventions you’ll have to keep track of, and implement. Maybe twice yearly. Like the grub issue, or the repo migration for two recent examples.

OpenSuse tumbleweed however is a rolling release distro that’s more stable, takes little in the way of manual interventions, and is quite sleek out of the box. I use it as a work partition for freelance dev work personally.

I love endeavour, but it can take some more babysitting than other distros as it’s essentially just a really good graphical arch installer

I’ve been using it daily for about a year and I have no complaints.

I use it on my gaming laptop. I’ve been using Linux in various ways since the nineties and just wanted to install Arch easily while I was brewing coffee, I had it ready to play games from my old Steam SSD within 20min. It installed proprietary NV drivers and keeps them up to date with new versions and kernels without me having to bother with that silliness, likewise for certain multimedia codecs that you have to go look for with other distributions, which is a bother.

However, I had to setup btrfs-assistant+grub-btrfs+btrfsmaintenance scripts myself, I wish it had an install option for that and I’m thinking Garuda might be a better option for this reason as that’s configured by default for new users.

It also lacks a GUI app installer, it can be bewildering for newcomers to search for packages with yay and understand pacman/yay stuff. There are ways, like octopi to remedy that but it’s not there by default.

TLDR: As an experienced user I enjoy it, I didn’t have to waste a lot of time and attn to install and it works well.

It’s exactly as most people describe: Arch with a Calamares installer, for all the good and bad that entails. I’ve never been sold on Arch for daily driver use since stability and simplicity is paramount to me, so I tend to use Fedora as a relatively up-to-date distro that I can generally trust not to totally break.

However, if you really want to jump in both feet first into troubleshooting and learning Linux, Arch and EndeavourOS are fantastic. Neither holds your hand too much out of the box but they also have an excellent and helpful community and documentation if you run into trouble or don’t know how to do something. Just… you have to be willing to deal with that kinda stuff, and not everyone is (I’m certainly not).

It’s a great distro but if you want to have more solid experience you could consider do these things

1- install LTS kernel alongside the normal one (especially if you use nvidia) because who knows what would happen in newer bleeding edge kernels .

2- some people like to use timeshift (I don’t use it personally but it’s recommended) and it’s better to make btrfs disk .

3- don’t use aur unless if there is a package that you can’t get by official repos .

Other than that I feel like it’s pretty stable distro and fast but please you have to consider doing these recommendations (from my personal experience)

I hope you enjoy your arch (endeavour os) experience .

Arch with a graphical installer. That’s literally all there is to it. It’s pretty decent imo

I went to EndeavourOS with i3WM (from dual boot Windows/ Ubuntu) and have been loving the experience. It’s really helped push my boundaries with learning Linux.