Beta Release | Endless OS 3.7.0~beta1

The first beta of Endless OS 3.7.0 is now out. Please follow these instructions if you want to join the beta testing program; bear in mind that the chance of encountering serious bugs is higher than in a regular stable release. As always, ensure your data is backed up!

Note that Hack users should not update to this beta due to some regressions. These will be fixed for the final 3.7.0 version.

GNOME 3.34

In this release most desktop components, including the App Center, were updated to the versions from GNOME 3.34. This brings new features, performance improvements and bug fixes.

New background settings panel

More easily discoverable night light setting

New avatars available

Note that the GNOME Shell (i.e. the Desktop) itself and Evolution (the email client) is still based on GNOME 3.32; new versions based on GNOME 3.34 will be included in a future 3.7 release.

Improved audio and video playback support

The built-in Chromium browser should now support AAC playback by default, without the need to purchase and download additional codecs.

Chromium now also supports accelerated video playback on Intel systems. To make use of that, make sure to install the Intel VAAPI Driver that can be found in the App Center.

Updated hardware support

The Linux kernel has been updated to 5.3 which fixes a number of hardware issues and increases support for various types of hardware.

Other Improvements and Changes

  • Updated Chromium. We’ve updated to Chromium 77.0.3865.90 to bring the latest security fixes to Endless’ built-in web browser.
  • New Disk Usage Analyser app included. The GNOME Disk Usage Analyser (i.e. Baobab) is now included as part of the OS. This utility can be used to access disk usage information through a graphical interface.
  • Flatpak and OSTree updates to keep compatibility with latest features and bug fixes.
  • Improvements to First Boot Experience. With the rebase to GNOME 3.34, the First Boot Experience gained support for auto-generated default avatars based on the user’s name, easier avatar picker including support to select a photo as avatar, among other improvements.
  • Remote content (e.g. SMB shares) are now accessible as local content. This should allow for example to open a media file in VLC from a remote SMB filesystem using the file manager.

Known Issues

  • Some App updates are not automatically installed when automatic updates are enabled.
  • Icons for some installed system apps are missing in the App Center’s “Installed” tab.
  • General Instability on App Center. Users may experience some crashes/instability when using the updated App Center. If you have trouble, you can install new OS updates from the Terminal using ‘eos-updater-ctl update’.
  • Installing some apps (e.g. Encyclopedia or Animals) via App Center fails to download required content. As a workaround, you can install the apps from the Terminal using flatpak (e.g. ‘flatpak install eos-apps com.endlessm.encyclopedia’). For that to work you may need to uninstall the app first if it was installed via App Center.

All the issues above are being worked on and fixes will be included in the final 3.7.0 release.

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