Beta Release | Endless OS 4.0.0~beta1 / 4.0.0~beta2

The first beta release of Endless OS 4.0 is out! Please follow these instructions if you want to join the beta testing program. Bear in mind that the chance of encountering bugs in a beta release is higher than in a regular release – please ensure your data is backed up before updating.

Endless OS 4.0 will bring a lot of changes and improvements, which are detailed in the Endless OS 4.0 (UNRELEASED) Release Notes. Most of the changes listed there are already present in the 4.0.0~beta1 release, but a few things are still expected to change (ex., minor kernel update from linux-stable).

As a beta tester, you can help us by providing feedback on stability and hardware support, and reporting software regressions (things that used to work in previous releases that stopped working on this new release). And specifically for this beta release, we are looking for feedback on printing and VPN connectivity with L2TP and OpenConnect/AnyConnect VPNs.

Note: there was a small problem with the ostree refs for 4.0.0~beta1, so we released 4.0.0~beta2 right after to fix it.

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I’ve been tracking the next version in a VM for a while … and now it says I’m on version 5.0.0 (both updates and /etc/os-release agree)?

Interesting, just upgraded from a fresh 3.9.6 to 4.0.0~beta2 and /etc/os-release and /etc/lsb-release both seem good, indicating the correct version string:

DISTRIB_ID=Endless
DISTRIB_RELEASE=4.0.0
DISTRIB_CODENAME=endless
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Endless 4.0.0"
NAME="Endless"
VERSION="4.0.0"
ID="endless"
ID_LIKE="ubuntu debian"
PRETTY_NAME="Endless 4.0.0"
VERSION_ID="4.0.0"
HOME_URL="http://www.endlessm.com/"
LOGO=endlessos
BUILD_ID="210917-070716"

Whats your Deployment? Mine is:

ae0b40f327fac19dc23c762dd72784d8055d7bb7d59a3992415d43d9dabd2277.0

Are you sure that you are on the Beta channel and not following master?

/edit: Just checked master, master is on 5.0:

DISTRIB_ID=Endless
DISTRIB_RELEASE=5.0.0
DISTRIB_CODENAME=endless
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Endless 5.0.0"
NAME="Endless"
VERSION="5.0.0"
ID="endless"
ID_LIKE="ubuntu debian"
PRETTY_NAME="Endless 5.0.0"
VERSION_ID="5.0.0"
HOME_URL="http://www.endlessm.com/"
LOGO=endlessos
BUILD_ID="210919-230008"

Yes, as @egrath pointed, master always has the next version we are going to branch, even though we are not quite working on EOS 5.0 yet.

@BryanQuigley if you are in doubt, you can find out which channel your following by looking at the OSTree URL in eos-diagnostics (if it has dev it means master, if it has demo it means beta, or if it does not have either it means production).

Thanks both! Yup, I’m on master.

WOW, thanks to you, dear people, great work, better looks and perfectly supports the 2010 iMac with AMD TURC graphics adapter (no shredded menus any more, no missing backlight at start, wonderful !!!) :slight_smile: works super nicely now (so also awesome Zorin 16 is the only distro lefg in the competition for our school here in Africa’s biggest informal settlement…) . We are still miss installing vivaldi browser but that’s on their side…

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Glad to hear that - thanks for the feedback!

Hi! Will Endless 3.9 automatically upgrade too Endless 4? Thank you for the awesome OS you have blessed us with Endless Team. Sending you good vibes from South Africa.

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Yes, with some exceptions documented at https://support.endlessos.org/en/endless-os/release-notes/4-0#end-of-hardware-support

Thank you very much for the prompt feed back.

A new beta OSTree release of Endless 3.9.6~beta4 is out!

This is a new checkpoint version for joining the Endless OS 4.0 beta testing program.

This release brings a bug fix:

Are there RPI4 images already available, would love to test with my 8 GB ones.

Will Flatpak be updated to version 1.12 on Endless OS 4.0?

As EOS 4 is built against Debian 11 which has 1.10.3, probably not. Also a quick look at the image builder shows nothing that points to any other version.

/edit: Just checked 5.0-master, has 1.10.2

@wjt wrote about hardware compatibility of EndlessOS 4 in post 9:

just curious since there is a note in that link which says:

any more information which laptop models, or to be a bit more concrete: Is my Acer TravelMate Spin B118-RN supported or will I encounter problems when I try to upgrade to EndlessOS 4?

The canonical list is in the eos-updater source code, https://github.com/endlessm/eos-updater/blob/master/eos-updater/poll-common.c#L501-L586 and the functions it calls. I don’t think your device will be affected.

@wjt thanks for the quick anser. Just another question: Is there an easy way to leave the beta program again? I was not able to find an info about leaving the program, only how to enter.

I have added instructions here:

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an once more: thanks to @wjt for the quick update. Just as tiny remark to the added instructions for returning to the stable version, I think I found a small typo: I guess that the marked “you c…”

should read “your computer …”

Fixed, thanks! I make that typo all the time.

1 Like