Endless OS 3.9.1 was released for existing users today, December 7th, 2020.
Downloadable images for new users will be available in the next few days.
Updated hardware support
We received several reports that the keyboard on some Asus laptops have stopped working after the 3.9.0 upgrade. We were not able to reproduce on several different Asus laptops we have access to, but nonetheless we are shipping a few changes in the Linux kernel that we expect to fix the problem. If you were affected by this problem on 3.9.0, please let us know in the forums if this update fixes the problem on your machine.
A previously known problem causing ISO images to have a 90s delay during boot was fixed, so 3.9.1 ISO images will no longer have this delay.
The NVIDIA drivers we ship have been upgraded to version 450.80, adding support for a few new graphics cards.
Finally, the virtualbox-guest-utils package has also been upgraded (we had already upgraded the kernel-side support on 3.9.0), and we also enabled 3D acceleration by default when importing our downloadable OVF images on Virtualbox or VMWare. If you already have a virtual machine running Endless OS, you can simply upgrade it to the latest version and enable 3D acceleration in the VM settings to take advantage of this improvement (on Virtualbox you need to make sure that VMSVGA is selected as the graphics controller for 3D acceleration to work).
Hack
We have completed another step towards establishing Hack as an open source project outside of Endless. After open sourcing the code with 3.9.0, we have published the Hack apps on Flathub.
We’ve also continued our work to make Hack available outside of Endless OS. Hack now runs on any GNOME based Linux system that has GNOME Shell version 3.36 or higher, and a Flatpak version above 1.8.2. For example, Hack now runs on Ubuntu 20.10 and Fedora 33. This also means that Hack now uses the Wayland Display Server, since it’s enabled by default on Fedora 33’s GNOME Desktop.
We have also improved the experience of installing applications when they’re required by quests - Quests now prompt the user to install the application. If the user accepts, the quest launches the software backend automatically and initiates the install.
We’ve added some new quest content to Hack, as well! In this version, we’ve added 4 more quests for Krita, covering simple animation as well as the basics of cel-shading and pixel art. We’ve also added another new quest that takes a different approach to beginner programming, using the turtle!
Other Improvements and Changes
- On Endless OS 3.9.0, an issue was introduced where the calendar/notifications menu would fail to show when its size was too big for the screen. This is now fixed.
- The LibreOffice icons are now updated to the official/upstream versions.
- The Desktop icons will now expand on hover to show the full icon name when applicable.
- The Parental Controls application was updated to simplify the options used to configure application installation restrictions.
- Unused Flatpak runtimes are now removed automatically during updates if they are marked end-of-life, to free up disk space.
- Support for installing or updating apps and for updating the OS from a USB drive using the App Center is now fixed. Apps show up in the “USB” category and OS updates show in the “Updates” tab.
- Other general improvements and bugfixes.
