Endless OS 5 is here!

Endless began with a mission: to bridge the digital divide. Billions of people still can’t access a computer–the most important work and educational device in history—and almost half the planet still isn’t on the internet. It’s 2023. That’s unacceptable. We realized that the best way to address this, and in some ways the only way to address this, was to build our own operating system: Endless OS. I want to talk about that operating system today, as we launch Endless OS 5.

Why did we need to build our own OS? To save a long diversion I’ll say that we tried every OS on the market: Windows is too expensive, doesn’t run on cheap hardware, and the features we need are not possible on a closed source operating system. Android is a mobile OS and, try as we might, we couldn't make it a good PC. Macs cost a fortune. ChromeOS requires the internet, which, by definition, our target users don’t have. Meanwhile, the digital divide is the result of a chain of problems. Solving one problem isn’t sufficient. There will always be another barrier right behind it. Users needed to be able to afford it, it needed to work without the internet, and it had to be usable by first time users. Endless had to solve the entire chain of problems. That required owning the entire tech stack. So we launched into the crazy endeavor to do that.

After a long journey of scrutinizing every possibility on the market, we landed on Linux. Linux has historically been incredibly powerful, but complicated—like a fighter jet with a crazy cockpit. Through this long journey, we realized that if Android was able to turn Linux into a mobile OS, we could make it as simple as a mobile operating system, but with the power of a full PC. We have done years and years of user testing to make a fighter jet that you can fly with a joystick.

On the heels of a decade’s worth of refinements, we launched Endless OS version 5 this month. This is our best OS yet. I always laughed when Apple said that. Of course it is! Otherwise you wouldn’t ship it! But in this case, it’s a complete overhaul. We have a very-much refreshed, much more modern Endless OS that is the product of three years of hard work.

The Pretty Face

Endless OS looks like a smartphone. When we began, we needed to easily onboard the billion people who had used Windows but couldn’t afford a PC. Windows was the clear benchmark. Fast forward a decade and their primary device is a smartphone. I want to be clear that our goal is to solve a problem. If that involves designing something that looks like the design paradigm that has come to define the modern computing era, that is precisely what we will do.

We also realized that youth in the US and their parents love Endless OS. We wanted to design something that was as aspirational for the top of the market as it was functional for everyone. We believe that we have done that, building something as sexy as a Mac, and yet universally accessible. Here is the new Endless OS 5:

Endless OS has our mobile app grid and search bar on the desktop, as always. We split the taskbar into a new dashboard with apps at the bottom, and a system panel at the top, like a smartphone and macOS.

We have added workspaces in the activities view, which shows all of your open apps. These two modes, Activities and Applications, make it easy to navigate your apps with one click or swipe.

The value proposition of Endless OS is not its interface. The value lies in its rich ecosystem of apps that (1) a parent can feel safe with their kids exploring and (2) that works even if they don’t have access to the internet.

Our aspiration, however, is bigger than that. We believe that the phone is built around native apps for a reason. They are faster, more immersive, and more accessible. The average person spends about five times as much time in apps as they do on the billion websites on the internet. Why do we drown in tabs on our PCs when we could have “an app for that” on our computers as well? Much of it is a historical legacy. It’s hard to change, but it is possible. The design paradigm that made Endless OS the simplest PC operating system on the market is the very same app-centric design paradigm that we need in order to make the app the heart of the PC.

There is an important keystone to enable that app-based computer paradigm: The App Center. Eventually, we believe people will do more in the apps on their PC than they do in the browser (like we already do on our phones). That will only happen if the app discovery process is fast, full and delightful. So we are launching an all-new App Center in Endless OS 5. Our design work to make it even more engaging and delightful is still ongoing, but it is a lot snappier and smoother than before. We are also seeing the fruits of our team’s work on Flatpak, the modern and widely-adopted app format for Linux, which has basically made every app that people actually use available in our App Center. The app-based PC is finally ready.

The Solid Soul

A pretty face and a strong app store are necessary steps on the journey of making the best PC for kids and making it available to everyone in the world. But the changes in the back-end, while invisible, are equally important.

Endless used to have more than 4,000 patches on the GNOME-based Linux desktop that we are built on. Every release involved us fighting against the heavy gusts of maintaining all of those patches. These last few years have been a long process of merging closer to upstream GNOME. We have done this hand in hand with the GNOME design team, co-developing some of their most important features (which I’ll talk about in my next blog post). The result is that most of the features that Endless OS has discovered in our decade of doing this are now part of a broader Linux desktop, available to millions, and Endless OS is more solid for being closer to their core. Today, those 4,000 patches are down to around 100. GNOME and Endless are both better for it.

I can talk about lovely things like Wayland, the replacement for the X11 Window System protocol. I remember speaking with the developer about when it would be ready a decade ago. “In a few years,” he said. We have it, finally! We have multi-GPU support for better battery life. We have multi-touch gesture support and an improved parental controls panel. As 9to5Linux said, “There’s been a lot improved throughout Endless OS so you’ll have to check it out yourself by downloading the ISO image from the official website.” You can go to EndlessOS.org to find it.

Ripples Unseen

It’s amazing how many people we impact without even knowing it. Most of our users aren’t even on the internet. But every once in a while the impact becomes clear. We had a “ceremony” for our ten year anniversary, with a dozen partners from around the world. It was the most touching moment as I heard story upon story of the impact that Endless is having on kids. These partners spanned nearly every content. To share one: William Kamkwamba was a young boy in Africa who found a book on windmills and then built one to save his village from drought. His story inspired me as I set upon my journey in the early days of Endless. Netflix was so inspired by his story that they also turned it into a movie. “Imagine if he could have had this knowledge library with all of the tools inside of Endless OS,” I thought to myself. Today, he is using Endless. He started a computer lab. Endless OS educates the children of his village. Every single day.

It isn’t every day that I speak with someone who has used Endless OS, but a few months ago a game developer that I was speaking with told me, “It’s so cool to meet you, because I installed Endless OS on my grandfather’s computer. He uses it every day and loves it!” I thought that was so cool! Again, a few days ago, I spoke with someone from a podcast who had discovered Endless OS. As he prepared me to record for the podcast, he raved about Endless OS, saying things like, “I am totally and utterly blown away. What you have here is incredible. I’m shocked that more people don’t know about it.” That’s part of the reason that I’m writing this. To share with you: “Hi, look, what we have is really special.” And it’s even better now.

If you want to know more about Endless OS 5, you can read these articles on Endless OS 5. And I’ll be writing more about our contributions to the community that made this possible, soon.