Endless OS 3.8.6 Is Released
The latest Endless OS release has an updated Chromium browser, an updated App Center fixing a crash when switching categories on Endless Mini, an icon theme dependency fix and a fix for the very unfortunate GRUB2 buffer overflow vulnerability disclosed late July that allows anyone to "securely" boot anything with any stable GNU GRUB2 release.
written by 林慧 (Wai Lin) 2020-09-02 - last edited 2020-09-02. © CC BY
The default desktop experience on Endless OS 3.8.6. Android users will likely feel right at home.
The Endless OS GNU/Linux distribution aims to be very simple and easy to use. It comes with a very customized tablet-like GNOME3 skin with the same kind of defaults icons you would expect to see on a smartphone or a tablet. Those using Arch or Manjaro Linux are not the target audience, this is an operating systems geared towards school children and others who are more familiar with smartphones than they are with computers.
Endless OS uses OSTree to manage the base system and FlatPak to install additional packages.
The latest release has an updated Chromium browser (changelog claims 84.0.4147.125, but you get Chromium 85 when you install it) and an updated App Center. The App Center (actually gnome-software) is what Endless OS uses to manage installed applications, it is essentially an app store where everything is free.
The most important highlight in the Endless OS 3.8.6 release is a fix for several very unfortunate buffer and integer overflow vulnerabilities in GRUB2 that were fixed in git (commit, commit) late July. Several other security issues that do not directly affect Endless OS, such as LVM handling and a udf leak were fixed at the same time. The GNU Project couldn't be bothered to make a new release to address these gaping security holes dubbed "BootHole" so distributions are forced either patch the latest 2.04 release or ship git snapshots. The gaping security holes in Grub 2.04 can only be used to load anything, including other unsigned operating systems, malware and spyware, on machines that have "Secure Boot" enabled so they may not be viewed as serious issues by an organization who never got on-board this whole "Restricted Boot" thing.
Endless OS 3.8.6 can be downloaded from endlessos.com/download/. There is a 2.63 GiB "Basic" multi-language version and a "full" 15.82 GiB English version as well as full Spanish, French, Indonesian, Portuguese, Thai and Vietnamese versions available. The full versions will occupy around 30 GiB once it is installed. It has all the applications you need pre-installed. The smaller 2.63 GiB image comes with nothing but the basic system, you will have to install every application you want to use if you go that route. A BitTorrent client like qBittorrent is required to download the .iso images. The torrents are very well-seeded, you should be able to download as fast as your Internet connection allows.
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