Endless Mobile, Inc. is an American information technology company that develops the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

-based

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

Endless OS and reference platform hardware for it. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

, U.S. with an additional office in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of the same name, Brazil's List of Brazilian states by population, third-most populous state, and the List of largest citi ...

, Brazil.

History

Endless was founded in May 2012 in

by Matthew Dalio and Marcelo Sampaio. In the first three years, the company focused on designing through field research in

Rocinha Rocinha (, ''little farm'') is the largest favela in Brazil, located in Rio de Janeiro's South Zone between the districts of São Conrado and Gávea. Rocinha is built on a steep hillside overlooking Rio de Janeiro, and is located about on ...

, the largest

favela Favela () is an umbrella name for several types of working-class neighborhoods in Brazil. The term was first used in the Providência neighborhood in the center of Rio de Janeiro in the late 19th century, which was built by soldiers who had ...

in Rio de Janeiro,

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, and also in Guatemala. In April 2015, the company was launched for the general public through a campaign on the crowdfunding platform

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

. It raised $176,538 with 1,041 backers in less than 30 days. In November 2015, Endless started to sell computers at Claro stores in Guatemala. Before that, the product was being sold in own kiosks. January 2016 marked the launch of Endless Mini, a white spherical PC the size of a

grapefruit The grapefruit (''Citrus'' × ''paradisi'') is a subtropical citrus tree known for its relatively large, sour to semi-sweet, somewhat bitter fruit. The interior flesh is segmented and varies in color from pale yellow to dark pink. Grapefruit i ...

, costing $79 and $99. On April 1, 2020, Endless became a nonprofit organization, Endless OS Foundation.

Product

Hardware

According to the specifications found in their store there will be several models based either on an

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

Celeron Celeron is Intel's brand name for low-end IA-32 and x86-64 computer microprocessor models targeted at low-cost personal computers. Celeron processors are compatible with IA-32 software. They typically offer less performance per clock speed comp ...

N2807 processors (''Mission'' and ''Endless'') or on a quad-CPU AMLogic S805 Cortex A5

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between t ...

processor (''Mission Mini'' and ''Endless Mini'').

Software

Endless OS is a

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

derivative distribution. It is built on top of the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...

and other open source technologies (

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and h ...

, GNOME,

GRUB Grub can refer to Grub (larva), of the beetle superfamily Scarabaeoidea, or as a slang term for food. It can also refer to: Places * Grub, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Switzerland * Grub, St. Gallen, Switzerland * Grub (Amerang), a hamlet in Bavari ...

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and prop ...

PulseAudio PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, macOS, as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris oper ...

, systemd, X.Org, and many more). Unlike most Linux distributions, it uses a read-only root filesystem managed by

OSTree libostree (previously OSTree) is a system for versioning updates of Linux-based operating systems. It can be considered as "Git for operating system binaries". It operates in userspace, and will work on top of any Linux file system. At its core ...

and

Flatpak Flatpak, formerly known as xdg-app, is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It is advertised as offering a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation from the rest of the system. ...

for application delivery and update. The user interface is based on a highly modified

GNOME desktop A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its character ...

environment. Endless Computers publish their

FOSS Fos or FOSS may refer to: Companies * Foss A/S, a Danish analytical instrument company *Foss Brewery, a former brewery in Oslo, Norway * Foss Maritime, a tugboat and shipping company Historic houses *Foss House (New Brighton, Minnesota), United ...

components and forks on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

. They submit many of their patches

upstream Upstream may refer to: * Upstream (bioprocess) * ''Upstream'' (film), a 1927 film by John Ford * Upstream (networking) * ''Upstream'' (newspaper), a newspaper covering the oil and gas industry * Upstream (petroleum industry) * Upstream (software ...

. The first public release was Endless OS 2.1.0 in July 2014. Endless OS 3.3.6 was released in mid-December 2017. The latest version of Endless OS is 4.0.3, which was released on 4 February 2022.

Reception

Endless Mini was awarded CES Editors' Choice at

CES 2016 CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typ ...

in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to Reviewed.com. Endless Mini was selected by TechSpot as one of the best devices showcased at the 2016

Mobile World Congress MWC Barcelona (formerly but still commonly referred to as Mobile World Congress) is an annual trade show organised by GSMA, dedicated primarily to the mobile communications industry. The event is held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain at the ...

Reviews

''PC World'' said that the Endless computer can be useful for areas with limited Internet access since it comes preinstalled with a lot of useful software and content, but for users who have easy access to the Internet, there are alternatives that are significantly more powerful or significantly cheaper.

References

External links

* PC World: * PC World: * TechCrunch: * The Washington Post: * CBS: * Wired: * CNN: * CNN International: * CNN Expansion: * BBC: * HuffPost: * OpenSourceFeed: {{cite web , url = https://www.opensourcefeed.org/1-endless-os-3.6-screenshots/ , title = Endless OS 3.6 - Exploring the rock solid system , date = 2019-06-15 , website = OpenSourceFeed , access-date = 2019-06-19 Free software companies GNOME companies Linux companies