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

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

-based

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

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

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, U.S. with an additional office in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

, 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 (, ) is a 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 one kilometre from a nearby beac ...

, the largest

favela Favela () is an umbrella name for several types of impoverished neighborhoods in Brazil. The term, which means slum or ghetto, was first used in the Slum of Providência in the center of Rio de Janeiro in the late 19th century, which was b ...

in Rio de Janeiro,

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

, and also in

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

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

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

. 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 flesh of the fruit is segmented and varies in color from pale yellow to dark red. Grapefru ...

, 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, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Celeron Celeron is a series of IA-32 and x86-64 computer microprocessor, microprocessors targeted at low-cost Personal computer, personal computers, manufactured by Intel from 1998 until 2023. The first Celeron-branded CPU was introduced on April 15, ...

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 ...

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

Software

Endless OS is a

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

derivative distribution. It is built on top of the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

and other open source technologies (

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

GRUB GNU GRUB (short for GNU GRand Unified Bootloader, commonly referred to as GRUB) is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Free Software Foundation's Multiboot Specification, which provides a use ...

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software 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 proprietary s ...

PulseAudio PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, including Windows Subsystem for Linux on Microsoft Windows and Termux on Android; various BSD distributions such as ...

systemd systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. The main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions. Its primary component is a "system and service manage ...

, 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 "Git Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source ...

and

Flatpak Flatpak is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It provides a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in (partial) isolation from the rest of the system. Flatpak was known as xdg-app unti ...

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, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depicted ...

environment. Endless Computers publish their

FOSS Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

components and forks on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

. They submit many of their patches

upstream Upstream may refer to: * Upstream (hydrology), the direction towards the source of a stream (against the direction of flow) * Upstream (bioprocess), part of therapeutic cell manufacturing processes from early cell isolation and cultivation until ...

. The first public release was Endless OS 2.1.0 in July 2014. Endless OS 3.3.6 was released in mid-December 2017. Endless OS 4.0.0 is via Direct Download or Torrent. Endless OS 5.0.4 Basic, was released on January 27, 2023. In May 2024 version 6.0 was released, including Linux kernel 6.5, the GNOME 43.9 desktop environment, and support for dark mode.

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 typi ...

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 dedicated to the mobile communications industry. The event is held in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain, at the Fira de Barcelona Gran ...

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

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

Endless OS FoundationEndless OS
-

DistroWatch DistroWatch is a website that provides news, distribution pages hit rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open source Unix-like operating systems. It now contains information on ...

Free software companies GNOME companies Linux companies