A bit too close to still doing dev work when taking it easy, but not really... Just noticed how popular EndeavourOS is becoming according to Distrowatch at least and thought I'd take a quick peek at it. Well, kind of... - simply downloaded the install iso, found the main sfs file and added 07 to the front of its name and booted it, in usual WeeDogged fashion via WDL generic overlayfs skeleton initrd.gz (albeit the 'special' one that contains kmod since the static busybox modprobe couldn't previously handle zstd compressed modules, which Arch-based distros all use now - I'll have to try new static busybox to see if it handles zstd on its own now... but not needed for my quick test).
Reason I'm looking at EndeavourOS is that I'm needing a new WDL_Arch64 build for the family business (and was slowly working on that) but wondered if I could save future dev work by just using something off the shelf like EndeavourOS (via WDL generic initrd). I don't have much installed on EndeavourOS at moment, but initial impression is certainly very good - the question is: would I drive it longterm via WDL initrd (which is a perfectly good option) or (????) go for a standard full install... I rarely do full installs, but... problem with frugal installs (despite their many flexible advantages) is that upgrades can be a major headache though more possible in WDL than most since can use uncompressed directories in layers. Full installs are such a pain though (my old computer simply has no partition space so I'd have to major reorganise it, but no such issue for my partner's business machine - nevertheless, the distro itself is just a platform - I still need to install all the apps required and maintain everything to work, and since much is to do with network connectivity, maintenance of system is a big job anyway... (we use ssh, vnc, and similar to interconnect on our LAN a lot as well as various rsync to cloud services for backups, so quite a lot involved in overall maintenance).
So, I'm in two minds... EndeavourOS (using XFCE) looks good - I like it more on first try than I did ManjaroXFCE - seems more responsive - pretty good actually. However, I have lots of customisations required for business computer needs and most of that is already done in my WDL_Arch64 build plugin so possibly easier just to stick to that. Have the same potential issues re major upgrades though. But easiest full upgrade mechanism is simply to make a new build via build_firstrib_rootfs script along with the Arch f_00 build plugin. However I'm thinking of not using a read-only root filesystem at all. Trick there is to simply use upper_changes (with no number) to contain the contents of what would have been the numbered root filesystem (such as 07firstrib_rootfs, be that an sfs or an uncompressed directory). If just using upper_changes (and no, or an empty underlying 07rootfs) the system becomes like a 'pseudo full install' - still using WDL initrd and overlayfs layers (so all the sfs module advantages of that) but with main upgrades going straight into the read-write upper_changes layer. Can always stick a 2-digit number in front of that later if I really want to use an optional discardable per-session upper_changes. Could do the same with EndeavourOS of course, not just with WDL_Arch64; same can be done with the likes of KLV-Airedale for that matter...
wiak