new desktop interface

New App Center interface

Wayland

Endless OS 5 uses a new generation of Wayland display server protocol.

Precautions:

• If you are using Endless OS in a VMWare or VirtualBox virtual machine, dragging and dropping files between the host system and the Endless OS virtual machine is not supported when Endless OS uses Wayland.

Improved multi-GPU support

Prior to EOS 5.0.0, when a system had more than one graphics card (ie one graphics card integrated with the CPU and another discrete graphics card), the system UI and all applications always ran on the discrete graphics card. While this offers the best performance, it comes at the cost of battery life. Starting with Endless OS 5.0.0, the system UI and most applications run on the integrated graphics, resulting in significant power savings, while those applications known to have more graphics demands, such as 3D games, automatically run on the discrete Start on the graphics card.

Users can also manually launch any application on the discrete graphics card by long-clicking on the application launcher icon and selecting “Launch with discrete graphics card”.

Other improvements and changes

• Shotwell is now available as a Flatpak, whereas previously it was built into the operating system. This allows it to be updated faster than the operating system itself.
• Similarly, gedit (text editor),Contacts,Archive ManagerCalculator, Fonts and Journal are now available as Flatpaks.
• OSTree 2022.1
• Flatpak 1.12.4
• Flatpak-Builder 1.2.2

End of hardware support

Some computer models no longer support Endless OS 5 or later. They cannot be automatically or manually upgraded from Endless OS 4 (our current long-term support release). It may technically be possible to install Endless OS 5 on an affected system, but it is not recommended.

The following devices are affected:

• Endless Enterprise EE-200 (Weibu F3C)
• ECS EF20EA

More details can be found at: https://support.endlessos.org/en/endless-os/release-notes/5-0-0