Endless Mobile, Inc. is an American information technology company that develops the Linux-based operating system Endless OS and reference platform hardware for it. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in San Francisco, California, U.S. with an additional office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

History

Endless was founded in May 2012 in San Francisco, California by Matthew Dalio and Marcelo Sampaio. In the first three years, the company focused on designing through field research in Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and also in

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...

. 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, ...

. 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 is ...

, 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 Celeron N2807 processors (''Mission'' and ''Endless'') or on a quad-CPU AMLogic S805 Cortex A5 ARM 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 D ...

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 ope ...

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 hardne ...

GNOME 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 characte ...

, GRUB,

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 proprie ...

, PulseAudio,

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

, X.Org, and many more). Unlike most Linux distributions, it uses a read-only root filesystem managed by OSTree and Flatpak for application delivery and update. The user interface is based on a highly modified GNOME desktop environment. Endless Computers publish their FOSS components and forks on GitHub. They submit many of their patches upstream. 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 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 Fir ...

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