A group of developers started Antergos as a hobby project in 2012 and pushed the first release in July 2012 under the name Cinnarch. Later, it got its name Antergos and gained popularity as an Arch Linux-based distribution created for all the users.
In a development that will surprise the Antergos enthusiasts, the developers of the operating system have announced their plans to end the project. In other words, the Antergos 19.4 ISO refresh was the last release and the developers don’t wish to continue the project any further.
Why has the Antergos Linux project ended?
In their announcement post, the developers have mentioned that they don’t have enough free time to properly maintain Antergos and the regular updates weren’t being pushed. As they rightly mentioned, it would have been a “huge disservice to the community” if they had chosen to continue the Antergos project in a similar manner.
For those who are interested in numbers, the Antergos image has been downloaded about 1 million times since 2014, which is a pretty good number for a Linux distro that was being developed by volunteer developers.
I took a look at the Hacker News discussion and found that the past users of the distro had lots of nice things to say about developers. Many of them praised the developers for disclosing the reasons honestly and having a continuance plan for the users.
I’m already using Antergos. What about me?
Those who are already using the distro, don’t need to be worried as Antergos will continue receiving updates directly from Arch. This makes more sense because Antergos is more or less an Arch installation that uses the GNOME 3 desktop environment. This is opposed to how popular Manjaro Linux operates; Manjaro uses its own repositories for packages even though it’s also Arch-based and is compatible with AUR (Arch User Repository).
Developers also plan to soon push an update that will remove Antergos repos from the system as well as any Antergos-specific packages. After this, the other packages will continue to receive updates from AUR.
Antergos Linux Alternatives
This brings us to another important subject of Antergos alternatives that people are looking for. What made Antergos attractive was its Arch base, lightweight performance, and easy installation process. If we consider the same requirements, some distros like Antergos include Manjaro Linux, ArcoLinux, ArchBang Linux, ArchLabs Linux, and Artix Linux. Most of these options come loaded with a user-friendly installer and desktop environment.
1. Manjaro Linux
Manjaro is a very popular Arch-based distro with an amazing performance. It follows a rolling release model and is known for great hardware support.
2. ArcoLinux
This Arch-based distro ships with Xfce desktop. This minimal distro was previously called ArchMerge.
3. ArchBang Linux
ArchBang Linux is another user-friendly and lightweight option that uses Openbox window manager.
4. ArchLabs Linux
This 64-bit, rolling release operating system comes loaded with AL-Installer system installer. The desktop interface used here is Openbox window manager.
5. Artix Linux
Artix is a fork of Manjaro-OpenRC and Arch-OpenRC projects. This lightweight operating system has different editions that are powered by LXQt desktop and i3 window manager.
6. SwagArch Linux
Loaded with lots of open source applications, SwagArch Linux runs the Xfce desktop environment and Calamares graphical installer. As its name suggests, this user-friendly distro was also derived from Arch Linux
