After updating from Endless OS 3.9 to Endless OS 4, your computer may appear to get stuck at the Endless logo animation for several minutes. This is due to a part of the upgrade process which is run the first time you start Endless OS 4. It is a one-time process; once it is complete, subsequent startups will be much faster. Please leave the computer for a few minutes, and plug it in if it is a laptop.
If your computer remains on the Endless logo screen for more than about 10 minutes, please help us to diagnose the problem further to help other users:
Esc or Escape key on your keyboard. This should cause the logo to disappear and be replaced with debugging output.If you are unable to wait for the process to complete, you can follow these linked instructions to start the previous version of Endless OS.
Previously, the operating system and Flatpak applications were stored using the same "repository" on disk. As part of the upgrade to Endless OS 4, these are moved to two separate repositories, which is a more standard configuration and may improve the reliability and performance of app installations slightly.
This process involves making a duplicate of all the application data on the system. The data itself is hard-linked rather than being physically copied, but it's still necessary to create a large directory structure, which can take a particularly long time on computers with slow disks.
In Endless OS 4.0.0, this process was run in its entirety while the computer starts up. In Endless OS 4.0.1, we have changed this process to run in the background. This should address the long first boot issue for users newly upgrading from 3.9.6 to 4.0.1.
Thanks to the help of users on our community forum, we have also discovered some historical bugs in Endless OS which increased the amount of data that needs to be duplicated. We're working on improvements to this process.