Not long ago, the lead developer of Linux Mint expressed his weariness and disillusionment with working on his operating system. Developing a large Linux distribution, with all that entails, and surviving in a world overflowing with options can't be easy. One of the problems can be a lack of free time, unless sponsorships are secured that allow developers to work on their distribution full-time. This is what happened to Antergos , an operating system that announced its discontinuation yesterday.
As the Antergos Linux Project explains, they released the first version of their operating system about seven years ago. Their intention was to do something similar to what Ubuntu did with Debian: to bring a great operating system to a wider audience—in their case, Arch Linux . And they succeeded. In five years, their operating system was downloaded almost a million times, which is no small feat considering, firstly, that it's Linux (a minority compared to Windows or macOS) and, secondly, the sheer number of desktop Linux distributions available.
931.439 people downloaded Antergos in 5 years
But developing Antergos was a hobby, meaning it had to be done in their spare time. Faced with a lack of time to work on their operating system and believing they wouldn't offer a good service, they've decided to end the project . They also think now is a good time to abandon it, since the code still works and some other developers could take it over and continue their work, though they don't specify whether they could do so under the same name.
Users already using Antergos need not worry: their operating system will continue to be updated directly from Arch Linux . However, the Antergos Linux Project will release an update that will remove its repositories from the system, as well as any other Antergos-specific packages that will cease to function in the future.
Without a doubt, this is a jug of cold water for Antergos users who must now pray that someone else will continue with the project or switch to Arch Linux. Are you one of them?
