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Comment by stryk | Hacker News Reader

I've always wanted to try Solus. The budgie desktop looks intriguing, and I've always wanted to try one that was an O/S of it's own and not a Debian or RHEL derivative. My main hang-up is concerning software availability. Since it's not your typical Debian-based OS the normal (huge) package repositories are out, so do you have to compile everything from source specifically for Solus, or do they have their own pre-compiled archive of stuff?

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There is a (growing) repository of software packages and the developers are open to sensible package requests[1]. So far I've found that almost everything I needed was already in the Solus repository.

[1]https://solus-project.com/articles/packaging/request-a-packa...

I have wondered, and certainly not exclusively to Solus, if there’s any reason why some “package capture” couldn’t be built in to people compiling from source for distros where a package isn’t available.

Certainly there would have to be a bunch of checks and balances, not blind acceptance, capturing source code URLs, checksums and the like, potentially reproducible builds, but could be a way to ‘crowd source’ packages. Or is this a solution in search of a problem?

checkinstall [0] lets you create deb, rpm, and a few other formats from Debian, so long as you have a decent makefile. Basically replaces the "make install" step.

[0] https://wiki.debian.org/CheckInstall

If that's what you're after, check out slackware Linux http://www.slackware.com/

It is weird I didn't see the Gentoo Portage and BSD Ports as the first mentions. They are basically forerunners not sure if they are actually the first.

Thats Arch and its AUR basically.

... If aur uploaded the binary from the first person building it, saving others the need to recompile.

Except for very large applications, most software you would find on the AUR can be compiled in a few minutes or less.

And it's not about "saving the time to recompile", it's about using the source code so that you can keep using the AUR as long as the compilation process does not break.

Ubuntu PPAs are somewhat like that.

Well, I've found my weekend project. Gonna install it on an older Laptop that's just laying around. Just for fun and experimentation. Thanks for the info

No problem. I've switched a laptop and my PC to Solus (dual-boot with Windows for gaming), and so far I've had fewer problem than I had with e.g. Ubuntu and other "mature" distributions. If you need support, there is the #Solus IRC channel on freenode (where lead developer Ikey Doherty is very active), or the Solus subreddit[1]. Development can be followed on Google+[2], Twitter[3], and in the #Solus-Dev channel. Have fun!

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/SolusProject/

[2]https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Solus-Project

[3]https://twitter.com/SolusProject

I use Void Linux on my home theater box and I've used Gentoo on my main laptop since 2012 (I did a short Hackintosh run from 2008 - 2011, but before that I was on Gentoo since 2003).

Gentoo is a true dev OS and it's not for the meek for sure, but I've grown to love it. I really should contribute more to Void and start making package for it. I think it's one of the best up and coming Linux distros.

I had to compile quite a big amount of stuff that was not in the repo. But yeah it was not that bad all things considered.

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