Solus 4.1 Fortitude | Hacker News Reader

Solus 4.1 Fortitude

getsol.us

51 pointsvital14 comments

As a very long time Linux on the desktop user, I absolutely love Solus. I've used about everything, but anymore, I just want something nice and easy for me out of the box. After the Antergos project ended, I decided I wanted something non Arch based, and tried Solus for the heck of it. I liked the default wallpaper, theme, and despite lacking advanced setups, the installer was perfect for my needs. Updates are done once a week, and despite the small team, they really mostly stay on top of things. If you're a distro hopper, or tired of your current one, give it a go.

Were you drawn to Solus mainly because of Budgie? Or was there something else too?

Nope, I don't even use Budgie. Despite my distaste for it, I'm still a Gnome guy. So, I don't remember why I even tried it other than I'd grown tired of Arch based footguns. I wanted rolling release, something easy to install that supported full disk encryption, and a decent amount of stuff via repo. Believe it or not, there's not a lot that ticks all those boxes.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is the only other one that I can think of.

I'm using Gnome on Debian testing and it ticks those boxes for me.

If I didn't have the "Ikea effect" with my current Void install I'd be using Solus. Straightforward, sensible and clean. Plenty of useful and interesting software in the repos. Good enough UX for developers and your nan.

I encourage everyone to try it, but before you do, remind yourself that it isn't Arch or Debian-based, so if you use some unusual software you may well need to build from source.

Lots of cool stuff has come from this small team. I tried solus a couple years back and liked it but didn't get too deep. I'd like to hear more about why I should use Solus over Debian/arch/whatever. It looks like they have a new kernel and lots of up-to-date packages, but what sets it apart? The package manager? The desktop environment (budgie) is available on other distributions so thats probably not the killer feature.

Who can fill me in?

I'll give the sales pitch.

Solus calls itself a curated rolling release. You get a stable, pretty, desktop OS which is continuously updated.

Package manager (eopkg) does what it says on the tin, is not radical or interesting (in my opinion).

Budgie is snappy and clean with a slight Windows aftertaste.

Another plus for Solus is transparent development. Take a look around:

https://dev.getsol.us

Amazing work! I'm excited to try out the Plasma variant. So far have been using Budgie, and quite happy with it.

The main annoyance is package repository. Not only it's humble, but the maintainers have really strong views on what shouldn't be there. Faced the problem when tried to install/build Fractal client.

I know this is opensource, but... What if I want to contribute financially to the project ???

I didn't found any 'donate' or 'buy' button.

Hardware costs money, there will be hosting bills to pay, and developers sometimes want to eat.

I found some info here https://getsol.us/2018/11/02/update-on-patreon/

but it seems like there is no way

Will Ubuntu Budgie be receiving an update too? Or do users have to wait until the next release?

https://ubuntubudgie.org/

Ubuntu Budgie updates are not driven by Solus updates. Ubuntu Budgie is independent and downstream from the Budgie project.

Big fan of Solus. It's one of the nicest options off the beaten path of arch and Debian-based distros. Great gaming support, and Budgie is very nice too.

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