Solus Is Back, but Can It Survive Its Troubled Past?
TBH, as a previous Solus user, I don't think I'd go back.
Part of the rise of the Linux desktop is that I have options that are stable, supported, and likely won't vanish into the ether anytime soon. Feels bad to think, but, eh, I'm just too old for anything else. đ
It totally did survive! https://polymaths.social/@solusspider/statuses/01JMS2XB3H6RJPQFC89V5RV9NB
I have been running Solus on various machines since November 2016.
I never left. The problem before was access was limited to one person who went AWOL. Now the organization has redundancy and the crew of maintainers are motivated, dedicated, and hard working.
This crisis was exactly what Solus needed to gain lasting power.
Stable. Rolling. Independent. That's what I want and Solus has been one of the few that really does this.
It is indeed a great distro. I can totally see myself going back to Solus if Fedora starts going downhill.
Ahat happened to it?
It kind of went a bit unmaintained and any news on it was a bit silent.
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I used to be an Arch guy, I had a pretty stable setup for a couple of years, until I had some problem with a printer and I just decided to toss the whole thing out and just go for a distro with neat defaults in which I wouldn't be having problems with printers.
I've been using Solus since then and it's been fine. Even during the "bad times" of no updates, my laptop kept working fine so I didn't bother switching to something else and I keep using it since it's been more stable than distros I've used in the past which were supposed to be stable. I've seen mentions of the possibility of it eventually having an AUR style thing which would honestly make it the perfect distro.
I think the website is having some issues... or is it just me?
Not just you, it isn't working for me either.
I'm glad it's back, but I don't really see a reason to switch. What does it offer that alternatives don't?
It's a rolling community distro that's also beginner-friendly. For instance, its package manager uses plain English terms instead of the unintuitive alphabet soup that Arch-based distros employ.
It also is the flagship distro for the Budgie DE.
I've tried it out a few times in a VM and there's a lot to like about it, but IMO the downsides are package availability (especially when compared to the AUR) and the dev team's rocky past. I'll be keeping an eye on it, though.
That makes sense. Though I prefer the customizability of Plasma I really liked Budgie's default experience when I last played around with it. Combined with the intuitive package manager, I can definitely see the potential - the current major simple / beginner-friendly distros feel a bit dated and/or have some frustrating design choices so I'm happy to have Solus as a competitor in that niche. I hope they're able to make the move to Wayland and expand their package repo.
I daily drove it for a couple years on my last laptop before it broke, but the main draw was itâs the budgie DE and weekly updates that kept things recent but still pretty stable. Overall a good experience, but I felt like trying OpenSuSe when I got my new laptop.
Itâs very nice to see Solus back. I wonât be back there any time soon, as currently my Linux laptop isnât in use (and is on Mint). I have a soft spot for Solus, though; it is the only distro not connected to Debian Iâve used as a daily driver. Hopefully the maintenance comes easier this time around, too.