Solus (previously known as Evolve OS) is an independently developed
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
for the
x86-64
x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mod ...
architecture
based on the
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...
and a choice of the homegrown
Budgie desktop environment,
GNOME
A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...
,
MATE
Mate may refer to:
Science
* Mate, one of a pair of animals involved in:
** Mate choice, intersexual selection
** Mating
* Multi-antimicrobial extrusion protein, or MATE, an efflux transporter family of proteins
Person or title
* Friendship ...
or
KDE Plasma Plasma is a desktop environment by KDE, and can refer to:
* KDE Plasma 5 (2014–today)
* KDE Plasma 4 (2008–2015)
* Plasma Mobile for smartphones
* Plasma Bigscreen
Plasma Bigscreen is a software project from KDE which contains an interface op ...
as the
desktop environment
In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...
.
[ Its package manager, eopkg, is based on the PiSi package management system from Pardus Linux, and it has a semi-]rolling release
Rolling release, also known as rolling update or continuous delivery, is a concept in software development of frequently delivering updates to applications. This is in contrast to a ''standard'' or ''point release'' development model which uses so ...
model, with new package updates landing in the stable repository
Repository may refer to:
Archives and online databases
* Content repository, a database with an associated set of data management tools, allowing application-independent access to the content
* Disciplinary repository (or subject repository), an ...
every Friday. The developers of Solus have stated that Solus is intended exclusively for use on personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
s and will not include software that is only useful in enterprise or server environments.
History
On September 20, 2015, Ikey Doherty announced that "Solus 1.0 will be codenamed Shannon, after the River Shannon
The River Shannon ( ga, Abhainn na Sionainne, ', '), at in length, is the longest river in the British Isles. It drains the Shannon River Basin, which has an area of , – approximately one fifth of the area of the island of Ireland.
The Shan ...
in Ireland", indicating that "codenames for releases will continue this theme, using Irish rivers."
In July 2016, Solus announced the intention to discard the concept of fixed point release
A point release (also a dot release) is a minor release of a software project, especially one intended to fix bugs or do small cleanups rather than add significant features. Often, there are too many bugs to be fixed in a single major or minor re ...
s and to embrace a rolling release
Rolling release, also known as rolling update or continuous delivery, is a concept in software development of frequently delivering updates to applications. This is in contrast to a ''standard'' or ''point release'' development model which uses so ...
model.
In January 2017, Doherty announced that Solus will adopt Flatpak
Flatpak, formerly known as xdg-app, is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It is advertised as offering a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation from the rest of the system.
...
to reassemble third party applications. In August, Doherty announced that Solus also will adopt "Snaps" (next to Flatpak).
On June 13 the same year, it was announced that the developer team had been expanded with Stefan Ric, and Ikey Doherty – previously working for Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
on Clear Linux OS – started working full-time on Solus.
On November 2, 2018, technology website Phoronix
Phoronix Test Suite (PTS) is a free and open-source benchmark software for Linux and other operating systems which is developed by Michael Larabel and Matthew Tippett.
The Phoronix Test Suite has been endorsed by sites such as Linux.com, LinuxP ...
published an open letter from original founder Ikey Doherty confirming that he was stepping back from the project, assigning "any and all intellectual, naming and branding rights relating to the ownership of Solus" to the development team ''"''with immediate and permanent effect, acknowledging them as the official owners and leadership of the project."
On January 1, 2022, experience lead Josh Strobl announced his resignation from Solus, after 6 years of involvement with the project.
Releases and reception
Point releases
Solus 1.0 "Shannon" was released December 27, 2015. Jessie Smith reviewed the release as part of a feature story in DistroWatch Weekly, a weekly opinion column and summary of events from the distribution world. While he "ran into a number of minor annoyances" such as "Solus panicking and shutting itself down", he concluded that "Solus 1.0 represents a decent start".
Solus 1.1 was released February 2, 2016. HecticGeek blogger Gayan has described Solus 1.1 as a "well optimized operating system", praising significantly faster boot and shutdown times than Ubuntu 15.10. Due to several usability challenges encountered, he recommended to wait another year before trying it out again.
Solus 1.2 was released on June 20, 2016. Michael Huff has described Solus in his review 'Finding Solace in Solus Linux' as a unique and original project for "those who’ve been reluctant to travel the Linux galaxy".
Solus 1.2.0.5 was released on September 7, 2016. Michael Huff, a programmer and data analyst, wrote in his second review of Solus in Freedom Penguin that "we finally have the power and ease-of-use of a Mac in a Linux distribution" and "that the only people who need to use Solus are those who value their happiness in computing", praising the operating system as only one of few independent projects assured of "a tight cult following with the potential for mass appeal."
Solus 1.2.1 was released on October 19, 2016. This is the last fixed point release of Solus and all future releases will be based on the snapshot model (the OS is now following the rolling-release model).
Rolling releases
Solus is considered a curated rolling release. It is a rolling release in the sense that once installed, end-users are guaranteed to continuously receive security and software updates for their Solus installation. Updates become available every Friday.
Solus 2017.01.01.0, a snapshot following the recently adopted rolling release
Rolling release, also known as rolling update or continuous delivery, is a concept in software development of frequently delivering updates to applications. This is in contrast to a ''standard'' or ''point release'' development model which uses so ...
model, was released on January 1, 2017.
Solus 2017.04.18.0, was released on April 18, 2017.
Solus 3 was released on August 15, 2017.
Solus 3.9999 (Solus 3 ISO Refresh) was released on September 20, 2018.
Solus 4.0 "Fortitude" was released on March 17, 2019. Announcing the release, Solus Experience Lead, Joshua Strobl stated that Solus 4.0 delivered "a brand new Budgie experience, updated sets of default applications and theming, and hardware enablement".
Solus 4.1 was released on January 25, 2020.
Solus 4.2 was released on February 3, 2021.
Solus 4.3 was released on July 11, 2021.
Editions
Solus is currently available in four editions:
* Budgie
Budgie may refer to:
Arts
* Budgie (album), ''Budgie'' (album), the debut album by the Welsh heavy metal band Budgie
* Budgie (band), a Welsh heavy metal band from Cardiff
* Budgie (musician) (born 1957), English drummer
* Budgie (TV series), ''Bu ...
flagship edition, a "feature-rich, luxurious desktop using the most modern technologies";
* GNOME edition, running the GNOME desktop environment, "a contemporary desktop experience";
* MATE edition using the MATE desktop environment, a "traditional desktop for advanced users and older hardware";
*KDE Plasma Plasma is a desktop environment by KDE, and can refer to:
* KDE Plasma 5 (2014–today)
* KDE Plasma 4 (2008–2015)
* Plasma Mobile for smartphones
* Plasma Bigscreen
Plasma Bigscreen is a software project from KDE which contains an interface op ...
edition, "a sophisticated desktop experience for the tinkerers".
Budgie
Ikey Doherty stated that, regarding Budgie, he "wanted something that was a modern take on the traditional desktop, but not too traditional", aiming to keep a balance between aesthetics and functionality.
Core team
* Technical lead: Beatrice T. Meyers ataDrake* Global Maintainers: Friedrich von Gellhorn irtablulu Joey Riches oebonrichie and Pierre-Yves yrios
Features
Curated rolling release
Solus brings updates to its users by means of a curated rolling release model. It is a rolling release
Rolling release, also known as rolling update or continuous delivery, is a concept in software development of frequently delivering updates to applications. This is in contrast to a ''standard'' or ''point release'' development model which uses so ...
in the sense that once installed, end-users are guaranteed to continuously receive security and software updates for their Solus installation without having to worry that their operating system will reach end-of-life. The latter is typically the case with fixed point releases of operating systems such as Fedora
A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...
and Ubuntu
Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...
but also Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
. Marius Nestor at Softpedia
Softpedia is a software and tech news website based in Romania. It indexes, reviews and hosts various downloadable software and reports news on technology and science topics.
Website
Softpedia hosts reviews written by its staff—each review in ...
has argued that all operating systems should use the rolling release model in order to decrease development and maintenance workload for developers and to make the latest technologies available for end users as soon as these are ready for the market.
Compared to other rolling release operating systems such as Arch Linux
Arch Linux () is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a Rolling release, rolling-release model. The default installation is a minim ...
- which provides ''bleeding edge'' software, i.e. software so new that there is a relatively high risk that software breakages might occur and render the system partially or completely unusable, Solus takes a slightly more conservative approach to software updates, hence the term ''curated'' rolling release. In contrast to Arch, Software on Solus is commonly referred to as ''cutting edge'', typically excluding beta software, and is released after a short period of testing (in the unstable software repository) to end users in order to provide a safer, more stable and reliable update experience. By prioritizing usability (curated rolling release) over availability (pure rolling release), Solus intends to make the operating system accessible to a wider target market than Arch Linux, which is mainly aimed at more advanced users possessing in-depth technical knowledge about their system.
Solus is also a ''curated'' rolling release in allowing its users to participate in the actual curation process, broadly conceived as the process by which software is selected, maintained and updated (on the server side in the software repositories of the operating system as well as on the client side on the end users computer system). More specifically, and contrary to other operating systems with various 'enforced update mechanisms', a Solus user has the freedom to choose what gets updated and when updates are applied (if at all), except for mandatory security updates.
Software availability
Solus comes pre-installed with a wide range of software that includes the latest Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...
, Thunderbird
Thunderbird, thunder bird or thunderbirds may refer to:
* Thunderbird (mythology), a legendary creature in certain North American indigenous peoples' history and culture
* Ford Thunderbird, a car
Birds
* Dromornithidae, extinct flightless birds ...
, LibreOffice
LibreOffice () is a free and open-source productivity software, office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was fork (software development), forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of t ...
, Transmission
Transmission may refer to:
Medicine, science and technology
* Power transmission
** Electric power transmission
** Propulsion transmission, technology allowing controlled application of power
*** Automatic transmission
*** Manual transmission
*** ...
and GNOME MPV. Additional software that is not installed by default can be downloaded using the included Software Center. Wireless chips and modems are supported through optional non-free firmware
In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...
packages.
Package management is done through eopkg. Michael Huff has quoted project founder and lead developer Ikey Doherty that Solus will not be defined by its package manager. In a previous interview with Gavin Thomas from Gadget Daily on February 8, 2016, Doherty stated that as an end user the goal is to actually ''not'' interact with the package manager, sharply outlining the project's direction in terms of user experience. According to Doherty, the goal is "to actually get rid of it, so the user doesn’t even know about it." In Solus, the package manager is not intended to be used as a tool to ''deploy'' but to ''build'' software, distinguishing it from less beginner-friendly practices on other Linux-based operating systems.
Software developed by Solus
* Budgie desktop environment: a GTK 3 desktop that tightly integrates with the GNOME
A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...
software stack, employing the underlying technology. Starting with version 11, it was announced that Budgie will no longer be written in GTK, and the GNOME software stack will be fully replaced, due to unsolvable disagreements with the GNOME team.
**Raven: a sidebar interface that serves as an applet panel, notifications center and houses the desktop customization settings.
** Budgie Menu: a quick category and search-based application launcher.
** Budgie-wm: the window manager of the Budgie Desktop.
* eopkg: (Evolve OS Package) a fork of the PiSi package manager.
* ypkg: a tool to convert the build process into a packaging operation.
*ferryd: the binary repository manager for Solus.
* Software Center: a graphical frontend to install software in Solus.
* Brisk Menu: a menu co-written with the Ubuntu MATE
Ubuntu MATE is a free and open-source Linux distribution and an official derivative of Ubuntu. Its main differentiation from Ubuntu is that it uses the MATE desktop environment as its default user interface (based on GNOME 2), instead of the GNOM ...
development team, featured in Solus MATE.
Security
In July 2015, Solus announced integration of Clear Linux patches to deprecate insecure SSL ciphers, responding to a community post on Google+ by Arjan van de Ven.
In response to security concerns experienced by the Linux Mint
Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Ubuntu (which is in turn based on Debian), bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications. It can provide full out-of-the-box multimedia support for those who choose to i ...
project in late February 2016, Solus introduced improvements by providing a global Solus GPG key on its download section. Joshua Strobl, Communications Manager at Solus, announced the separation of official and community mirrors on the download page with official mirrors "to be regularly audited and updated" and "daily integrity checks against every ISO mirror" to be performed.
Within its software center, Solus contains a wide variety of dedicated security software ranging from encryption software
Encryption software is software that uses cryptography to prevent unauthorized access to digital information. Cryptography is used to protect digital information on computers as well as the digital information that is sent to other computers over t ...
such as VeraCrypt to anonymization tools such as Tor
Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to:
Places
* Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain
* Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city
* Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano
* Tor Bay, Devon, England
* Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia
Sc ...
.
Solus integrates AppArmor
AppArmor ("Application Armor") is a Linux kernel security module that allows the system administrator to restrict programs' capabilities with per-program profiles. Profiles can allow capabilities like network access, raw socket access, and the ...
instead of SELinux
Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a Linux kernel security module that provides a mechanism for supporting access control security policies, including mandatory access controls (MAC).
SELinux is a set of kernel modifications and user-space t ...
for restricting programs' capabilities.
Popularity
Because of user privacy, the Solus project doesn't track users so there isn't a direct and reliable way to measure popularity.
As of July 2021, the DistroWatch
DistroWatch is a website which provides news, distribution pages hit rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open source Unix-like operating systems. It now contains information on ...
website, which records the frequency of page clicks on its own site, ranked Solus 13th in the 6-month page hit rankings, 6th among the most popular rolling release distributions. and achieved an average reader-supplied review score of 8.42 out of 10.
Critical reception
Solus 3 was named one of the best Linux distributions of 2017 by OMG! Ubuntu!
Matt Hartley praised Solus in his overview of the best Linux-based operating systems of 2017, as "Perhaps the most interesting distro in recent years...taking a unique approach to a logical user workflow, package management and how they work with the community. I see them doing great things in the future."
In the more mainstream media Jason Evangelho covered Solus a few times for ''Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
'' magazine. Solus received a lot of appraisal from Evangelho in his articles covering PC gaming and tech industry, most notable regarding gaming on Solus Linux and about the 4.0 release.
References
; Notes:
External links
*
*
Solus on OpenSourceFeed gallery
{{GNU/Linux distributions
Free software operating systems
Linux distributions
Rolling Release Linux distributions
X86-64 Linux distributions