About the Solus Project...

[KGIII]

I've been following this for a while, mostly via Reddit - as that's actually the best source for news that I've been able to find for this particular topic.

I think I'll first link to the Solus Reddit page:

r/SolusProject

r/SolusProject: A modern, desktop-focused Linux distro built from scratch. Official subreddit of the Solus Project (getsol.us), which includes the …

www.reddit.com

There hasn't been an update in more than two months, not even basic security updates. The head honcho quit. The person who was working on Budgie bounced to just working on Budgie (the DE that came with Solus and started with Solus).

There's more - including a lack of communication and seemingly a complete lack of structure within the project.

As such, I've felt obligated to say something for a while now, but I don't really feel it'd be an appropriate article for my site, not without a lot of effort on my part to at least do due diligence by trying to contact the people running the show. (Others have tried with no success.)

The servers were down for quite a while. The update server has been down for quite a while, if I'm understanding correctly. Nobody has mentioned it coming back online and I've not tested this. The web server was down and that was brought back up.

Budgie, the DE that got started with Solus, no longer recommends Solus.

Getting Budgie | Buddies of Budgie Docs

Get Budgie Desktop across the Linux operating system of your choice!

docs.buddiesofbudgie.org

Here's another article (some strong language) that gives some details (they appear to have some prior biases as well):

Time to Stop Using (and Recommending) Solus - Boiling Steam

I’ve complained in the past about Solus (Linux distro) when they could not be bothered to fix their Steam Linux client packaging after Proton 5.13 was long out (they eventually did), but now it’s time to come to more radical… <a...

boilingsteam.com

Anyhow, if I were a Solus user, I'd have packed my things and moved already because of this. It's probably time to stop recommending it (not that we ever do, so that's a bit pointless to say).

It's unfortunate, but I don't think I'd ever rely on them for anything important unless they made some drastic changes and upheld those changes for some time.

 

[wizardfromoz]

If it is of any assistance to The Viewers, they can read my observations on Solus over the last six (6) years by using our Search Facility with

solus

wizardfromoz

Be warned there are two (2) pages of results, and it took me almost a year to try it (never again).

Cheers

Wizard

 

[f33dm3bits]

A New Voyage - Solus Forum

The official Forums of Solus

discuss.getsol.us

A New Voyage | Solus

As a community and a team, we have been through some choppy waters the last few months. After extensive internal discussions involving consu

getsol.us

 

[Vrai]

Thanks for sharing this @KGIII . I have seen a few posts here and there recently regarding Solus and was wondering what the scuttlebutt was. I never used Solus as a daily driver but I have tested it out several times.

If memory serves, I seem to recall that several years ago there was some kind of hoo-hah involving Ikey, Solus, projects, developers, new projects, Budgie, or some such.

 

[KGIII]

If I understand correctly, they finally released an updated version. I'm assuming that means their server is working again.

At this point, for me, that would change very little and go into the 'too little, too late' category. But, that's just my opinion.

 

[mrcrossroads]

Never used it but good to see they're righting the ship.

 

[f33dm3bits]

 

[kc1di]

Solus project was started by Ikey Doherty who has a long history of starting projects only to abandon them after a bit. He started this one as a reaction to being dissatisfied with something on the Linux Mint team. Don't remember all the details. But I personally stay away from his projects. Though he has had some good ideas. Implementation and organization are not in his vocabulary. Just my own opinion. His latest project is called Serpent Linux and I won't be trying it anytime soon.

 

[Vrai]

I saw something yesterday which indicated that someone or some organization was re-energizing the Solus project.

Solus Linux Plans New Direction Built Off Serpent OS - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

 

[KGIII]

I saw something yesterday which indicated that someone or some organization was re-energizing the Solus project.

Solus Linux Plans New Direction Built Off Serpent OS - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

Yeah, they even have a new release. So, the project will live on - for now. I'll keep watching the sub-Reddit to see the results. I think they've burned a lot of goodwill and trust, but time will tell if they're really able to recover. (I made my thoughts clear above.)

 

[wendy-lebaron]

The moment I read the blurb on the site's blog promising a great deal of stuff, and did not have somebody's name on it that I expected, I became convinced this distro is definitely dead. It will be SerpentOS no matter what reality anyone wants to accept. Enjoy the mess.

Was going to post something which would have gotten me permanently banned from Solus forums but I don't plan to come back ever. This was it: "I miss d_______e."

 

[KGIII]

... I became convinced this distro is definitely dead.

I have already said my piece above. None of that has changed.

Rather than say something myself, I think it's telling that the Budgie project removed their recommendation of Solus as a way to use the Budgie desktop. That says it in louder words than I could muster.

As an aside, the Budgie desktop is kinda interesting. I've played with it a few times but only virtualized. It's a fine DE, as far as I can tell. With Budgie having already split from the Solus project, this fiasco shouldn't reflect poorly on them. It's beyond their control and they've already cut ties with Solus.

 

[wendy-lebaron]

Budgie, the DE that got started with Solus, no longer recommends Solus.

This was very tough considering the same guy who helped create that D.E. was involved with the OS project, and now has returned to that project which to me is like, "I was just kidding earlier!" Let's see if those two "unstable" guys (and the "living legend") could surprise the world again. Here I'm putting down that I doubt they could keep all their lofty promises unless they start charging for their product.

LOL at Brodie video, "Staudey" isn't a "living legend". In fact nobody is.

I agree with the Wizard. For three months I had Solus with MATE and it was great, but was forced to move on. Because of the impressive mess it does to the ESP, because it must want 2GB or more for it, it gets ruined easily. It is not for distrohoppers and it wants to be installed only to the internal HDD. Never again.

 

[f33dm3bits]

This was it: "I miss d_______e."

I'm not following?

 

[wendy-lebaron]

Sorry cannot reveal without perhaps being personally attacked for it but anyway...

Go right now to this place:
discuss.getsol.us/ (put "https" and the rest in front of it)

Keep pressing "Load More" button at the bottom, have to do it like five times.

Find a topic which was started near Martin Luther King Jr. day this year. Somewhere near one which has a curse word as name. LOL.

If you still haven't figured it out, go into that topic (the topic with the date not that other nasty one) and scroll to one of the last posts found there. It has a link that might explain some things.

 

[KGIII]

Here I'm putting down that I doubt they could keep all their lofty promises unless they start charging for their product.

Their funding is public (somewhere, I haven't looked for it) and they've got "plenty" of money in the kitty from donations and the likes. So, maybe? They've got about $20k USD - which might not seem like much but is 'pretty good' for a smaller distro. During the most tumultuous periods of the latest outage, this was referenced a number of times. Someone provided some links but I didn't save them anywhere.

So... There's that... They have a few bucks on hand. During the turmoil, I also saw many people willing to donate, but the standard rebuttal to that was that they already had money. I have not followed beyond that. I can not make an informed statement about current affairs.

I think I'll also quote myself with this one:

I think they've burned a lot of goodwill and trust, but time will tell if they're really able to recover.

I'm not in a position to make predictions, but that's the big one for me.

I've seen distros come back from the brink (Remember when Mint had a compromised .iso release and when they lost control of the forum's database along with usernames and salted and hashed passwords? They're fine today. They're currently one of the most popular distros out there.) I do not wish any of them ill will, nor do I hope they fail. A diversity of Linux ecosystems is a positive thing, in this person's opinion.

 

[Pirx]

I've tried Solus. It was an interesting distro. Fully independent, not based on anything and came with its own DE. I didn't stick with it, because, at the time, I was really into coding and Solus was not the best choice for that purpose. Budgie, on the other hand, is something I still use with Sparky Linux on my old laptop. I have two desktop environments installed on that machine. LXDE is the main one, but for watching videos I switch to Budgie. There is no screen tearing with Budgie and working with external monitors is much more comfortable.