The launch of the new version of the Linux distribution Solus 4.1, which comes with various improvements to the system, for the desktop and for some applications. For those who do not know about Solus, they should know that this distro is not based on packages from other distributions and that also develops its own desktop called "Budgie", as well as its own installer, package manager and configurator.
The distribution adheres to the hybrid development model, according to which significant releases offering new technologies and significant improvements are issued periodically and in the interval between significant releases.
About Solus
To manage packages, use the eopkg package manager (PiSi fork of Pardus Linux), which provides the usual tools for installing, removing packages, searching the repository, and managing repositories.
Packages can be distinguished into thematic components, which in turn form categories and subcategories. For example, Firefox maps to the network.web.browser component, which falls under the category of network applications and a sub-category of applications for the web. Over 2000 packages are offered for installation from the repository.
Budgie desktop is based on Gnome technologies, but it uses its own Gnome Shell implementations, panels, applets, and notification systems.
To manage windows, Budgie uses Budgie Window Manager (BWM), an advanced modification of the Mutter base plugin.
The basis of Budgie is a panel similar in organization of work to classic desktop panels in that all panel elements are applets, allowing you to flexibly configure the composition, change the location and replace the implementation of elements of the main panel as you like.
Solus 4.1 main news
In this new version of the system, Linux kernel has been updated to version 5.4, version with which support is provided for new equipment based on AMD Raven 3 3600 / 3900X, Intel Comet Lake, Ice Lake chips.
While the graphics stack has been migrated to Mesa 19.3 with support for OpenGL 4.6 and the new AMD Radeon RX (5700 / 5700XT) and NVIDIA RTX (2080Ti) GPUs.
In ISO images, the zstd algorithm (Zstandard) is used to compress SquashFS content, which compared to the "xz" algorithm allowed speeding up unpacking operations 3-4 times, at the cost of a slight increase in size.
Another change is that the distribution configuration is optimized to use the "esync" mechanism (Eventfd Synchronization) in Wine, which allows you to increase the performance of multithreaded Windows applications and games.
The component aa-lsm-hook responsible for compiling profiles for AppArmor is rewritten in Go. Recycling simplified code base maintenance aa-lsm-hook and provide support for new versions of AppArmor, in which the directory location with the profile cache was changed.
On the part of the system components, we can find the updated versions of programs, including systemd 244 (with DNS-over-TLS support in systemd solved), NetworkManager 1.22.4, wpa_supplicant 2.9, ffmpeg 4.2.2, gstreamer 1.16.2, Firefox 72.0.2, LibreOffice 6.3. 4.2, Thunderbird 68.4.1.
On the side of playing musica, in the editions with the desks Budgie, Gnome and Mate, Rhythmbox player is proposed with the Alternate Toolbar extension, which offers a compact panel interface implemented using client-side window decoration (CSD).
For video playback in the editions of Budgie and Gnome, comes GNOME MPV and in MATE VLC is proposed. While in the KDE edition, Elisa is available to play music and SMPlayer for video.
On the part of desktop environments, in the case of Budgie has been updated to version 10.5.1, on the desk Gnome has been updated to version 3.34, in the desktop environment MATE has been updated to version 1.22.
And finally in KDE Plasma has been updated to the versions of KDE Plasma Desktop 5.17.5, KDE Frameworks 5.66, KDE Applications 19.12.1 and Qt 5.13.2.
In this version, the environment uses its own design theme Solus Dark Theme, the location of the widgets in the system tray has been changed, the clock applet has been redesigned, the list of indexable directories in Baloo has been reduced, the window centering is enabled by default in Kwin and one-click desktop support is enabled by default.
Finally if you want to get the system image you can do it from the link below.
Great distro that has been marking the designs of my computing for a few months. Congratulations to the rolling-release that this distro proposes.