Ikey doherty was a very active developer of Linux Mint; specifically LMDEHowever, he decided to move away for personal reasons and created his own project; the distribution SolusOS.
Ikey Doherty:
I left from LM some time ago due to a couple of personal reasons i didn't like it in the direction i was going LMDE, it was something in which I had put a lot of effort and in my opinion the promises that we had made were not being delivered, therefore it was born SolusOS.
SolusOS a gap was beginning to emerge among the other distributions, slight modifications in Gnome 3 to improve Gnome fallback In the direction of the user experience, package layout and updated drivers among other important improvements, as well as a careful elegance in the artwork, they caught the attention of more than one user.
However, what seemed like a bottom-up project came to nothing when he decided to abandon this project again - his own project in this case.
Nowadays Ikey doherty is on a new crusade, this time the distribution under his charge is called evolve OS and it is about which we will talk in this review.
This new distribution is created from scratch -From Scratch- and has as distinctive elements a new desktop called Budgie and the famous package management system PiSi (Used by Pardus y pisi linux), which is maintained as «eopkg" inside evolve OS.
Installation:
The picture Evolve-OS-Beta1.iso was downloaded from the official site evolve and I used the installation via USB.
From the terminal or console:
sudo dd if=Evolve-OS-Beta1.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
While lightdm it is the startup manager this does not appear at system startup, a simple but highly polished desktop appears before us.
Appearance:
As you can appreciate Evolve OS it does not escape what the project leader has accustomed us to. The desk Budgie is the flagship of Evolve OS and is focused on simplicity and elegance, plus a likeness or attempt to get closer to the desk of ChromeOS.
According to the official site:
The desk Budgie integrates seamlessly with the stack of GNOME, employing underlying technologies to deliver an alternative desktop experience. In the spirit of open source, the project is compatible and available for other distributions of Linux.
Customize Evolve OS:
Despite its simplicity budgie settings allows us to customize the system quite well, I would almost dare to say that it is not necessary to download extra applications for this section.
By default comes a compact menu with headings (categories) which I decided to change to the traditional mode that we see in Linux Mint for example, it seems more intuitive and therefore faster when searching for applications.
Gnome Panel theme integration brings us closer to the traditional panel Gnome, although the one that comes by default is fine.
Something that caught my attention was the possibility of adding "padding" to the applets on the taskbar, I don't remember seeing it in other distributions.
In the following gallery you can see the mentioned sections:
Regarding the update and installation of applications, it has a software center with a simple and comfortable interface to work with, this is a specific objective in the development of Evolve OS, the same happens in the configuration of the other sections, such as the configuration of the keyboard and mouse, region and language, etc.
It also has Evo Assistant, a small wizard that offers us to install other applications, in this case Google chrome it also offers assistance through forums and channels IRC.
Applications:
- Firefox 35
- Transmission 2.84
- gparted 0.16.1
- Gedit
- Weather
- Maps
- Files (nautilus file manager)
- Video (totem)
- file-roller
- GIMP 2.8.10
Other features:
- Gnome 3.14.2
- pee 3.2
- Network manager 0.9.8.6
- Kernel 3.18.3
- SystemD 206
- GCC 4.8.1
- LVM2 2.02.99
- xorg-server 1.16.3
- New 1.0.10
- Radeon 7.4.0
- Glamor-egl 0.6.0
- mesalib 10.2.4
- flash-player-nonfree 11.2.202.394
Desktop applications:
According to the official site, evolve OS now comes by default with support for many formats, and includes many codecs within the ISO download. As an example, H.264. MP3 y DVD, all work out of the box with no configuration required, and can be accessed using Totem pre-installed or packages Rhythmbox.
Conclusions:
I must admit that Ikey doherty From my point of view he is an excellent developer, the work in which he is usually involved always has a seal of quality, elegance and stability.
This particular layout was very fast and smooth despite using live mode. Minimalist and very simple to configure, that is the line you intend to follow ikey, avoid a bloat on the desktop with extra settings, also the inclusion of the package manager PiSi It seems to me an excellent option (its virtues are exposed in many discussion forums).
As a personal observation, I hope you continue with this project until its launch and regain the trust of those users who were disappointed with the discontinuity of the previous distribution; but above all, renew the confidence of developers who want to collaborate in evolve OS and strengthen this new project.
Source:
https://evolve-os.com/
I wish Ikey Doherty the best of luck in his projects, but I think we have to be a little more serious. If he is going to embark me again on a project that tomorrow is going to be abandoned by someone else, I prefer to be where I am.
How do I install the software for this distro?
if you use pisi, it should be ...
sudo pisi install YOUR-APP
I like Pisi a lot, more than any other package manager and the packages themselves with deltas support. It is a pity that more distros do not use it, to this day I regret that Pardus was the one I have been most comfortable with, with his successor I do not feel the same security.
it looks interesting ... but it's just a shell, I don't see any sense in downloading a distro that who knows what future it has, but I do see sense to use the shell
ps: you need a proper icon pack for the interface, the systray icons are horrible
Completely agree.
Its interface looks polished, but its icons are like Gnome's awita. Ugly!
Normally I wait for things to be stable, but I'm getting off that D thing;
looks good sexy: c
I was one of those who had SolusOS as their main distro, and for me it was great.
Now I am going to test the desktop in my file ... let's see how ... we will think about trying aoura evolve on some equipment for tests.
salu2