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Solus Linux 4.5

Solus Linux 4.5

On January 8, the latest release of Solus Linux 4.5 was announced. Solus is an independent Linux distribution for modern PCs, using Budgie as the desktop environment and eopkg for package management.

New Features:

  • Installer. This release features a new version of the Calamares installer. It simplifies installation using file systems like Btrfs, with the option to specify custom partition layouts, marking an important step away from Python 2, which was used for the previous version of the OS installer.
  • Default Applications:
    • Firefox 121.0, LibreOffice 7.6.4.1, and Thunderbird 115.6.0.
    • The Budgie and GNOME editions come with Rhythmbox for audio playback, and the latest version of the Alternate Toolbar extension provides a more modern user interface.
    • The editions with Budgie and GNOME desktop environments are equipped with Celluloid for video playback.
    • For video playback in the Xfce edition, the Parole player is included.
    • The Plasma edition comes with Elisa for audio playback and Haruna for video playback.

  • Pipewire is now the media framework for Solus, replacing PulseAudio and JACK. Users should not notice any difference in the user interface. Performance improvements should be noticeable; for example, sound transmitted via Bluetooth should become high-quality and reliable. A demonstration of Pipewire's capabilities can be found in a forum post about microphone input noise cancellation.
  • Support for ROCm for AMD hardware. We are now packaging ROCm 5.5 for users with supported AMD hardware. This provides GPU acceleration for applications such as Blender, as well as hardware acceleration for machine learning with support for PyTorch, llama.cpp, stable diffusion, and many other AI programs and tools. We have made additional efforts to expand ROCm compatibility to as much hardware as possible, including hardware not officially supported by AMD. ROCm 6.0 will be released soon, further improving graphics-accelerated workflows.
  • Hardware and kernel supportThis release of Solus comes with the Linux kernel 6.6.9. For those who need an LTS kernel, we provide 5.15.145. The 6.6.9 kernel offers broader hardware support and some interesting changes in configuration. For example:
    • Our kernel configuration now includes all Bluetooth drivers, audio codecs, and audio drivers.
    • schedutil is now the default CPU governor.
    • Kernel modules are no longer compressed during initramfs creation, reducing boot time.
    • We have modified our kernel to default to the BORE scheduler. This is a modification of the EEVDF scheduler optimized for interactive desktops. Under heavy CPU load, the system will try to prioritize processes that it deems interactive, while maintaining a responsive feel.
  • Mesa has been updated to version 23.3.2. This introduces various improvements:
    • Device selection and Vulkan overlay is now included.
    • Added the Gallium Zink driver.
    • Added the Gallium VAAPI driver.
    • Input-output support for the built-in OpenGL overlay has been added.
    • Vulkan support for Intel 7th and 8th generation GPUs has been added (which are actually not powerful enough to use it, but some hardware acceleration is better than nothing).
    • Ray tracing support for Intel XE graphics processors has been added.
    • An experimental Virtio Vulkan driver has been added.
  • Budgie:
    • Dark theme preference support. The 'Dark theme' switch in Budgie settings now also sets dark theme preference for applications. Some applications may override this with a specific color scheme, for example, an image editor might prefer a dark canvas. Nevertheless, this standardized and vendor-independent setting should help ensure a more consistent experience for users.
    • Budgie Trash applet. The Budgie Trash applet, developed by Buddies of Budgie and Solus team member Evan Maddock, is now part of the default applets available in all Budgie installations. With this applet, users can effectively empty their trash and view its contents for potential recovery.
    • Quality-of-life improvements: Taskbar icons can scale depending on the size of the panel; improvements to the notification system, including slightly reduced memory usage; enhancements in the system tray related to inconsistent implementations of StatusNotifierItem; keyword support is now enabled for fuzzy searches in the Budgie menu and the Run dialog—search queries like 'browser' or 'editor' should yield better results; the privilege escalation dialog will now display a description of the action and the action ID when graphical privilege escalation is requested; the battery indicator in the 'Status' applet now allows users to select power profile modes on supported systems. Release notes for the original version can be found at this link.
  • GNOME:
    • Default configuration changes: The Speedinator extension replaces Impatiente and speeds up animations in Gnome Shell; the default GTK theme is now set to adw-gtk3-dark to ensure a unified look for GTK3 and GTK4 applications based on libadwaita; new windows are centered by default; the timeout for the 'Application not responding' message has been increased to 10 seconds.
    • Bug fixes, cleanups, and quality-of-life improvements: The file picker in GNOME now has a grid view, addressing a longstanding feature request; the ability to select files by thumbnails; mouse and touchpad settings are now visually displayed; new accessibility settings have been added, such as loudness enhancement, keyboard accessibility, and constant visibility of the scroll bar; GNOME settings now include a 'Security' menu that shows SecureBoot status. All release notes for the version can be found at this link.
  • Plasma. Solus 4.5 Plasma Edition comes with the latest versions:
    • Plasma 5.27.10;
    • KDE Gear 23.08.4 (primarily contains bug fixes and translation updates);
    • Qt 5.15.11;
    • Sddm 0.20.0.
    • A lot of work has also been done for the upcoming Plasma Edition. Support for Plasma 6 is gradually being implemented in anticipation of the first stable release from the KDE developers, expected later this year.
  • Default configuration changes. Former Solus team member Girtabulu made numerous small fixes to the user theme: now a double-click by default opens a function, and new directories opened by external applications in Dolphin now open in a new tab.
  • Xfce. The release announcement for Solus 4.4 stated the intent to discontinue the MATE Edition in favor of a new Xfce version, which is now intended to fill the same niche as the MATE version for users who prefer a lighter desktop. Since this is the first release of the Xfce edition, there may be some rough edges, even though all the time was spent making the experience refined. Solus developers refer to the Xfce version 4.5 as a beta version. The new Xfce edition includes:
    • Xfce 4.18;
    • Mousepad 0.6.1;
    • Parole 4.18.0;
    • Ristretto 0.13.1;
    • Thunar 4.18.6;
    • Whiskermenu 2.8.0.

    This Xfce version features a traditional desktop layout with a bottom panel and Whiskermenu as the application menu. It uses the Qogir GTK theme with the Papirus icon theme to give it a sleek and modern look. Blueman is already installed and meets all your Bluetooth needs.

  • On the future of MATE environment support. Developers are still working on a smooth transition for existing MATE desktop users. Users are given the option to migrate their MATE installations to the Budgie or Xfce environment options. MATE will continue to be supported for existing users until we are confident in our transition plan.

You can download the Solus 4.5 distribution options at this link.

Source: linux.org.ru

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