The release of the Linux distribution Solus 4.9 has been announced, which is not based on packages from other distributions and develops its own installer, package manager, and configuration tool. Previously, the Budgie desktop was included in the distribution, but it has now been separated into an independent project. The upcoming Solus 5 branch is set to be developed on the technologies of the AerynOS distribution. The project's code is distributed under the GPLv2 license, using C and Vala for development. Builds are provided with the Budgie, GNOME, KDE Plasma, and Xfce desktops. The size of the ISO images is 2.6-2.9 GB (x86_64).
The package manager eopkg (a fork of PiSi from Pardus Linux) is used to manage packages, providing familiar tools for installing/removing packages, searching the repository, and managing repositories. Packages can be categorized into thematic components, which in turn create categories and subcategories. For example, Firefox is categorized under component network.web.browser, which belongs to the network applications category and the Web applications subcategory. More than 2000 packages are available for installation from the repository.
The distribution follows a hybrid development model, whereby significant releases are periodically made that offer new technologies and major improvements, while between significant releases the distribution is developed using a rolling model for package updates.
For music playback in the editions with Budgie and GNOME desktop environments, the Decibel player is provided, while Celluloid is used for video playback. In the KDE edition, Elisa is available for music playback, and Haruna is used for video. The Xfce edition employs Parole as the media player for multimedia files.
Key Changes:
- A directory with presets is utilized for managing the services that start by default in systemd.
- The group of users with access to privileged operations has been changed from sudo to wheel.
- The Calamares installer has been updated to version 3.4.2. Compared to the previous release in Solus 4, support for hybrid installations of the bootloader has been implemented, where the boot partitions are created simultaneously for systemd-boot and GRUB2.
- The default size of the EFI boot partition has been increased to 2 GB due to the increased size of kernel modules, firmware modules, and NVIDIA packages.
- Package versions have been updated, including Linux kernel 6.18.21, GRUB 2.14, Mesa 26.0.4, Firefox 149.0.2, LibreOffice 25.8.6.2, and Thunderbird 149.0.2.
- The build with the Budgie desktop has been updated to version 10.9.4. The ptyxis terminal emulator is used by default. Packages with Budgie 10.10, which supports only Wayland, are expected to be released soon.
- The GNOME desktop has been updated to the GNOME 49.5 release. Packages with GNOME 50, which only supports Wayland, are expected to be released soon.
- The KDE-based build has been updated to releases of KDE Plasma 6.6.4, KDE Gear 25.12.3, and KDE Frameworks 6.24.0.
- The Xfce-based build continues to be shipped with the release of Xfce 4.20.
Source: opennet.ru
