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Solus Linux 4.5

Solus Linux 4.5

On January 8, the next release of the Solus Linux 4.5 distribution took place. Solus is an independent Linux distribution for modern PCs, using Budgie as its desktop environment and eopkg for package management.

Innovations:

  • Installer. This release uses a new version of the Calamares installer. It simplifies installation using file systems such as Btrfs, with the ability to specify your own partition layout, an important step away from Python 2, which was the language in which the previous version of the OS installer was written.
  • 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.
    • Editions with the Budgie and GNOME desktop environments come with Celluloid for video playback.
    • To play videos, Xfce comes with a Parole player.
    • The Plasma edition comes with Elisa for audio playback and Haruna for video playback.

  • pipewire is now the default media infrastructure for Solus, replacing PulseAudio and JACK. Users should not see any difference in the user interface. The performance improvement should be noticeable. For example, sound transmitted via Bluetooth should become better and more reliable. A demo of Pipewire's out-of-the-box capabilities can be found at message on the forum about noise reduction of microphone inputs.
  • ROCm support for AMD hardware. We are now packaging ROCm 5.5 for users with supported AMD hardware. It provides GPU acceleration for applications like 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've done additional work to extend ROCm's compatibility to as many hardware as possible, including hardware not officially supported by AMD. ROCm 6.0 will be released soon, which will further improve the performance of GPU-accelerated workflows.
  • Hardware and kernel support. This release of Solus ships with Linux kernel 6.6.9. For those who need an LTS kernel, we provide 5.15.145. Kernel 6.6.9 brings broader hardware support and some interesting configuration changes. 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 use the BORE scheduler by default. This is a modification of the EEVDF scheduler, optimized for interactive desktops. When the CPU load is high, the system will try to prioritize processes that it thinks are interactive, while maintaining a responsive feel.
  • Kitchen updated to version 23.3.2. This introduces various improvements:
    • Device selection and Vulkan overlay are now enabled.
    • Added Gallium Zink driver.
    • Added Gallium VAAPI driver.
    • Added I/O support for the built-in opengl overlay.
    • Added Vulkan support for 7th and 8th generation Intel GPUs (which aren't really powerful enough to use, but some hardware acceleration is better than nothing).
    • Added ray tracing support for Intel XE GPUs.
    • Added experimental Virtio Vulkan driver.
  • Budgie:
    • Dark theme preference support. The Dark Theme toggle in Budgie Settings now also sets the dark theme preference for apps. Some applications may override this with a specific color scheme, for example a photo editor may prefer a dark canvas. Regardless, this standardized and vendor-neutral customization should help provide a more consistent experience for users.
    • Budgie Garbage 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 Recycle Bin and view its contents for possible recovery.
    • Quality-of-life improvements: icons on the taskbar can be scaled depending on the size of the panel; notification system improvements, including slightly reduced memory usage; System tray improvements related to inconsistent StatusNotifierItem implementations; Keyword support is now supported for fuzzy searches in the Budgie menu and Run dialog - search terms such as "browser" or "editor" should return better results; The privilege escalation dialog will now display the action description and 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 here link.
  • GNOME:
    • Changes to default configuration: Speedinator extension replaces Impatiente and speeds up animations in Gnome Shell; The default GTK theme is now set to adw-gtk3-dark to provide a consistent look and feel for GTK3 and GTK4 applications based on libadwaita; By default, new windows are centered; The waiting time for the β€œApplication is not responding” message has been increased to 10 seconds.
    • Bug fixes, cleanups, and Quality-of-life improvements: GNOME's file picker now has a grid view, closing a long-standing feature request; ability to select files by thumbnail; Mouse and touchpad settings are now demonstrated visually; Added new accessibility settings, such as over-boosting audio, enabling accessibility using the keyboard, always making the scroll bar visible; GNOME settings now include a Security menu showing SecureBoot status. All version release notes 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 (mainly 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 also being gradually rolled out in anticipation of the first stable release from the KDE developers, which is planned for later this year.
  • Changes to default configurations. Former Solus team member Girtabulu has made many small fixes to the custom theme: double-clicking now has an open function by default, and new directories opened by external applications in Dolphin now open in a new tab.
  • Xfce. The release announcement for Solus 4.4 announced the intention to ditch the MATE Edition in favor of a new version of Xfce, and the latter is now intended to fill the same niche as the MATE edition for users who prefer a lighter desktop experience. Since this is the first release of the Xfce edition, there may be some rough edges, even though all the time has been spent making the work polished. The Solus developers call Xfce 4.5 a beta version. The new edition of Xfce includes:
    • xfc 4.18;
    • Mousepad 0.6.1;
    • Parole 4.18.0;
    • Ristretto 0.13.1;
    • Thunar 4.18.6;
    • Whiskermenu 2.8.0.

    This version of Xfce has a traditional desktop layout with a bottom bar and Whiskermenu as the application menu. It uses Qogir GTK theme with Papirus icon theme for an elegant and modern look. Blueman is already installed and covers all your Bluetooth needs.

  • About the future of delivery with the MATE environment. The 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 by existing users until we are confident in our transition plan.

You can download Solus 4.5 distribution options at this link.

Source: linux.org.ru

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