14 DAY TRIAL // Solus developer and package maintainer Joshua Strobl has informed the GNU/Linux community about some of the latest applications and technologies that landed in the distribution's software repository.
Yes, that's right, a new installation of the This Week in Solus (THiS) newsletter has arrived, issue 34, and things are starting to look pretty good from the perspective of the Solus newcomer, as more and more open-source applications and programs are being added to the repository for them to use on a fresh Solus installation.
Among these, we can mention the popular Krita 3.0 digital painting tool and Kdenlive 16.08.0 video editor. They are now available in the Solus repos if you want to install them, because, after all, Solus is a rolling release operating system, so there's no need for you to wait for some big point release of new ISO images.
"Kdenlive is currently being put through its paces and I’ve ensured that we enable H.265 under Solus (enabling it in both FFMpeg and gstreamer-1.0-plugins-bad) with 8-bit, 10-bit, and 12-bit color depths. So far some editing and effects have been tested as well as exporting in WebM (VP9), H.264 and H.265," says Joshua Strobl.
Games, lots of games, new window managers, and desktop environments coming soon
However, adding Krita and Kdenlive is not the biggest news of today's This Week in Solus newsletter, as there's some great news for Linux gamers as well. As such, the Solus team is happy to announce the availability of many racing, adventure, RPG, and arcade games in the main Solus repository.
These include the Dustrac 2D racing game, Endless Sky sandbox-style space exploration game, OpenJazz Jazz Jackrabbit Linux port, Angband dungeon exploration game, Zelda: Mystery of Solarus XD, and Zelda: Return of the Hylian SE. Many other cool games are coming soon as well, so keep an eye on the Solus repos.
Ultimately, it looks like the Solus developers have finally opened the door for new desktop environments and window managers, something that apparently blocked many newcomers from using Solus as their daily driver. For now, only the i3 tiling window manager has landed in the repositories, but more are coming very soon.