Solus 1.2.1 ships with the Budgie 10.2.8 desktop environment

Oct 19, 2016 05:15 GMT  ·  By

Today, October 19, 2016, Softpedia was informed by the Solus Project about the official release and general availability of the long-anticipated Solus 1.2.1 release, along with the first Solus MATE Edition.

Solus 1.2.1 is shipping with the Budgie 10.2.8 desktop environment, which includes full IBus (Intelligent Input Bus) support for enabling multi-lingual input, a new Places Indicator for quick access to your most used folders and drives, improvements to the on-screen display (OSD) notifications for sound and brightness, a popover for the volume applet, and countless other small, yet useful enhancements.

The graphical installer has been updated with full-disk encryption support via LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) in the graphical installer, along with LVM (Logical Volume Management) support, there's now OpenGL 4.5 support for Intel Broadwell processors, which should provide users with a boost in gaming performance, and the latest Linux 4.8.2 kernel for better hardware support.

Additionally, Solus 1.2.1 introduces an updated Software Center application that now lets you install more third-party apps, including Android Studio and Plex Media Server, and notifies you of new system updates in real time. Under the hood, Solus 1.2.1 comes with the open source Radeon Vulkan driver, the proprietary Nvidia 370.28 driver, support for the "Intel Virtual Button," and Microsoft Surface Pro 3’s touchscreen.

Introducing Solus MATE Edition

Many of you were asking lately when the Solus MATE Edition would be released, and today we're happy to inform you that you can finally download and install the first ever release on your personal computer. Solus MATE Edition ships with the same under-the-hood awesome features as Solus 1.2.1 (see above), but is built around a highly customized MATE 1.16 desktop environment.

"MATE receives the same treatment under Solus as our primary Budgie experience, such as proper integration, statelessness and sane defaults. Our MATE edition delivers a unique yet familiar traditional experience and even ships with exclusive artwork provided by Marius Nestor," said Joshua Strobl, Communication Manager and Developer at Solus Project.

Last but not least, both Solus 1.2.1 and Solus 1.2.1 MATE Edition contain new artwork provided by Twisted Pixels Photography and yours truly. We hope that you'll have a great time using both releases and remember that, if you're running Solus, you're already enjoying most of the new features shipping with Solus 1.2.1, but you'll have to reinstall if you want full-disk encryption.

Download Solus 1.2.1 and Solus 1.2.1 MATE right now!

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Solus 1.2.1 (14 Images)

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