14 DAY TRIAL // While it doesn't look like there will be a Solus 4 release in January, we're looking forward to the upcoming optimizations that the Solus devs have planned for the next snapshot.
Communications Manager Joshua Strobl shares with us today some details on the latest goodies that landed in the software repositories of Solus, as well as various of the upcoming improvements that the team plans for the next release of the Linux-based operating system. First thing first, in case you missed it, they released LDM (Linux Driver Management) 1.0.
LDM is in charge of the detection and enumeration of devices on Solus, as well as other GNU/Linux distributions that want to implement it. Linux Driver Management replaces the old DoFlicky driver management utility, and comes with a bunch of new features designed to support the goals of the Solus 4 release. More details on LDM 1.0 can be found here.
Various of Solus' stacks and toolchains were updated in the past few weeks as well, and users can now enjoy things like the GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 7.3 system compiler, GEGL 0.3.28 for the GIMP image editor, OpenCV 3.4.0, which is used by a multitude of multimedia apps, and the libsodium cryptography library used by several messaging apps.
Solus Plasma Early Access ISO now ready for testing, boot optimizations
And now for the real goodies, as Solus Patrons can now test drive the upcoming Solus Plasma edition using the Early Access ISO image that was released to them, and Solus leader Ikey Doherty promises more boot optimizations to make Solus even faster than before, in case anyone needs it to be faster than already is.
"Have you ever looked at your boot time and thought "I sure wish I could make this faster!" ? We have too. This week Ikey will be reworking our core systems to facilitate a faster boot for all users, evaluating the early boot services and unblocking critical services to ensure speedy boot and login," says Joshua Strobl.
With that in mind, Solus will stay true to the X.Org display server for now, while the devs still work as hard as they can on the major Budgie 11 desktop environment, which could support the next-generation Wayland display server, as well as the soon-to-be-released Solus 4 snapshot for newcomers and those who want to deploy the operating system on new computers.