14 DAY TRIAL // Joshua Strobl from the Solus Project published a new installation of the distribution's weekly newsletter, This Week in Solus 36, to inform Solus users about the latest software updates and other important changes in the Linux OS.
Now that Solus is a rolling release Linux-based operating system, it always gets the newest and most advanced GNU/Linux technologies, as well as open source software releases. Also, as you might know already, the Solus developers open the gates to more desktop environments and window managers, such as i3 and MATE.
An official Solus MATE Edition is expected in the coming weeks, as part of the forthcoming Solus 1.2.1 ISO update, which should bring many goodies and up-to-date components to those who want to deploy the distro on new machines. However, this does not mean that you cannot enjoy the latest MATE 1.16 desktop right now.
"We’re happy to report the landing of MATE 1.16.0 in the Solus unstable repository. This MATE release improved GTK3 support and [adds] improvements to MATE applications such as Caja, Engrampa, MATE Terminal, and MATE Polkit," says Joshua Strobl in the announcement, where you'll find all the full changelog.
Solus is now powered by Linux kernel 4.7.5
The Linux 4.7.5 kernel has been announced this past weekend, as reported right here in this space, and Solus was the first stable distro to add it in their repositories. Therefore, we can safely say that Solus is now powered by the most advanced stable kernel version, Linux kernel 4.7.5, which didn't even hit the Arch Linux repos yet.
Other than that, the "Solus Packaging" video series has been revised based on the new ypkg 2.0 build tool of choice for the Solus operating system, helping those who want to learn how to package apps for Solus. And, as usual, several new packages made their way into the Solus repos and existing ones have been updated (full list in the newsletter).