The Solus operating system is getting even better

Oct 11, 2015 19:16 GMT  ·  By

The Solus developers are making progress with the operating system, and they've updated a number of important packages and they've also announced that a user repository mechanism will be supported.

Official repositories are one of the most important components of any distribution. This is where users find all the bits and pieces they might need. Some repositories are better than others. For example, Arch Linux has a huge third-party repository where you can find pretty much anything, and most of the packages in there are updated quickly. It also means that the distribution needs to have a big and active community for that to work.

Ubuntu is another good example. The Ubuntu users have access to PPAs provided by Launchpad. PPA stands for Personal Packages Archives, and anyone can use them. It's easy to add them to the OS, and they are used by developers all the time to keep the packages up to date. Now, the Solus developers want to add a user repository mechanism, and that can only be a good thing.

Solus is getting better with each new update

"I am happy to announce that we will be officially supporting a user repository mechanism. There are multiple reasons behind them, one of the key rationales is easier updating of Google Chrome, Steam, and other software in the future. The user repository will likely tie into GitHub in some fashion, moving our existing 3rd-party repository at some point to suit the new setup," noted Solus developer Joshua Strobl.

As usual, a number of important packages have been updated, and a few ones have been added. The devs are also looking to upgrade the GNOME stack to version 3.18, before the launch of version 1.0. It's possible that the switch to GNOME 3.18 will also introduce some bugs or issues that will delay the launch of the stable version.

Right now, you can download the latest Solus Beta, so you can take a look for yourself.