14 DAY TRIAL // Today we have some great news for those of you who use the Solus operating system on your personal computers, as a bunch of new updates pushed recently into the stable software repositories brought some of the latest Open Source technologies.
Until a few days ago, Solus used applications from the GNOME 3.20 Stack, which we have to admit are pretty old considering the fact that the GNOME 3.20 desktop launched on March 23 last year. About two weeks ago, the Solus developers teased us with the upcoming availability of multiple applications from the GNOME 3.22 Stack.
And the wait is now finally over, as the hard-working Solus development team somehow made it possible for us to use a multitude of up-to-date GNOME 3.22 apps on our favorite Linux-based operating systems; that, of course, if you're using the main edition of the OS, with the lightweight Budgie desktop environment.
Yes, we know, there are still some issues with the Nautilus file manager, which was rolled back to version 3.20.4, but project leader Ikey Doherty promises to fix them as soon as possible. We can't wait until that happens, but at least we can now enjoy the powerful new features of the long-term supported Linux 4.9 kernel.
That's right, Solus is now powered by Linux 4.9! Specifically, the latest Linux 4.9.7 kernel released the other day just landed in the Solus repositories a few hours ago, along with numerous other goodies. Therefore, we recommend that you update your Solus installations as soon as possible to get them all and stay up to date.
What's coming soon to Solus?
Budgie 11 is coming soon to Solus if that's what you're asking yourselves right now, but it could take a few more weeks to be able to upgrade our installation to the new desktop environment, which will use the newest Qt technologies. Flatpak support is already there if you want to install apps that aren't available in the Solus repos.
What else is coming soon to Solus? Well, it looks like the graphics stack might finally be updated soon to the latest X.Org Server 1.19 release, bringing state-of-the-art support for AMD Radeon users. Right now Solus is using X.Org Server 1.18.4 due to some AMD hybrid issues, but if you have a spare testing machine, testers are now needed!
We think we covered pretty much everything, at least for Q1 2017, but who knows, we can expect anything from the Solus developers as they're always working on new features, new tools, and under-the-hood improvements to make Solus the best Linux-based operating system of 2017.
Floodgates for #Solus Shannon are now open! Depending on your system, expect in excess of 200 updates, including flatpak, GNOME 3.22, etc. pic.twitter.com/HgC4uaThzm — Solus (@SolusProject) January 30, 2017