Linux Steam Integration utility received an important update

Dec 11, 2016 22:00 GMT  ·  By

Joshua Strobl from the Solus Project was extremely happy to publish today, December 11, 2016, the 40th installation of the project's This Week In Solus (TWiS) weekly newsletter.

We can't say that TWiS is still a weekly thing lately, because it's not, and that's only because the team is hard at work planning new features for the rolling and independently-developed Linux-based operating system. As some of you might be aware, they recently announced Solbuild, the brand-new, faster package build system.

But there are bigger news than that, especially for those who use the Solus MATE Edition, as the team is currently developing a new Applications Menu applet for the MATE desktop environment, which is entitled Brisk Menu. It aims to offer a traditional experience in the style of MAE, and you can see it in action in the attached screenshot.

"Meet Brisk! This is a new menu we’re developing for the MATE desktop, to provide a slightly traditional, but very fast and usable menu system. It started out inspired by the Budgie Menu but has drifted towards honoring Cardapio. And with it being written in C, it’s lightning quick," said Joshua Strobl, Solus Project Communications Manager.

First Solus ISO snapshot coming soon

We talked about this a while ago, and it looks like it will finally happen. The first Solus ISO respin/snapshot is coming soon, bundled with some of the latest and freshest GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source applications, including Linux kernel 4.9, X.Org Server 1.19.0, upgraded libinput library and X.Org libinput driver, and Brisk Menu.

To implement the X.Org Server 1.19 display server in Solus which, along with xf86-video-amdgpu 1.2.0 and Linux kernel 4.9, introduces support for older AMD Radeon GPUs from the SI (Southern Islands) / GCN 1.0 family, the team had to deprecate the Nvidia 304.xx and 340.xx graphics drivers, urging users to move to the Nouveau driver.

In related news, Solus Project leader Ikey Doherty was proud to announce an important update to the Linux Steam Integration utility. As expected, the ISO snapshot is designed for those who want to deploy Solus on new computers or plan to reinstall, as the rest of us will be getting all these goodies quite soon via a system update.